Cheap shot? AAirhut thermal 1 mm pad tested against the blue Arctic APT2560 and a really positive surprise

1 - Introduction and overview 2 - Microscopy, material test and usability 3 - Performance comparisons and measurements 4 - Summary and conclusion

Thermal pads on Amazon, like the AAirhut tested today, are always a gamble, usually with an unfortunate outcome. You click through offers that shine with full-bodied promises, only to end up with a product that looks more like a flabby eraser than an effective solution to thermal problems. It is advertised as having “excellent thermal conductivity”, but in reality the pad already has problems transferring heat from the hand to the table. Or you get pads that crumble like old cookies when cut to size – but the main thing is cheap.

But cheap is always very relative. With an indication of a whopping 15 W/m-K, insiders know that this is also theoretically impossible, a pink thermal pad caught my eye that provocatively shouted “Buy me, I’ll kill all the putties!”. If you compare the price with that of the expensive pads from Fujipoly, then this would at least be reasonably inexpensive, even if not extremely cheap. I get around 20 cm² of pad area per euro, which is just about ok. But as it is: Curiosity wins and youth does the research. Bought, measured, amazed. But more on that in a moment, because I also need an established comparison.

With the blue APT2560 pad from ARCTIC, which is now EOL and has been replaced by the better PT3, but is still sold cheaply on platforms such as Amazon, we end up in the price zone of around 24.8 cm² per euro. The manufacturer states 6 W/m-K, which seems credible at first and the price is also more than ok. If the 6 W/m-K is really realistic, then this is a typical ARCTIC offer from the shelf of inexpensive and yet solid materials. If, but we still have a word to say, because the TIMA5 doesn’t lie. But since this pad is one of the best-selling, it might be a good indication.

But back to the pad and the color pink. then there are those rare moments when you suddenly get lucky, and the AAirhut 1 mm pad is just such a case. At first, the name sounded more like a random Scrabble toss between Pizza Hut and Airwick air freshener. Who would have thought that this inconspicuous product would be the exception to the rule and perform well? The pad was a positive surprise as soon as it was unpacked. No slippery silicone feel, no sticky surface that looks more like chewing gum. Instead, a pleasantly grippy material that did not oily slip away when cut and did not disintegrate into microscopically small pieces – a rarity with noname products in this price range. You could almost have thought that the purchasers in China had actually put some thought into it.

The real test, however, was of course the performance. And lo and behold: instead of influencing the temperatures marginally at best like many other cheap products, the AAirhut actually delivered solid results, I can spoil that for you. The temperatures remained stable and were even slightly lower than with some high-priced competitor products that like to adorn themselves with technical superlatives but hardly deliver in practice. In short: the AAirhut is the proverbial stroke of luck in a sea of mediocre to inferior products. Proof that you can occasionally find real quality at a fair price on Amazon – a rare but welcome surprise that gives us hope that not every cheap product on offer is just a dip in the proverbial bucket. Incidentally, 6 to 15 W/m-K is stated on the packaging, which reads somewhat differently to the Amazon headline.

Yes, AAirhut is also just a brand of a Chinese wholesaler and marketer that sells everything from hair dryers and USB gadgets to heat-conducting materials, only this time it performed even better than I thought possible. However, the imprint of the German “consulting firm” is not worth the money that the printer ink cost. In the end, nobody wants to know that if something goes wrong. But Amazon and the Chinese are liable.

So today there’s a duel for all those who are still looking for a good 1 mm pad and don’t dare to use thermal putty. But I can already spoil the fact that putties will be the future for our DIY stories and pads are de facto obsolete. I know who is currently working on good, easy-to-process putties for the end customer market or will launch them on the market after my tests of established industrial products. Both the internal testing of prototypes and pre-production samples for well-known brands on a fee basis and the cross-testing of industrial samples of products already on the market are resulting in an interesting trend away from pads and towards putty. But that’s a completely different story.

Test setup and methods	Material analysis and microscopy	Basic knowledge
Here you can find out why effective thermal conductivity and bulk thermal conductivity can be completely different in practice, what role the contact resistance between the surfaces and the paste plays and how thermal compound can be measured precisely. There is also a detailed description of the equipment, the methodology and the error tolerances.	You will learn how laser-induced plasma spectroscopy works and the advantages and limitations of the measurements. There is also high-resolution digital microscopy and analysis of particle sizes. This information is also used to estimate the long-term stability of a paste.	Anyone who has always wanted to know what is or is not in a paste and how these pastes are produced will find what they are looking for here. The basic article provides a better understanding of what is often sold for far too much money and sometimes with adventurous promises.