I often end up using my laptop while laying on a couch or a bed, with the laptop sitting in front of me directly on a fabric surface. Since the air intake is at the bottom - it gets completely obstructed, and the laptop heats up more than it needs to and drains the battery faster.
I would love to see an Input Cover option with a vent for air intake, to allow the laptop to suck in air from the top too.
Doesn’t seem sensible. Where on the top and that would leave the top even more prone to liquid ingress.
Even dust would just fall in.
There are reasons for being at the bottom, hot air rises, which is essential on low load with no fan.
See IP3# 1mm gaps
Placing the laptop on a tray or better still an aluminium plate could resolve your concerns.
Most laptops are used on a table, not a fluffy blanket etc. that would be careless.
always maybe and that will have been considerd in design, so no prob.
Citation needed 
Maybe in business settings. For personal use though, laptops sit on an awful lot of flat surfaces. Blankets, pillows, even your lap is not flat when it comes to an air intake like this. For the 14" at least, the air intake is only really the left hand side (where the fan is), which is the bit that is pressed down on the not flat part of your left leg.
Anyway, I don’t think a top air intake is necessarily a great idea, but I do agree the bottom intake design is bad. It’s the worst part of the laptop, by far.
On such occasions, my legs are not tight together and air flows between them, and even if the fan is offset to the left it will still draw the air in.
Well if you are a blanket user I can see how that may be a reason to cry, but for me that is ideal. I have a stainless steel plate to rest on which allows for some heat dissipation and air cooling before it gets into the laptop.
Also I don’t know if you saw my picture but the back is raised some 2cm allowing a little easier flow.
Better sign off now before I get too hot.
Take care
You ain’t getting much use of passive convection if your height delta is 1cm
It seems pretty sensible to me, there are a lot of laptops with top intake. Dust gets it either way, so I’m cleaning any of my laptops regularly. And the risk of a liquid spill is much further down on my priority list than not having the cooling system suffocate in a scenario that happens every day for multiple hours.
Also, do note that I’m not saying that your laptop should have a top intake. I just want to have an option to make my laptop have a top intake.
Sorry, I have a radically different approach to devices than you. I tweak and mend them to suit my needs, not the other way around.
If I wanted to bend myself backwards just to use a computer I’d probably still be using some macbook
Well I reside in a wooden cabin, I use only vegetable fibres and burn wood. I have dust everywhere above the stove on some copper hangings it has been an inch deep. The floor on my mezzanine where I sleep can quickly have a layer I can wipe my hand over to collect.
Despite that after some 26 months I took my 11th Gen apart and found no dust to speak of.
I generally use it on a metal plate with 2cm so plenty of air flow that could bring dust. I get more on the keyboard and lid in six months but none inside. So a top grill would not work in my dusty environment.
I’ve had laptops since 1996 and never had a dust problem even though I live in the woods, on a boat, in a tent etc. But I rarely put a laptop on my legs with trousers and never on my bedding etc.
Image today of dust on my steel base, maybe after a week, but less than that inside after 26 months. The air intake is further from the ‘ground’ where dust settles.
