A spunbonded nonwovens is made by first spinning thermoplastic continuous filaments and emitting them from a spinneret in a direction and then passing the filaments in the direction through a cooling chamber. Meanwhile cooling air is fed from respective manifolds flanking the chamber into the chamber to cool the filaments and the cooling air is guided into the manifolds through respective manifolds and through respective planar homogenizing elements each having a plurality of openings forming a free open surface area constituting 1 to 40% of the total surface area of the respective planar homogenizing element. The cooling air passes from the planar homogenizing element into the cooling chamber through a flow straightener.