The girlfriends favourite

The Rantopad Mammoth is packed in a nice eye-catching, glossy cardboard box. Oddly, it has a sticker of the woolly mammoth from Ice Age on it. The Chinese symbols next to it only tell you where the pad is made.

This pad bares a fairly remarkable, if not copyright encroaching resemblance to the SteelPad S&S. It feels like its made of the same plastic, as the speckled rubber back, and a semi circular bottom (although the S&S is more pronounced). Even the logos are in the same place. They are the same size too, with the Mammoth coming in at 320x270mm. Sometimes these things happen when two manufactures buy an OEM product from a company and make minor adjustments to make it their own. Or it could be a coincidence, or a copy (however unlikely).

The surface of the pad is slightly rougher than the S&S but it still feels smooth. Rubbing my hand across the surface causes the pad to move slightly which means that the speckled rubber back isn’t the greatest at anchoring the Mammoth in place.

The pad is ridiculously thin, in fact just less than 2mm meaning that you can have your keyboard on top of the pad in a tight situation and it won’t rock when you type.

The only thing that breaks up the expanse of black is the small Rantopad logo in the corner which tells you that it’s the Mammoth version. The logo is subtle and far from garish so you won’t be a walking advert if you use this at, say, a LAN party.

And on that note, this pad is nice and transportable due to its weight and slim design. Shame there isn’t a carry bag like with the SteelPad S&S…