Testing

Methodology

Click to enlarge

To test the pad, we’ll be using a whole bunch of different mice including the Razer Lachesis, the Razer Deathadder, the Ideazon Reaper, the MSI Starmouse and a generic PS/2 optical mouse. The mice were all optical, with the generic PS/2 being standard optical, the Deathadder being infra-red, the Reaper a standard red LED, the Lachesis with a laser diode and the Starmouse also containing a laser.

I tested the mouse over a week to get my full impressions of the pad and how different mice work with it.

Results

The first thing about the pad is that the surface doesn’t absorb your sweat as a cloth mat would. While this means you won’t have a sweat-sodden pad after a few months, it does mean that your wrist gets moist and then rubs against the edge of the pad. It doesn’t feel particularly nice if you go for an epic gaming session and you’ll find yourself reaching for a towel after a while, or turning up the air-conditioning.

The pad is unbelievably fast. There is pretty much no friction with your mouse on the top, using the included mouse feet helps, but not with high-end mice (the Razer models). You can flick the Deathadder from one side and it’ll fly off the other side which just shows you how well your mouse will glide on the pad. For me, this feature is a little annoying; I prefer a pad that gives you a reasonable amount of friction so that when you stop moving the friction helps you not overshoot what you were trying to click. When I first started using the pad, I would miss menus and click the wrong buttons, but you soon learn how to move your mouse fast and accurately.

The accuracy of the pad is flawless, at least with all the mice bar the Lachesis. For some reason the ultra high DPI of the mouse doesn’t gel well with the pad’s unorthodox pattern and lumpy surface, and you find the cursor jumps by a far degree (we’re talking inches) even if its stopped. It’s strange to see this happen, but the other mice work perfectly. I did try some other lower end optical mice, and some exhibit the same symptoms as the Lachesis where the accuracy is far lower than when using your desk for instance.

It’s a bit of a shame that Razer’s current flag-ship mouse simply doesn’t work on the surface; and more frustrating when the Lachesis refuses to be accurate on a cloth pad. You’ll have to pick another hard mouse pad from SteelSeries if you are a lucky Lachesis owner.

Playing Battlefield 2142 on a packed server, you’ll find your movements are clear and crisp with each twitch of your wrist centring your cross-hairs on the next victim. You can spin around as fast as your mouse will allow without the mouse pad limiting the speed in any way. I found that the extra speed made that tiny bit of difference and my lead grew further than usual to the frustration of the other players. I even got the biggest compliment another can give; ‘cheater!!!1’.

Switching to Command and Conquer: Zero Hour and the extra speed made little difference, and the low friction became a bit of an annoyance where I would overshoot what I was trying to select. This pad appears to be geared towards high-speed high accuracy gamers rather than those who prefer strategy style games such as Zero Hour, or Company of Heroes.

At no point during any of the testing did the mouse pad move as and it stayed perfectly still on my desk meaning the rubber backing did its job well. While I usually don’t like hard surfaced pads, this one is beginning to turn me towards the ultra-fast movements that it allows. Strangely, even though the pad makes noise when you draw your mouse across it, it sounds slightly muted rather than a gravelly scrap that others have.