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Mouse pads usually don't instill a sense of excitement when looking for items to purchase for your computer setup, but in the last few years "performance" mouse pads have entered the market and taken a firm hold on the gamer population. First came the 3M Mousing Surface, which was a thin pad, about 20cm across, with a rough, textured surface to give the mouse ball something to grip on. They were popular with secretaries (well, they were at my workplace) and generally did the job they were designed to do.
Then came the Everglide pads, in two flavours at first: that of a normal rectangle shape and an oval-with-a-bite "Attack Pad" shape, followed by the attack-pad-on-horse-steroids Giganta pad. Made of thick, durable plastic, they were immediately embraced by the gaming community and soon, pretty much any twitch-gamer worth his Quake 3 t-shirt had one. The Everglide pads also featured a textured surface, where the theory was that not only would it be a great surface for a mouseball to gain traction on, but it would "collect" skin cells and oil and gunk and trap them in the valleys and troughs of the rough surface. The theory was that this would stop the mouse rollers from getting gunked up and would improve mousing performance even further.
I've used both the 3M and Everglide products - I own a Quake 3 Attack pad for home use and a standard pad for work - and frankly, the Everglide pads are far better. I always found the 3M surface too "boggy"; it made the user feel like they were trying to push their mouse through a small puddle of thick glue. I'm not entirely sure what manifests this effect, possibly the soft polymer the surface was made out of was bending under the weight of the mouse and hand, but it was annoying and horrible for gaming. In comparison, the Everglide pads - made out of tough plastic - don't bend under weight, the mouse rides on top of the peaks of the surface. This gives the mouse a very "glide-y" feel to it; it actually feels like it's been lubricated. You in the back, stop sniggering.
So why am I rambling on about products that have been out for a few years now? Because Everglide have released a new range of pads that are similar in form to the old 3M Mousing Surface, but retained the superior performance of an Everglide surface.
The new pads are large, larger than my old faithful rectangular Everglide pad; you'd have to try hard to run your mouse off the edge. They also come with a selection of themes: we received "Cyborg", and "Special Ops", which of course, is for all you CS junkies out there.
They're flexible and can be bent back and forward without damage; I rolled one up into a cylinder with a diameter of about 4-5cm and it unrolled with no damage, although it did need to be reminded of how to be flat. Two minutes of using a mouse on it again worked better than any clothing iron.
While the texture of the surface works in a very similar fashion to the old Everglide pads, the structure is quite different. Rather than a seemingly random mass of peaks and troughs, rows and rows of tiny protrusions sit on the surface, with relatively large shiny, flat areas between the bumps.
The bottom of the pad is a thin foam material, which is does its job perfectly. It's the boring part of the pad, so that's all the attention we're going to give it. Foam fans, go elsewhere.
These flat areas have caused some issues when I've been using my first generation Microsoft Explorer optical mouse; jumps across the screen and other glitches weren't uncommon, although I never had these problems with my newer Intellimouse Optical that I use at home. I would hazard a guess that these flat areas are reflecting the light back at the optical "eye" and confusing it somewhat, but not completely blinding it.
Aside from this minor issue, there were no problems in using either of the review pads, both worked well and were a pleasure to use. They're probably also better for RSI in the mousing wrist, especially if you're like me and you use the older thick plastic Everglide pads. The drop in height makes a difference and while I don't think I'll need to sue Everglide for wrist damage, I can feel that my wrist isn't as "out of place" when using the new, lower pads.
I heartily recommend these pads: they work well, they're flexible (so they're great to chuck in a box of gear and take to a LAN), fairly inexpensive at $9.99usd and they come in a range of show-off themes. I can't hate anything about them. They're just plain nice. Buy one.
