There are three things more important than anything else to a gamer; his keyboard, his mouse, and his mouse pad. These three items that should stay with him longer than any other part of his computer. He knows their feel and their every quark, and most importantly he knows that these devices will either allow him to achieve greatness, or betray him when it's game time.

The Pad

The pad from steelpad.com comes packaged in a thin cardboard box, and our unit also came with a strip of pad surfer Teflon tape for use on the bottom of one mouse. The pad itself is very large spanning 290 x 267 mm, therefore it uses a considerable amount of desk space. For those without as much space Steelpad also makes the 3S which is basically the same unit only much smaller.


Unlike the name might suggest, the pad itself is made out of aluminum rather than steel and is treated and fiber polished. The pad is also very light and extremely durable. The pad is extremely thin at only 3.5mm (including rubber feet). The pad is said to work with all ball and optical mice except for Logitech mice other than the MX series. This turned out to be true as the pad would not work properly with my Logitech Dual Mouseman Optical mouse. However, the pad did work correctly with our Logitech MX500 mouse.

Performance

Setting up the mouse and mouse pad for use was a simple enough. The pad surfers were quick and easy to install. All that we needed to do was cut the appropriate size off the strip that was given to us with the package and apply it to each foot on our mouse. After the pad surfers were installed, the mouse glided on the pad much better than it did before. Before the pad surfers were put on the mouse would make an annoying scrapping sound when it would glide across the mouse surface. However, the pad surfers eliminated the noise completely.

After playing a few games and taking the time to get acquainted with the pad I really came to appreciate the slick surface. The only problem that I had with the pad is that due to its aluminum construction it feels very cold and can collect condensation from sweaty hands. While this usually only happened in extreme cases, the condensation can be annoying because if your laser mouse happens to track over the "wetness" it can cause the pointer to go astray.

Overall

Despite the Steelpad's hefty price tag, this mouse pad is one of my top choices. This mouse pad is constructed better than any mouse pad I have used thus far. If you can overlook the cold feel, and hefty price tag, this is the mouse pad to get. The Steelpad can be had for about $40 at various places online.

Price - 7.0
Performance - 8.5
Overall - 8.0

by Ryan 'Speedy' Wissman