When someone asks you how they could improve their game cheaply, chances are high you tell them to buy a good mousepad. Indeed, you can get a brand new gaming mousepad for as low as 15$, and it makes quite a difference. The options aren’t scarce though. There are literally tons of hardware gaming companies that are producing them and even some that specialize themselves in only producing mousepads.

Instead of simply picking mousepads and reviewing them, we’re going to take a different approach for you to decide what to buy. In this first Part 1 of this complte look at mousepads, we’re going to take a look at how mousepads evolved over time, why they changed and what technology works better for what and for who. This will really help you see mousepads under a new light. Let’s begin.

How mousepads evolved

Initially, mousepads in gaming were the same ones that we used for work: small cloth pads that were originally intended to smoothen the experience with a ball-mouse, and prevent it from accumulating debris. Without a mousepad, you had to blow into the ball-mouse to remove them, if you’re old enough to remember those days that is.

Materials were then changed to fit the new optical mice, and “higher performance” mousepads started to quickly appear around that time. What did people need? Well we basically only needed a mousepad that wasn’t feeling as cheap and that could last longer before it worn out. Businesses saw the opportunity for performance, and they would soon hit the gaming market as well.

Gaming hardware companies didn’t stick to the traditional clothpad for very long to please their gamer customers, and they soon started to implement all sorts of materials into their new gaming mousepads such as:

-Plastic (ex. Steelseries S&S)

-Aluminium (ex. Razer eXactMat)

-Glass (ex. Icemat)

You might remember the Icemat glass mousepad, which was a great idea and all, but their line of headsets stood the test of time way better.

Whether or not it was a way to differentiate themselves from normal clothpads or because they really thought hard surfaces were the way to go for better performance, hardware companies DID go more toward hard surfaces in the beginning. We were somewhat in a “gliding trend” with solid mousepads where the only objective was to make the most frictionless mousepad. It looked like friction was rather the only reference to judge the value of a gaming mousepad : the best gaming mousepad basically was the one with less friction.

When we eventually reached a point where moving a mouse on a mousepad was like moving hot butter into a 300$ pan, gamers realized that eliminating all friction wasn’t totally the way to go. They wanted to come back to smooth cloth pads, as they missed its smoothness and comfort and started to value the need for some fair friction once again. The comeback to cloth pads was kind of predictable looking at it from now. Hard mousepads were heading into the pretty absurd 50-60$ range, so players had another reason to go towards more classic and cheap options, such as Steelseries QcK: a thin and very smooth cloth with a very traditional feel, ideal for a low sensitivity game like Counter-Strike, that was gaining a lot in popularity at the time. Steelseries also quickly addressed the number one issue associated with lower sensitivity: size. The oversized QcK + pad became just as popular if not more than the original and smaller version.

And this is where we mostly sit at today. There are both hard and soft mousepads on the market, but we can say that the competitive and pro-gaming scene has mostly stuck to cloth pads for the last couple of years. This is simply a fact: cloth pads is what’s on the table of professional gamers as of now. You can decide on whether that has an influence on your choice or not.

Sometimes, we just have go look over all the features and marketing and look at what’s really on the players’ tables.

Thunder 8 mousepad

Before you make your choice though, come back here for Part 2 of this complete look at mousepads. We’re going to take a more in-depth look at cloth pads and hardpads, along with some recommendations.