Steelpads’ Gaming Glove

Introduction

As games become more and more realistic, and more and more emotional, gamers around the world are beginning to have much more of a physical reaction to the games they play. They can become jittery, tense, sweaty and their arms and wrists suffer from this as they are constantly in a sate of tension. Enter Steelpad, the creators of the legendary Steelpad mousemat, who have produced a “Gaming Glove” to aide you in your sweaty play. Lets see how it performs.

Steelpad’s take on the Gaming Glove

Always have a smooth gliding sensation. Less friction between hand and mousepad. Better grip on mouse. Full wrist assist. One size – for right hand only.

A First Look

On first look the packaging is basic at best, but it does have clear plastic sleeving allowing you to see the product before buying, a bonus in my book. The cardboard top card gives you some details on the glove to let you know exactly what it is, and what it is designed to do.

The glove is also fitted around a cardboard hand which is supposed to give an idea of how to wear the glove, which I’m sure is helpful to some people, but is hardly needed.

A Closer Look

Upon taking the glove out of the packaging I was given a better idea of how the glove works. It has holes for thumb; little finger and the rest of your fingers have the large hole in the middle. The wrist strap is secured with Velcro and there is a Steelpad logo on the back. There is also a vent hole on the back as well to make sure that the glove doesn’t increase the amount of sweat you produce during gaming.

Upon putting on the glove I was surprised by how comfortable it was. It fitted around my hand nicely and the wrist strap was firm but not too tight. However I did find that my little finger was not as well supported as the rest of my hand while wearing the glove.

Testing

To test this glove I decided to perform my normal set of tests for something mouse related. A normal windows usage test, one in a slow paced game and another in a fast paced game.

General windows use: The glove was comfortable to use, and definitely supported my wrist throughout. It also made moving around windows and surfing around websites slightly nicer to do.

Slow Paced Game: For this test I spent half an hour playing transport tycoon, a game some of you may not have heard of but it is similar in style to sim city. The glove again was fine, supportive at the wrist but I did feel that its supposedly “Frictionless” wrist strap hampered my movement when I needed to do something quickly.

Fast Paced Game: For this I decided to pick a game that makes me tense and sweaty (If that was a bit graphic for some of you I apologize ;) ). For this test I used the FEAR multiplayer as this always has me on edge.
For the duration of this test I felt very little difference to when I am not wearing the glove. I was able to move the mouse around with little difficulty, though perhaps a bit slower at some points because the wrist strap would occasionally cause a bit of drag on my cloth mouse mat. (Because of this I also decided to try the glove out on my Icemat, and the problem was solved. The glove glided perfectly over that surface with no problems whatsoever.). The only other redeeming feature of this glove is that it stops the sweat from your hand reaching the mouse mat. Which on my cloth mat, made no difference, but on my Icemat it stopped the problems I had with the slippery surface which brought my Icemat back out of retirement.

Conclusion

This mouse mat does exactly what it says on the packaging. It does support your wrist, and stop sweat from interrupting your gaming. However these things have very little affect on gaming anyway, so the glove achieves very little. Buy this if you really want to make sure your gaming is NEVER happered by your bodies fluids or if you have wrist related problems, otherwise there is little point in shelling out.