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Introduction

Ideazon have introduced many innovative products in the past from the Zboard to its gaming board counterpart, the Fang. Today however, I am testing something a little simpler; today I have the Ideazon FragMat. Designed to compliment the Ideazon Reaper mouse and others like it, Ideazon are attempting to branch out into the mat market. Lets see how it does.

A little about Ideazon

It all began back in 1999 as Oren Kramer, an avid gamer, tried his hand – both hands, in fact – at mastering the tricky basic commands of StarCraft™, an extensive real-time strategy game. Oren was also an avid Quake™ player, an intense first person shooter game. Suddenly, the proverbial light came on and in a moment of inspiration Oren asked himself three questions he would soon pursue the answers to . . .

What if a gaming keyboard could be designed to let gamers execute complex maneuvers and a combination of movements with just a single easy keystroke?

Could such a keyboard eliminate the need to memorize key commands and free gamers for the first time to focus all of their attention on action, strategy and ultimate victory?

Would a keyboard dedicated to gaming action not make it easier and faster for gamers of all levels to master any game and maximize playing enjoyment?

So began the Ideazon revolution.

Oren went on to create the first Zboard and the rest is gaming history. The Zboard was the world’s first gaming keyboard, an innovation that forever changed the way gamers connect with their favorite games. It cut down the learning curve to deliver a lethal competitive edge to core gamers, while helping casual players dramatically and immediately improve their play.

NB. Full Ideazon history ca be found at their website.

Dimensions

11.81″ x 9.44″

Features

NB. Specs. taken from Newegg.com

Bits and Box

The FragMat comes with only itself in its see through plastic packaging; nice and simple.

The FragMat

The Frag Mat is quite an average size for a mouse mat but features a much more unconventional surface design.

It’s made of a “Reduced Friction Polymer” which is designed to aide your mouse’s movement across it.

Along with its smooth material surface, the FragMat is also quite attractive. Featuring long sweeping cuts of dark gray across the lighter gray and an Ideazon “I” is emblazoned in the centre. Slightly below this is the “Z” more commonly seen on the Zboard products and below that still, is a little web address for you to remember, “Community.zboard.com”; don’t forget it now.

The underside of the Frag Mat is made of a soft foam and sticks to the desk surprisingly well. Even during vigorous mouse movements the Frag Mat stood firm, and moved no more than a couple of mm at each broad stroke.

The FragMat is also designed as a bit of a Co-Operative product as it was sent to us along with the Reaper mouse that Ideazon also manufacture. These products do look pretty good, but how well will they perform together? On with the testing!

Testing

To test this mousing surface out I ran through our usual benchmarking games and tested the mat with different mice. The mice that I used for this were:

Ideazon Reaper – 1600DPI
Razer Krait – 1600DPI
Logitech Generic – 800DPI

The games that I tested the mat on were as follows:

Starhip Troopers, BF2142, 9Dragons and Company of Heroes. These games are used to test the mouse mat in different genres which require different kinds of mouse movements, E.G. Starship Troopers for frantic mouse movements and Company of Heroes for more precise and accurate testing. I also performed some simple Windows based activities for several hours to get a feel of prolonged usage and how it performs when simple tasks are being carried out.

The first tests I performed were the windows based ones. With all mice this mat performed very well giving me no problems with skipping or mat movement. However, after a few hours my wrist did feel a little clammy on the surface and I also felt it didn’t support my wrist as much as a thick cloth mat would.

When moving onto the gaming tests the Frag Mat showed its true colours. In Starship Troopers and Battlefield the mat gave me all the speed I needed to get every bug in my way, and all the accuracy I needed to fire that Anti-Tank rifle round straight to the heart of the Tanks; making swift work of both.

Next I used 9Dragons for a bit more of a relaxed gaming experience and found the Frag Mat to be almost perfectly suited to the task. However, during long gaming sessions, as with the windows based tasks, it was not as comfortable as thicker clock mats and because of its surface, did make my wrist clammy which was not the most comfortable of sensations; causing me to occasionally need to wipe my wrist.

Company of Heroes suffered from the same comfort issues, but performance wise I was able to execute the commands to my units accurately and quickly.

As I said before I used several different mice testing this mat and did find that the gaming mice performed better than the generic one. This was mainly due to their increased sensitivity meaning because of the “average” size of the mat I never strayed near the edge. With the generic mouse I did find that I occasionally bumped over the edge of the pad so I would not recommend those with 400DPI mice to use this pad, as for long sweeping movements it simply isn’t big enough.

Cost

I found this particular mat for about £8 in several online Etailors, though currently it would seem many of them are out of stock.

Conclusion

The FragMat is a fantastic budget option for any gamer. It gives you a smooth surface with an excellent cross between precision and speed. It also features a sturdy foam underside that although doesn’t prevent movement as much as other more expensive mats, it does the job nicely. The only real let down for this mat is the comfort factor. It gets your wrist clammy in long gaming sessions and just doesn’t give much support at all. Its not all about the comfort though, and if you don’t mind sacrificing a bit of comfort instead of sacrificing a few more pounds, the Ideazon FragMat is a great choice.

Pros	Cons
Very smooth surface	Not that comfortable, clammy wrist
Good underside grip	Underside not completely stable
Precise and Speed strokes are both possible

I’d like to thank our sponsors Ideazon for providing us with this mat.

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