XSReviews

Introduction

Rantopads aren’t particularly well-known, in fact this is my first insight into their products. Offering several types for different gamer’s tastes, there is sure to be one that suits your playing style. Today I have the Rantopad Mammoth; a hard plastic pad.

Specs

None, site in German and Google translate isn’t very helpful…

The girlfriends favourite

The Rantopad Mammoth is packed in a nice eye-catching, glossy cardboard box. Oddly, it has a sticker of the woolly mammoth from Ice Age on it. The Chinese symbols next to it only tell you where the pad is made.

This pad bares a fairly remarkable, if not copyright encroaching resemblance to the SteelPad S&S. It feels like its made of the same plastic, as the speckled rubber back, and a semi circular bottom (although the S&S is more pronounced). Even the logos are in the same place. They are the same size too, with the Mammoth coming in at 320x270mm. Sometimes these things happen when two manufactures buy an OEM product from a company and make minor adjustments to make it their own. Or it could be a coincidence, or a copy (however unlikely).

The surface of the pad is slightly rougher than the S&S but it still feels smooth. Rubbing my hand across the surface causes the pad to move slightly which means that the speckled rubber back isn’t the greatest at anchoring the Mammoth in place.

The pad is ridiculously thin, in fact just less than 2mm meaning that you can have your keyboard on top of the pad in a tight situation and it won’t rock when you type.

The only thing that breaks up the expanse of black is the small Rantopad logo in the corner which tells you that it’s the Mammoth version. The logo is subtle and far from garish so you won’t be a walking advert if you use this at, say, a LAN party.

And on that note, this pad is nice and transportable due to its weight and slim design. Shame there isn’t a carry bag like with the SteelPad S&S…

Testing

To test the Rantopad Mammoth, I’ll be using a huge array of mice to fully review the gaming surface. Some are not pictured, but I’ll be using a generic optical mouse, a Razer Deathadder, a Razer Krait, a Saitek GM3200, a MSI StarMouse, an Ideazon Reaper and a very retro rollerball mouse.

These mice are a mixture between infra-red, laser, optical and rollerball which means that every base is covered.

I’ll start this by the tracking graph which is explained here. As you can see this pad tracks 100% perfectly. No problems here.

As with most hard mouse pads, there is a grinding sound as you draw your mouse over the pad. After switching between this, the S&S and the Ratpadz GS and XT, I can say that this is the quietest of the lot. This is due to the way that the surface has been finished. It’s almost as if it’s been poorly polished to give the mouse glide, but still keep its obviously awesome tracking.

In Battlefield 2142, the combination of smooth glide and top-notch tracking proved that your mouse pad does affect gameplay. The size of the pad became an issue when I was doing a bit of low sensitivity flying, but overall the pad made a small, but noticeable difference to my skill. There is nothing more annoying than your performance being hampered by your mouse when playing a game like Battlefield.

After a while, heat and sweat levels rose which made the bottom part of the pad moist meaning I had to dry my wrist a few times otherwise it would start to irritate me. Providing you keep a towel close you’ll be fine.

All the mice enjoyed the experience of being used on the pad. The Saitek GM3200 at max sensitivity was perfect and there was no negative acceleration or cursor jumping. Even the rollerball worked well on the pad.

While the pad can be moved easily with your hand, the pad stayed put, even when I was frantically slaying the enemy in a heated match.

Conclusion

This pad has gone a long way to converting me to the path of hard mouse mats (me being a fan of cloth surfaces). The perfect tracking and quiet usage are nice to see, and a joy to use, but the sweat build-up and size issues rear their ugly head every now and again.

This pad is dangerously close to me giving an Editor’s Choice to a hard mouse pad…

Pros	Cons
Perfect tracking	Sweat build-up
Quiet usage	Size
Subtle appearance

I’d like to thank Rantopads for providing us with the mouse mat.

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