Testing

Test Rig

Methodology

Mouse mats and other peripherals fall into an interesting category for testing, as your opinion on them tends to be very personal, as the mat, mouse or keyboard has to be right for you, beyond having the specifications to do what you want with it. Therefore these reviews can be highly subjective so as always, please make sure to test a peripheral for yourself before you buy it.

However with that said, our testing methods involve using the mat over prolonged gaming and general usage periods to test its gaming ability and comfort.
The games used for testing were as follows:

• Dawn of War II
• Call of Duty: World at War

The mouse used for testing was the NZXT Avatar.

Results

Dawn of War II

In Dawn of War 2, I played for a couple of hours, switching mats as I played, unleashing my hordes of Orcs upon my Space Marine and Eldar enemies. All mats performed pretty well, but there was definate characteristic differences between them all. The Breathe was probably my favourite of the three as it was big enough to never cause any problems of my wrist or hand skating off of the edge of the mat, and it’s surface was spongy enough to not cause any sweating problems.

While the Seven was equally capable of providing a comfortable and technically appeasing surface for your mouse to slide across, it’s size did occasionaly irritate me as to stop my wrist grazing the desk I had to bring it back to hang over the desk edge, but this provided less surface to move my mouse around on. It wasn’t a huge problem, but to differentiate between the mats, this one wasn’t quite as good as the Breathe.

As far as the Solid goes, while it’s surface was pretty nice to mouse over, I do find that these plastic coatings cause excess sweating that when it builds up, just pools on the mat; and that seriously affects user comfort.

Call of Duty: World at War

As far as Call of Duty goes, the Solid definately came up in the rankings. It’s plastic surface was far more suited to the faster paced action of the FPS title, while the cloth mats did bring some slight drag to the NZXT Avatar, despite it’s teflon feet aiding it’s smooth passage across each surface.

That said, I think I would still prefer the Breathe all in all, as it’s surface has the best mix of functionality and comfort. While the Solid may have it trumped in terms of “performance”, comfort wise it’s just not up to scratch, and that’s a very important factor when it comes to mouse pads.

NB. Throughout all testing, the rubberised surface on the underside kept all mats sturdy and none of them slipped once.

Comfort

After using all the mats for a couple of hours, I’d have to rank them as follows:

1. Seven FX-3
2. Breathe FX-2
3. Solid X-3

The seven’s main advantage over both other mats is it’s thickness, and it’s pure cloth surface. While the Solid may be about as thick, and the Breathe a full cloth surface, the Seven combines both of these to give a great wrist rest as well as not allowing sweat build up thanks to it’s all cloth construction.

The Breathe did a good job too, but unfortunately due to it’s shallow height, it doesn’t provide quite as much support as the Seven. In regards to the Solid, well it’s surface might be spongey, but the moisture build up from clammy gamer hands wasn’t particularly pleasant after an hour or so.

Cost

When it comes to pricing their are slight variations between the pads. The Breathe clocks in at just over £6 when converted from the USD pricing – don’t be surprised if that goes up when it goes on sale here – which is very impressive for the build quality of the mat. The other two are roughly the same costing around £12 and £15 a piece, making them all very reasonable in price.