SteelSeries Gaming Kit

S&S Pad

The S&S pad is designed for gamers that like a hard surface to mouse on with super-fine sensitivity. The guys at SteelSeries say that the surface is optimised for laser mice with a 'dot-pitch' of plastic texture that has been chosen by the gamers at SK Gaming; those guys seem to be pretty closely involved with all SteelSeries development.

The pad itself is slightly larger than a Ratpadz and lacks the cutaway at the front. However, there is arguably no need for a cutaway, since the pad is so thin. It is barely 2mm from the height of the desk, which means you will barely notice it under your wrist. It's more like a part of your desktop surface than a discrete mousepad.

The top is rather hardwearing, whilst underneath there is a rubber-plastic compound designed to keep it in place on your desk. It does a pretty good job of staying put, although your mileage will vary depending on your desk surface.

Because the pad is so thin, it's very bendable, and there is a small worry that it could get snapped if put under a great deal of exertion. However, you'd really have to try quite hard to snap it.

We tried out the pad in Conter-Strike on our new gaming server. For reference, we tried the S&S against our tried and tested Ratpad, as well as the Giganta Lazer 4. We used a Logitech MX1000 laser mouse as well a standard optical mouse.

We were really impressed with the response offered by the S&S. The glide on the pad was very smooth and the fact it is so thin means that it almost disappears into the worktop beneath your hand. The surface of the pad is textured perfectly, and we found that we were able to be both precise and fast moving with our mousing actions. This should definitely be on your list if hard mousing is your preference.