Everglide Titan mouse mat

The Cloth Mat Cometh

Pro-gaming is now a big business, and it seems like there are more gaming accessories than ever before. Chaps like Jonathan 'Fatal1ty' Wendell have become high-profile names and icons, and a new generation of gamers aspires to be just as good as him.

In fact, you could say that Jonathan is the reason we're even looking at this product today - the guy has single-handedly driven the resurgence of cloth mousepads for gaming. That's right, remember cloth mousepads? Those tatty, rubbery things you used before you got some class and got an Everglide pad or a Ratpadz?

Everglide and Ratpadz have dominated the mousing surface market in recent years with a couple of hard, durable and stunningly accurate surfaces that have become the choice of millions of players worldwide. The original Ratpadz was built upon by the smoother, lighter and bigger Ratpadz GS; whilst Everglide had their standard pads as well as Giganta pads in various shapes and colours.

However, Wendell has his own cloth mouse mat, which is a huge cloth surface. Why doesn't he use a hard surface? Well, I asked him this a few months ago, and his answer could be summed up thus:

When you're gaming in a big tournament, you get nervous. When you're nervous, your hand gets a little jittery. On a hard surface, those jitters can get exaggerated and ruin your game. On a cloth surface, those jitters don't jerk you around too much, and your hand can gradually calm itself down.

Of course, cloth surfaces have the advantage of being absolutely incredibly huge, too - you're unlikely to ever fall off the edge and lose traction.

Cloth-eared

Let's take a look at the actual mat itself then.

The mat is designed especially for pro-gamers. It uses FiberTek cloth which Everglide claims will give you the maximum precision possible whilst being a smooth and easy-glide surface. Handily, it comes in a carry tin for you to take your mat to LANs all rolled up.


You can see the close up of the Everglide logo and the surface of the mat. On the right, you can see the rubberised base of the mat which is designed to cling to your desk.


Here's an idea of the size. In the middle is a Ratpadz GS, and on the right is an Intellimouse v4. It's really, really, really big.