Of Mice and Mats

Giganta Lazer 4

Price: £21

Some like it hard, some like it soft. At least, that always appears to be the case when it comes to mousepads. If you're a hard-surface kinda guy, then you might find that the Lazer4 is right up your street.

Manufacturered by the guys at Gamerzstuff in an outrageous orange, it's an iteration of the old Everglide Giganta pads, optimised for laser mice.

The Lazer4 has a very finely detailed mottled surface, enabling laser mice to pick up all the detail they can on their 1000+ DPI sensors. The pad is durable and will certainly take a kicking at a LAN party. The cutaway at the front is pretty large, although some will prefer the all-front cutaway of the RatPadz - although this has a more shallow incline from the desk to the top of the pad.

It clearly does what it says on the tin, with the accuracy of our laser mice spot on when we used this pad. It's a very fast surface, meaning that compared to a cloth pad, your mouse will twitch across the screen far quicker. If you like your sensitivity down low, this is possibly not the pad for you.

We also found that there really wasn't much difference between this laser-optimised pad and our standard RatPadz. Call us plebs, but the surface not only seems similar, but plays almost exactly the same. If you want a hard surface in orange, then this is obviously your choice - but we wouldn't say it's particularly different from any other hard surface we've used.