On Our Desk - 12

Razer Destructor

Manufacturer: Razer
UK Price: £27.99 (inc VAT)
US Price: $39.99 (ex Tax)

The Razer Destructor is a mousemat that’s been kicking around the bit-tech offices for a long, long time and I’ve been making use of it as my mouse mat of choice ever since it first arrived, retiring the SteelSeries SP after I grew tired of scratching it with bits of dirt trapped under the mouse.

Originally, the plan for the Destructor was to get a whole load of different high-end mouse mats and then do one huge bit-tech round-up, pitting the likes of the Destructor even against ghetto solutions like a black piece of paper sellotaped to your desk.

Unfortunately, it turned out there really isn’t a huge amount to say about mouse mats and while I did attempt the task it was impossible to get past the first few pages without passing out on my keyboard in boredom.


There was also the whispered conviction that if I pressed on with the article then I may well go mad and wake up one day far away from my computer to find that I’d married a supermodel and started having one of those ‘life’ things. P’ah!

Unfortunately, just like I was struggling to find anything new and interesting about a mouse mat after the first few pages (and that was pushing it), Razer has also apparently struggled to find a way to improve the basic mouse mat design. So, they haven’t.

What the Destructor is then is just another mouse mat. It’s thin, it’s stylishly shaped and it bears a funkily embossed Razer logo naturally – but it is still essentially just a plastic mouse mat much like pretty much any other mouse mat you’d care to exhibit on your desktop.

Still, that doesn’t mean it isn’t good. In fact, this is a damned decent pad. It keeps things basic and is as simple as it needs to be once you iron out all the fancy PR lingo about how perfect the resistance is. It’s flat and smooth and it has a slightly textured surface that mice can pick up really well and it doesn’t have a tendency to accumulate all the horrible types of finger gunk on it that you’d rather not have to wipe off before your girlfriend comes home.


The most important qualities as far as we’re concerned though are still that it is plastic, as metal mouse mats have a tendency to scrape and scratch if you get so much as an ant leg trapped under your mouse, and that is non-slip. Thanks to the rubber base underneath the Destructor isn’t going to slip or slide anywhere.

In fact, the most remarkable facet of the Destructor isn’t the mouse mat itself, but the huge reinforced envelope that it comes in. With a massive, strong fabric body and soft velvety interior, the Razer envelope is certainly very plush and good looking. It’ll certainly do a good job of protecting your super high-end mousemat from harm too…but you’ve got to wonder what the point of it is.

Sure, if you carry your mousemat around wherever you go then the envelope is handy, but do you really want to admit to that? For LANs, yes, the envelope will protect your mousemat, but is that enough to warrant an inflated price?

Don’t get us wrong, the Destructor is a decent mouse mat and it has done a good job of serving us well over the last few months, though the carrying case has done nothing more than sat in the bottom of a desk drawer ever since we first puzzled over its existence. The problem is though that the Razer Destructor, despite its worth as a decent mousemat, doesn’t really manage to perform above or beyond the abilities of any other good mousemat.

Verdict: A mouse mat of passably high quality, but at over £25 you've got to really want one to justify this price.