The three rats: Diamondback, MX518 and Orochi and Steelseries 6Gv2

[Drowsy Emperor]

There has been a new addition to the family:

 

Steelseries 9HD mouse mat - around 30-40$

 

 

This is hard plastic mat. Its got three layers, the top rough surface, the hard plastic inbetween and the rubberised layer that holds it down. The rubber does a good job, I haven't had it move so far.

The pad is very thin, 3mm I think.

 

Both the Logitech MX518 and the Orochi glide beautifully on it, although the crappy plastic feet of the MX518 don't offer as much control as Orochi's teflon ones.

 

At first it wasn't easy getting used to it, after a lifetime of cloth pads what with the huge speed increase in mouse movement - but after a while it became perfectly natural.

The way you can control small movements and rapidly move it if necessary is something cloth mouse pads aren't as good at. I noticed an increase in aiming agility in Quake III, but at the same time a drop of accuracy in CS1.6 as I tended to move the crosshairs too far.

 

The marketing info isn't lying, the surface really increases mouse responsiveness and precision by a little margin. Supposedly something about how the little bumps reflect light.

 

It comes with a little cleaning rag.

 

Overall: i feel it was worth the money. I'll be using primarily this pad for now.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Update on the Steelseries 6Gv2.

 

The keys are indeed rubbing off much faster than is acceptable, the WASD combination is already 50% duller in little under a month of use. So that's one major flaw of this board.

 

Another is putting the backslash key \ next to the right shift, which made the said shift key much shorter than usual. This results in not being able to easily extend your right pinkie when writing a capital letter on the left side of the keyboard.

 

Its very hard for me to do and as I have very long fingers its probably impossible for people that have smaller ones. Since the right hand must now leave its home row to press the right shift this results in a delay and possible typos.

 

Otherwise I'm not noticing any other flaws so far.