History

Soft Trading is not a name that many gamers will recognize. However, mention the name Icemat or Steel Series and more than a few ears are likely to perk up. Many of you may be surprised to know that these two brands are actually made by the same company, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that their products are the same.

Soft Trading made its mark on the gaming world with the brand Icemat producing glass mousing surfaces. Not too long after, they would announce another brand and call it Steel Series. Steel Series would bring us very different types of mats than what we knew from Icemat. Over the last 3 years Steel Series has become a major player and a company known for its great products. The most recent addition, or rather, soon-to-be addition is the Steelpad 5L Mouse Pad.

Description and Examination
After one look, the only description I can give you is hybrid. They have taken the comfort, smoothness and softness of cloth and combined it with a plastic base for durability and stability. It is really quite a good idea.

There was nothing surprising about it when I opened the package. It looked just like the picture. In fact, the only thing that I can say threw me off was its size. I had read the specs before it arrived and expected something rather large (380mm x 280mm), but it doesn’t quite set in until you are holding it. Colors on the image were a little more dull and washed out than I wanted, but that is nothing to complain about and the image is still of a high quality and resolution. It’s a mouse pad; the image doesn't have that much of an effect on performance.

The specs on the site claim that it is composed of 5 separate layers. From top to bottom: plastic coating on cloth, cloth, rubber foam, plastic, and rubber elements. After reading this, I was expecting a really thick pad to arrive, but it is no thicker than any of those old cloth pads from the early days. Only 4 of the 5 layers are visible as far as I can tell. For those of you wondering what the heck ‘rubber elements’ are, they are basically a splatter pattern of runner on the bottom of the pad to keep it from slipping.



One last thing is that the site claims that this mouse pad was designed specifically to perform with laser equipped mice. My only question to that is: Laser mice were developed to be a lot more accurate than optical mice, so, theoretically, it doesn’t matter what you put that laser mouse on. It can see weave in the fabric, so it really doesn’t need the fancy image on the front no matter how cool it looks. I brought this question to Soft Trading and they provided an answer. Currently, laser mice like the G5 and G7 do not work on their Icemat 2nd Edition nor do they work on the Steelpad 4S. Why do they not work? Neither Soft Trading nor I can find a reason for this. I will address these issues later on.

On to the review….