S&S
Manufacturer: SteelSeries
Type of pad: Hard
Material: Plastic
Size: 12.6”x10.7”
Price: $39.95

SteelSeries' sponsorship of SK seems like one of the most commercialized in all of eSports. Sure, The CPL has Intel and NVIDIA (so does SK), but wherever you see SteelSeries, SK wont be far behind. I can look at the Intel website and not see anything about The CPL, but I cannot look at the SteelSeries website without seeing some sort of involvement gaming twist. SteelSeries got together with the players of SK.swe to produce a love child product called the SteelPad S&S: a mousepad designed by professional gamers for professional gamers (S[teel]&S[K]).

There are a lot of things to say about this mousepad. First off we have the packaging. The outermost layer of packaging is a simple cardboard box that doesn't really matter. Inside there is a nylon sleeve with 2 pockets, one that has your complementary S&S Padsurfers, and one that has the SteelPad S&S. The nylon sleeve itself is by far the most stylin' packaging technique utilized out of all of the mousepads, and it protects the S&S surface quite well. The S&S itself it basically just a large flat piece of plastic. This is the only pad in this entire experiment that uses just one piece of material for the entire mousepad (besides the gripping surface). The mousing surface is a rough texture that at first glance is comparable to the rough side of the X-ray Thunder8. Since my mouse already has mouseskates on it, I decided to test this mousepad before adding the padsurfers and after, to see what kind of difference they make. But overall, first impressions of the product by aesthetics alone was that this is one of the cooler looking packages I have seen.

First I tested out the surface without the padsurfers. After playing a couple of games, I concluded that the S&S was nothing special. It had a similar feel to the control side of the Razer eXactmat. The tracking performance on the pad however was very nice, as the non reflective surface of the S&S seems to offer greater responsiveness than most other mousepads tested. Another thing I noticed about the S&S surface is that it is rather abrasive. The stock mouseskates seemed to be worn down more after a few hours of gaming on the S&S than they did after testing any of the other pads. And then I put the padsurfers on. I thought that putting on these little plastic dealios wouldn't make too big of a difference. Boy was I wrong. This mousepad went from being average to being exceptional. It went from having a pretty sizable amount of friction to having almost no friction at all. A very small amount of effort not only moved the mouse but moved it pretty far. All of these little movements were completely registered by my MX310 as well.

The construction of the S&S, by virtue of it being a single piece of material, is definitely the best out of all the tested pads. This also makes it ideal of LAN environments because it is thin and very easy to bring with you wherever. The way the mousepad grips the desk is also unique. Instead of the traditional rubber pads, it uses these strange shredded rubber chunks. They do a good job of keeping the mousepad stable while gaming (not that this is a big task when taking into consideration how frictionless the surface is), but the pad can still be moved around rather easily if you are attempting to do so. This can be advantageous for gamers who have to adjust their setups to make room for someone else's computer or to make room for books on a crowded desk. The final feature of the S&S is its size. Not too big, not too small, the S&S seems like the perfect sized mousepad for low sensitivity gamers. While playing, I found my mouse repeatedly approaching the edge of the surface, but never crossing it. This feature is undoubtedly the result of SK's input into the product.

Pros:
+Perfect size
+Single piece of material
+Nylon sleeve
+Grips desk just enough
+Included mouse skates
+Minimal friction

Cons:
-Abrasive
-Nothing special without included S&S padsurfers

Score:
9/10