One of the more storied companies in the gaming hardware world is a Danish company called SteelSeries. For six years SteelSeries has been producing “performance enhancing gaming gear”, seemingly with the mentality that less can be, and usually is, more. Simply by navigating around the SteelSeries website it becomes clear that they are not a company concerned with gaudy details, impractical features, and excessive product branding. The SteelSeries style is very subdued, simplistic, and, if we’re being completely honest, is a welcome change from that of other companies in the gaming space. The products themselves reflect this simplistic style in their design, as well as their very straight-forward physical construction. We reviewed two such SteelSeries products in our mousepad roundup over a year and a half ago and they were both among the highest-ranking entries in that article.

Last week we received one of the latest products from SteelSeries (who have apparently decided to drop the individual product line monikers like “SteelPad” and “SteelSound”) and were happy to find that they continue to maintain the simple style that they're known for. The SteelSeries SX is a mousepad designed to exceed all expectations and forge a new standard for “smoothness” on a mousing surface. In its creation, SteelSeries threw the typical manufacturing considerations like production cost, price point, and volume into the wind, in a no holds barred attempt at creating the most exclusive gaming mousepad in existence. Right after taking this thing out of the box, we were inclined to believe that they had succeeded. We don’t really like judging products on first impressions however, so we put the SX through its paces to see if SteelSeries' goals for the project have been realized in their final product.

SX
Manufacturer: SteelSeries
Type of pad: Hard, single surface
Material: Silicon coated, anodized aluminum
Size: 32cm x 27cm x 2mm thick
Gallery: Click Here!
Price: $59.95

The color scheme of the packaging that SteelSeries has used for the SX is very striking. The dark grey, contrasted with orange, is the prevailing theme on the new SteelSeries website, and does a good job catching one's eye and keeping it there. The cardboard sleeve that contains the transparent plastic case is cut in a way that sort of reveals the product underneath but sort of doesn’t, which is kind of cool. The mousepad itself comes with a set of SteelSeries Glide MS mouse skates and something called SteelSeries Silicone Glide, which is a specially designed saturated cloth. We are not sure what the latter accessory is for exactly, but we think it is for keeping the surface of the SX in pristine condition.