Gliding Performance

I took a large flat panel, let one end rest on the floor, the other end at a ~30° angle and put each mouse pad on the panel. Then I took a wireless mouse with batteries inside and set it at the high point of the panel. I let it slide down and measured the time it took for the mouse to go from the starting position until 24.8cm down (the size of the smallest mouse pad “Sharkoon Xurface”). I repeated this test 10 times, removed the largest and smallest value and averaged the remaining 8 data recordings. If I got faulty readings which differed a lot, I started over from scratch.


(lower score is better)

The cloth mouse pads scored worst in this test (exception being the Nuke-Z) , where as the hard plastic of the Ratpadz XT ruled the roost. The performance difference between the top contenders is small, but after the 1 second mark there is a noticeable difference between the pads.

Some of these pads needed a “break in” period before they were able to provide smooth sailing; moving the mouse several times up and down the pad with light force applied improved the gliding performance afterwards.

As a last test I applied one of the mouse-skates to the test subject and the performance difference was phenomenal, almost all pads delivered performance numbers close to the top contender with times well below 1 second. Worth noting if your mouse doesn’t seem to slide very well over your newly purchased pad: get some mouse-skates!