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Product: Icemat
Manufacturer:Soft Trading
Price: $28.40 (approximately £20)
Homepage: www.Icemat.com
When we got this in the mail all we could say was wow! It looks so cool:
The Icemat arrived tightly packed in polystyrene, so don't worry about it arriving in pieces. On opening it up, the Icemat is revealed to be a rectangular piece of frosted glass (25cm * 21 cm), the size of your average mouse mat. It sits on six plastic feet that hold it securely on any flat surface.
The cost is around £20 which is a lot of money to pay for a mouse mat, but the market today is seeing more and more premium mats for the demanding gamer.
We first tested it with our Logitech optical mouse, the mats are not designed for optical mice but we wanted to see how it would perform. As we had anticipated, the results were disappointing. Moving the mouse while being very accurate was not totally without it's anomalies. The beam could obviously not get a fix and led to erratic movements. The mouse, despite being cleaned of any dirt, produced an irritating "scraping" noise due to the contact between the mouse and the glass surface. This noise and the attendant sensation is unnoticed by certain users or likened to the fingernails on the blackboard by more sensitive others.
The company had thoughtfully included a "pad surfer" with the mat, once attached, the noise was eliminated.
We then moved onto a regular ball mouse. This produced far better results but the noise was still present. On the plus side the mouse ball's traction was much better easily beating the traditional wet-suit fabric. We had 100% efficiency of the transmission of movement of mouse to the screen, which is the main purpose of a mat. The mat is very easy to clean unlike conventional mats for those days when your coffee is not content to stay in your mug. I cannot claim to have got anymore Counter Strike kills but at least I can't blame my lack of traction for all those deaths!
Conclusion
As is stated on the site, the Icemat does not support optical rodents, yet. The performance on a purely subjective level of the ball rodent is greatly improved through use of the Icemat. The ball mouse gets perfect traction from the glass surface. The mat itself does not move at all, with the help of its slightly tacky (in feel) feet. The look is exceptional and the durability appears to be high (we assume its able to sustain most falls onto giving surfaces).
The final ChillBlast rating is * ********
Many thanks to Jacob for sending us the Icemat. Check out his site at www.Icemat.com