Miscelleneous by stefan @ 2011-09-29
The new SlamePad mouse pad from ModMyMachine is made from high quality materials, durable, and is designed for speed, by featuring a smooth top surface, which can be found in one of the 10 available colors.
At first I would like to thank CaseKing.de and ModMyMachine for sending a sample of their SlamePad for testing and reviewing.
"ModMyMachine was founded by Stefan Krumme aka Slame in 2005. While sitting on a LAN Party with Nikolaus Morasch aka NikoMo he was quarelling about his own computer. Well, everybody liked it, but he didn´t. Niko told him to do some new mod with a diary on a forum. Slame, who hates worklog diaries, asked why nobody is doing some PimpMyRide for computers. Niko answered he would watch it if some idiot will do it. Well that´s the story. Slame did it."
The SlamePad from ModMyMachine is surely an interesting product and comes in aid of people that want a solid, but smooth surface to use the mouse on. The pad is shipped inside a cardboard envelope, with the name of the product and the chosen color name on the frontal side:
The envelope is mainly designed for single usage, so for unsealing it we have to remove some of the cardboard parts:
The pad is made from a specially coated anodized aluminum, its size is 315 x 235 mm with a thickness of 4 mm; the top surface can come in multiple colors and it was mainly speed optimized:
On the lower right corner of the pad we can find the ModMyMachine logo, debossed. By using this design, the manufacturer made sure that the logo does not wear off after months, even years of intense use:
The fine build quality of the product can be also observed when looking at the milled rounded edges; the pad was shaped like this to avoid cuts to the hand (some aluminum pads do also have rubber on the edges for the same reason):
For avoiding pad movement on the table, the bottom was designed with a special anti-slip rubber texture:
Here is a closer look on the bottom texture:
The speed-optimized SlamePad worked with most mice I have tested, and no cursor jumps were experienced during testing. The top surface is durable and you might expect for it to last a long time without worrying that it might get scratches. Depending on the bottom surface of the mouse, we might experience different noise levels; we cannot expect the mouse to be as silent as when using a cloth pad.
Because of the aluminum build, depending on the room temperature, the top surface may feel a little cold at first and some condensation can occur, but this apparent issue dissapears after some minutes of usage. This type of behaviour can be found on most aluminum pads on the market and is not isolated on the SlamePad.
After using the SlamePad with the ROCCAT Kone[+], Razer Salmosa and the Swiftpoint Mouse, the mice seem to move smoother than when using with some of the previously reviewed SteelSeries or TTeSports cloth pads. In addition to the smoothness, the SlamePad is also easier to maintain compared to the cloth surfaces, which tend to get dirty after a while.
Besides black, ModMyMachine gives us the possibility to choose between 9 more colors (gold, silver, bronze, champagne, deep red, orange, dark blue, turquoise, or purple):
Since the pad is made from aluminum, it cannot be folded as a cloth based one, to be carried at a Lanparty; however, because the product does not take a lot of space, we should easy find a place for it inside the rucksack. To avoid dust accumulation and scratches during transport, it would have been nice the manufacturer to include a carry pouch for it, but this, of course, would have increased the final price.
The SlamePad does not come cheap; it can be found at CaseKing for about 39.90 Euros but considering that this is a long time investment and is built from high quality materials, it is not something that we should pass up easily.
I would like to thank again to CaseKing.de and ModMyMachine for making this review possible!