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Your gaming arsenal might feature the best gaming keyboard and best gaming mouse out there, but it’s never complete without a reliable mouse pad. A gaming mouse pad will go a long way in improving your precision, speed, and control, and they’re almost essential if you play competitive online multiplayer titles.
Best Gaming Mouse Pads Reviewed
Choices aren’t few when selecting mouse pads for gaming. Gaming mouse pads have been popular since the inception of gaming mice, and there are plenty of options to choose from.
We’ve handpicked our favorite mouse pads available right now in the market. You’ll find products from popular brands like Razer, Corsair, SteelSeries, and more. Let’s get started.
Best Overall
SteelSeries QcK Gaming Mouse Pad
Versatile and Reliable
The SteelSeries Qck Gaming Mouse Pad has been around for a long time. Little has changed about its design, and it is available in a variety of different sizes and material types.
The versatility, quality, reliability, and fantastic pricing of the SteelSeries Qck Gaming mouse pad makes it by far the most loved and widely bought mouse pad out there. Due to the sheer options it offers, it’s hard to pick any other gaming mouse pad over it as a top contender.
The SteelSeries Qck has been around for a long time, and it’s been a favorite for many. There are numerous reasons for its popularity, with the most obvious being its fantastic value. SteelSeries QcK has widely been regarded as the top choice mouse pad for esports for nearly two decades.
The classic QcK is made from micro-woven cloth that has been optimized for high and low DPI tracking movements. A rubber base ensures it sticks to any surface you lay it on. With the rise of harder surface mouse pads and the RGB madness, SteelSeries has also released this gaming mouse pad in other variations.
Our personal favorite is still the Classic, but you can buy it in Hard form factor, Thick, with stitched edges, and as an RGB variant. Furthermore, you can choose between various sizes as well to suit your needs.
This makes the SteelSeries QcK relevant for nearly any buyer. The only version it doesn’t come in is with wireless charging, but since the demographic of wireless mouse users is so small, we don’t think it’s a concern for most.
Best Hard Surface Mousepad
Corsair MM600
Awesome Aluminum Mousepad
The Corsair MM600 is a dual-sided aluminum gaming mouse pad that is designed for both speed and control. Both surfaces are distinct from one another, with one offering lower friction and the other better control.
With rubberized corners and a fantastic, stable design that caters to the needs for speedsters and those looking to improve accuracy, the Corsair MM600 is a great buy if you’re looking for a higher quality mouse pad that will last.
Corsair offers some RGB craziness with some of its mouse pads, but it doesn’t try to do anything extravagant with the MM600. The MM600 is, in fact, the exact kind of product that defines Corsair’s success: simply, no-nonsense, and extremely high quality.
This mouse pad for gaming offers a huge surface space and utilizes high quality machined aluminum to provide an extremely low friction surface. Turn it around and you get slightly more friction that is designed to provide better control.
The versatility on offer makes it extremely practical for PC gamers who play multiple genres. If you need speed for your MOBA title, you have it on demand. If you need precision and accuracy for the likes of Counter Strike, simply flip this bad boy over and you have that too. The rubberized corners ensure your mouse never slips off the surface, nor does your mouse pad ever move.
Best RGB Mousepad
Corsair MM800 Polaris RGB
Stylish and Smooth
The Corsair MM800 Polaris RGB features 15 bright LEDs around the rims for all the lighting effects you want. It has a USB passthrough port to easily connect your mouse, and the surface material is plastic. It can sync with other Corsair RGB products as well thanks to its excellent software.
The Corsair MM800 is all about combining style with substance. The surface is smooth and accurate, while the RGB lighting is bright and gorgeous. Furthermore, the software to control the RGB is fantastic, so you can have all the fun you want with the rainbow colors.
We’re personally not the biggest fans of RGB lighting in mouse pads. We think it’s a little over the top, and at least these innocuous pieces of plastic/cloth should be spared from rainbow puke. Still, many think otherwise, and they want their system to be a mini disco club.
If you come in the latter category, you’ll absolutely love the Corsair MM800 Polaris RGB. This mouse pad has a plastic surface, but this is a hard surface that won’t bend or budge. Furthermore, among the several RGB mouse pads we’ve come across, the Corsair MM800 by far has the best RGB implementation out there.
There are 15 LED lights integrated into this gaming mouse pad. All of them are very bright. We’re absolute fans of the fantastic Corsair iCUE software that lets you control these lights, and it’s indeed a delight to have them sync up with any other Corsair peripheral of PC component you might own.
Another great feature is the USB pass through port that you can use to conveniently plug in your gaming mouse or a flash drive. We don’t know why most RGB and wireless charging pads don’t feature passthrough ports, but it’s good to know Corsair understands how to maximize the use of an RGB mouse pad.
4. Razer Goliathus Chroma
If you are looking for a RGB lit cloth mouse pad, then you want the Razer Goliathus Chroma. The mouse pad has RGB lighting, although not as great as the Firefly from the same company, it gives you the same feel as a normal clothed mouse pad does.
While the RGB on the mouse pad is not so great, it still has very visible lighting on it, which makes it a great addition to a RGB lit up rig. One feature that we like about this compared to the Firefly is that you can fold it and throw it in a bag, while the Firefly is a stiff board, regardless of what version you choose.
The placement of the wire also matters, as the plastic that the wire is attached to is on the top left corner in the Razer Goliathus Chroma, while in the Firefly it is right in the middle on top, which can interrupt your gameplay quite a lot as you bump into it frequently while dragging the mouse on top.
The plastic cover housing the lighting chip also has a place to tuck in your mouse wire, which acts kind of like a mouse bungee. It kind of enables you to clear off a bit of the wire tangle issue as you are able to tuck the mouse wire in it.
So it does not have a lot of lighting zones on the corners, it can only be changed to one color at a time, which is kind of a bummer, but the quality is great.
5. ASUS ROG Sheath
Why get a pad for just your mouse, the ASUS ROG Sheath is a desk pad which allows you to not only put your mouse on it but it can also house your keyboard over it.
When it comes to mouse pads nothing can be better than a frictionless cloth one which allows for greater movement and pixel precision. With a good enough mouse that has smooth friction-free feet, this mouse pad is great to navigate on.
The clothe design allows for it to be easily carried around, the red rubber bottom serves as a grip that allows it to stick to any flat surface and not move even during intense mouse movements.
With stitched corners and edges, you are able to tell where the mouse pad ends, but since it is so big you might hardly ever reach the edge on it. The stitches also allow for a longer life for the ASUS ROG Sheath so you can game hard on it without worrying about tearing or wearing.
It has a thickness of 0.12″ which makes it superlight weight, the cloth does not catch wrinkles and the rubber helps it set back to a straight shape right away easily.
6. MSI Thunderstorm
The MSI Thunderstorm is a bit of an oddball but in all the right kind of ways. This is what you call a heavy metal gaming mouse pad. You might absolutely love the massive logo, or you might hate it. Regardless of your opinion, you’ll love the durable anodized aluminum surface.
The aluminum in use is hairline surfaces to provide just enough resistance to make it ideal for control. The mouse pad itself has an L shaped design so it can sit as close as possible to your keyboard.
What we really like about the MSI Thunderstorm though is that it on the back side you can get a more contemporary micro-textured surface that cloth mouse pads are so well known for. If you play multiple genres, you’ll probably want to take use of both surfaces.
7. Logitech G440
If you play with a very high DPI, you should consider the Logitech G440 mouse pad. This mouse pad is designed to handle high DPI movement with incredible accuracy. It’s a little expensive, and the mouse pad is specifically designed to cater to the Logitech G mouse series sensors, but given that Logitech is one of the most popular gaming mouse brands, there’s a good chance you’ll be interested in it.
The surface of the mouse pad is textured for control and accuracy, making it ideal for high DPI movement when you’re playing first-person shooter and other fast-paced action games. The bottom of the mouse pad is rubberized to keep it firmly in place. The size is spacious and generous, so you can move your mouse around like a maniac without ever worrying about it falling.
The only gripe we have is its exclusivity (not entirely exclusive, but it still works best with Logitech G mice) and the fact that it costs so much.
8. Razer Firefly Chroma
If you own multiple Razer peripherals with RGB and want to sync them up together for some disco effects while gaming, a great option to do so is the Razer Firefly Chroma. The RGB will sink with all your other Razer devices like gaming mouse and keyboard. Don’t expect it to sync with something from Corsair or any other brand.
The Razer Firefly Chroma is designed for style and speed. It has a smooth micro-texture that is designed primarily for speed, though Razer does claim that it adds a bit of control too. Below the Razer Firefly’s surface, you’ll find a rubber base that keeps the mouse pad in place.
What we like about the Razer Firefly is that it is fairly priced. Yes, we know that Razer and fairly priced almost never go hand in hand, but this is a rare exception. For an RGB mouse pad and the quality it offers, the Firefly is a good deal. It’s just a pity that it has no USB pass through.