Razer Scarab Mouse Surface
A House For Your Mouse
In the interest of full disclosure I have to say that I have long scoffed at ‘gaming’ mouse mats/pads etc and that I generally felt like a decent laser mouse did well on any logically sound surface that you would choose to use it on.
I was wrong
Now to be fair I had never considered how much impact my mouse had on game play until getting into higher end mice but once you start to keep an eye on things you start to notice the near unconscious things you might catch yourself doing like:
- slight pickup and put down of the mouse when it feels ‘caught’
- occasional ’love tap’ (maybe knock that dirt or something free)
- move to another area of your mouse pad or desk surface (must be ‘that’ spot)
Now that I started thinking about it I was compensating quite a bit for things the mouse might do (or rather not do) that really had nothing to do with anything I was actually changing and all were combinations of the mouse AND the surface I was using.
Well, you think that after you get yourself on a better mouse, these little things go away but nope, you end up learning that with a precision instrument, the conditions that it performs best under have to be better than before. Turns out that spending the money on a great mouse without the right surface to use it is like DaVinci painting The Last Supper on a wall of jello. It just doesn’t bring out the greatness of the work down there.
So, with a brand new Razer Imperator Mouse in hand and a month of gaming with it down I hesitantly laid the Razer Scarab under it and worked hard to ignore it was there.
Features
Seems crazy to think about features when you think of a mouse pad (surface, mat, whatever) since for most of us its like listing the features of a throw rug but there are some nice ones to point out here including:
High quality rigid construction
Fractal 2.0 Textured Surface – You cant see it, you can feel it and the mouse laser really likes it
Rubber Base which keeps it neatly in place
Carrying Case… well, Im listing this as a feature because it was nice but this one seems like they might do better to offer as an option and cut the price a few bucks since a purse for my mouse pad just didnt get it done for me. Luckily it has ZERO bearing on the product so no harm.
Ease of Use
Sure, it’s easy, place on desk under location of mouse. It is a good size with lots of room to work yet not too big that you have to clear space or feel like it is eating up valued coffee cup placement space.
Measurements: 350 mm / 13.79” (Length) x 250 mm / 9.85” (Width) x 3 mm / 0.12” (Height)
It’s light too, 229 g / 0.50 lbs which is enough weight to feel solid but thin and light enough to quickly and easily re-position if needed
Performance
What does a mouse mat “perform”? It’s the Ying to a good mouse’ Yang. While using the Scarab I noticed that twitch response time was cleaner and more crisp. Smaller movement such as instances where you’re playing a sniper and working a long distance target seem much easier to get small granular adjustments translating to the screen easier. The better I could fine tune the faster I could take shots and as we all know, sometimes getting that shot off first is the key.
Quality
In a word, great. After two months of use I have no signs of dirt build up, scratches or edge issues. I am even proud to report that the severe abuse testing team (aka family parrots) took a shot at it once and while they routinely make short work of ‘pad’ type mouse surfaces they were stymied by the Scarab.
Value
You’re going to have to get out of the old “it’s just a mouse pad” mindset to plunk down the $40 you’ll spend on the Scarab but if you consider it a natural and necessary addition to a solid gaming mouse investment then you can consider the surface to be the second half of a unit.
Final Report
I am sold, once I got a chance to see that there IS a difference between using a great mouse on a crap surface vs one designed for it I would hazard a guess that I’ll be recommending the hold outs to make the switch when they next invest in mouse upgrades.
