Prior to building my first gaming PC and joining the master race, I never gave professional mouse pads a thought. Over the last few years I’ve only used two mouse pads and they did the job as good as any other. One was a Spongebob Squarepants mouse pad I found on the side of the road. The other was a piece of cardboard with a penis drawn on it. When what should be considered pure crap works for my mouse without fault, I had every right to be hesitant about buying a proper mouse pad. But when I built my gaming rig, something inside me changed. I wanted the best to compliment my precious, so I set out to find a decent mouse pad.
Since I still wasn’t completely sold on the idea of a professional mouse pad, I didn’t want to spend that much money on it. After a day of browsing the Internet, I ran across the Steelseries Qck Pro Gaming Mousepad, which seemed like a nice mouse pad for the price. I still found myself a little standoffish since all of the promo photos for the Qck featured mouse pads with wrinkles in them.
The future of mouse pad packaging? I sure hope not!
It was apparent why they looked wrinkled the moment the Qck arrived. It comes rolled up in a tube. The way I see it, if you can’t figure out how remove a few wrinkles on a mouse pad, you should reconsider your hobby. Upon taking it out of the tube and placing it on the flat surface where it will forever reside, I noticed most of the wrinkles did come out. There were a few rises here and there, but nothing too noticeable. I was more worried about performance than aesthetics at this point. I was able to iron out all the kinks in just a few minutes by running my mouse over the pad in an aggressive manner.
The surface is cloth and feels nylon to the touch. It’s all black with a little Steelseries logo in the lower left-hand corner. It’s nothing fancy, but for $10 I wouldn’t expect it to be. My mouse (Steelseries WoW Gaming Mouse) glides over the Qck with ease. I never have to worry about dramatically pulling my mouse back from the edge of the pad in mid-battle thanks to its roomy 12.6 x 10.6 surface area.
Before it was flattened, the non-slip rubber base didn’t do its job. The entire mouse pad imploded in on itself several times. When flatness is this important to a mouse pad, I’m left absolutely baffled as to why Steelseries decided to ship the Qck in a tube instead of a more traditional (and flat) package. But once all the kinks are ironed out, it’s not going anywhere. The backside might not feel like it has much grip, but once it’s down on a flat surface it’s down to stay. I might shift around a little, depending how comically aggressive you are, but it won’t hamper your gameplay experience at all.
Don’t worry about the wrinkles. They will be gone after your next match in Team Fortress 2.
A personal pet peeve of mine is the lack of water resistance on most gaming mouse pads. Some claim they have it, but one spilt Mountain Dew later often proves otherwise. The Qck does not feature a water resistance surface. Water spilt on it for testing purposes soaked into the Qck and could not be rung out, resulting in having to lay the mouse pad in the sun for it to dry.
Since the Qck is cloth, it picks up dust and filth like no other. Thanks to its black color, most of the time it’s not noticeable. I like to think I’m a fairly clean human being, but I still have to clean my Qck mouse pad at least once a week. To clean, just run it under some warm water. I can’t suggest using soap, as the mouse pad is very absorbent and soap could potentially eat away at the structural integrity of the mouse pad.
The Steelseries Qck Pro Gaming Mousepad does its job. Some problems I had with it were easily solved in a matter of minutes and others are unavoidable nuisances that you will just have to live with. Nothing is bad enough to steer you away from the Qck, but you should be aware of them before you buy one. For only around $10, the Qck is a great low-budget addition to your desktop.
