NOIDpad: Not Just Another Mousepad

Looking for a new mousepad? Want to give it custom touch? There’s a new face in town, and it has NO ID.

It was just another day at the office when we started off the conversation that led to this review. Out of nowhere, well, out of the endless world of the internets, we were messaged on IRC about reviewing a mousepad. Usually when companies approach us with a new mousepad, it is over the phone or through e-mail. When asked what company this mousepad was from, our contact replied with a name none of us had heard before. We have to admit we were skeptical. Having just completed what seemed like our one billionth mousepad review, we had yet to see something so ground-breakingly spectacular that we absolutely could not wait to get our hands on one for ourselves. Sure there were somewhat unique surfaces. Sure there were mousepads that touted certain things that were pretty cool. But no mousepad made us genuinely want to have it sitting on our desk quite like this one would. Why, you ask? How could a mousepad take these stone-cold hardware reviewers and make them putty in its hands? Well, this mousepad was a GotFrag Hardware mousepad.

Before you go clicking the GotGear link at the top of the page in search of this amazingly cool item, no, we do not make mousepads. Futhermore, the two pads we have on our desk right now are the only two in the world. You see, aside from getting our shipping address and contact information, the representative from this company also asked us for a design. This is something we had never been asked for before, so we didn’t really have one on hand. We tasked the former head of GotFrag’s Graphical Arts department, Phil Theiren, with creating a design for GotFrag Hardware that would look good on the surface of a mousepad. We didn’t know what kind of resolution or colors to use in the design – all we had was a size. We submitted this design through email more than three months ago.

Three months is a long time in the hardware world. Suffice to say, we had all but forgotten about our encounter with the representative from Noidpad.com until a package from Estonia arrived on our doorstep one afternoon. Upon opening the package we quickly remembered the mousepad and were very happy to see the fruits of our design efforts three months prior. And oh how sweet it was.

{mospagebreak heading=Introduction&title=Features, Specs}

NOIDpad - Custom
Manufacturer: NOIDpad
Type of pad: Soft
Material: Polymer coated cloth
Size: 40cm x 28cm x 3.5mm thick
Gallery: Click Here!
Price: $32.50 for custom, $26.00 for normal

All NOIDpad mousepads have the same “hybrid” surface. We first saw this kind of surface being used on the QPAD|CT, a normal cloth mousepad with a plastic-like coating. The version of NOIDpad we received was custom, but there are several extremely nice designs available on their website, as well as the base model, which is far from plain itself. The mousepads were shipped to us in the usual platic tube containers. The only problem we have with this method is that there is a period of about two days during which the mousepad is slightly curled and will not lie totally flat on the desk. Other than the mousepad, the package also contains a generous amount of teflon mouse skate material that works well to reduce friction.

As far as the performance of the surface is concerned, we found the NOIDpad to be exceptional. We tested both optical and laser mice on the surface, and could not get any skipping to occur under normal gaming conditions. Furthermore, rigorously muscling the mice across the surface at unrealistic speeds did not yield any noticeable skipping. The Logitech G5 BF2142 Special Edition laser mouse we used in the testing did not appear to exhibit the performance problems at extremely low sensitivity and rapid movements that have been reported by many GotFrag users. In terms of friction, the NOIDpad offers less friction than any normal cloth mousepad we have tested, including the Razer Mantis Control. It does, however, offer slightly more friction than the QPAD|CT. We would assume this to be the result of the obviously thicker polymer layer on the QPAD|CT, but we are not exactly sure about that. Many other reviews of this mousepad have reported that the “glide factor” on the NOIDpad is greater than that of the QPAD|CT, meaning that there is actually less friction. In our professional opinion, none of the mice we used would glide quite as well on the NOIDpad as they did on the QPAD|CT. However, the difference here is miniscule and both mousepads are certainly worth a look from anyone in the market for a polymer-coated pad.

The bottom of the NOIDpad is the standard rubber/foam solution that we see on pretty much all cloth mousepads. This material gets the job of sticking to the desk, which is done admirably on the 3.5mm thick pad. However, we experienced the same movement problems with 1.35mm variant that we did with the 1.5mm thin X-ray Aqua3. The mousepad seems to slip gradually on the desk with longer mouse movements. The slippage we observed on the thin NOIDpad was not as drastic as with the Aqua3 – rough measurements show it to be about half the magnitude – a factor we believe to be the result of the NOIDpad’s surface being considerably slicker than that of the Aqua3. We wouldn’t go so far as to call this amount of slippage “devastating” or “unplayable”, but some people might consider it to be a detriment. The fact that the rate of slippage is steady throughout the mouse’s movement rather than incremental would suggest that this effect can be gotten used to after a certain amount of usage. Thin mousepads are great and everything, but we would like to see more inventive solutions from manufacturers to get the pad to stick to the desk better than the current material.
{mospagebreak title=Thoughts and Conclusions}

The NOIDpad is certainly large enough to be considered as a professional gaming mousepad. It is just about the same size as the QPAD|CT, and quite a bit smaller than the enormous Razer Mantis. The NOIDpad provides more than enough horizontal room for wide, sweeping precision shots, but gamers using low sensitivities may run into problems on vertical mouse movements. Like the QPAD|CT, the base dimension of the NOIDpad is significantly greater than the height dimension, which results in a rather oblong rectangle. We are used to seeing much more balanced, square-like shapes when reviewing cloth mousepads. Two of the best cloth mousepads we have tested, the Razer Mantis Control and the SteelPad QcK+ have been far more balanced in terms of dimensions than the NOIDpad. Granted, gamers do not typically alter the vertical position of their mouse in as drastic a fashion as they do horizontally, but should the need arise, the NOIDpad might not be able to accommodate such movement.

The final thing to note about this mousepad, and in our opinion, the one thing this mousepad does better than any other on the market, is the appearance. We did our best to convey the quality and sharpness of the design that was printed on our mousepad. Upon taking the mousepad out of the protective tube, it was the quality we would expect to see from a top of the line printer printing on regular copy paper. It was a very nice, true to color representation of our design. However, it didn’t stay like that for long. This mousepad seems to be a dust magnet of sorts, for after a mere day’s worth of gaming, the black on the mousepad appears quite washed. The colors also look a bit washed, but the design itself is just as sharp. We don’t know whether or not we can attribute this washed look to the gathering of dust or just the exposure to light and normal use, but it is somewhat depressing to see this otherwise beautifully crafted surface appear faded.

There is not much more to say about this mousepad. Tracking on the surface is just as good as any other cloth surface we have tested, and the reduction in surface friction by the polymer coating is second only to that of the QPAD|CT, albeit barely. The base NOIDpad is available on the NOIDpad.com website for about $26 USD, about the same price as the MSRP for the QPAD|CT. However, shipping costs to the USA are a mere $4.50 USD. You will be hard pressed to find the QPAD|CT in the USA for less than $40 USD. For users looking to get a custom design on a cloth mousepad, the NOIDpad is a clear choice. For users that like a decent sized cloth pad with less friction than the run of the mill pads out there, the NOIDpad is also a clear choice. For all gamers looking for a new surface, NOIDpad has clearly emerged as a serious competitor in the gaming mousepad arena.

Pros
+ Coated surface
+ Large, but not too large
+ Includes generous amount of mouse skate material
+ Ability to customize
+ Very sharp image quality
+ Competitive price
Cons
- Fading reduces splendor of image on darker pads
- Thin version of the pad slips slightly on desk
Rating
8.4 out of 10