Closer Examination

The mat is extremely big and has the same basic shape as the QPAD EC-R and XT-R mats which is nice. The shape means that your wrist’s angle of attack is the same no matter where you have positioned the mouse on the mat. It does not matter that much comfort wise with soft mats like the UC. The image was taken straight after unboxing the mat and as you can see there are some bumps across the mat which are caused by the mat being stored in a box rather than a cylinder. No matter how you store it, the edge will tend to curl up a bit. After two days on my desk the bumps were almost gone completely.


The rubber base is approximately 3 mm high. You really do not notice the height of the mat when in use because it is soft and wrist friendly.


Even though it is a soft mat the edges do not seem to be prone to flossing. The finish of the edges was perfect all the way around the mat. The fact that the edges are so neatly trimmed has a beneficial effect on durability, since the first thing that usual starts to come undone on a soft mat are the edges. QPAD has done the right thing here and sealed the edges thoroughly. Although they probably will come undone over time, the UC has the prettiest edges of all my soft mats.


The surface is very finely knit and is quite hard for a soft mat. It does not stretch to the same degree as my older cloth based mats, which is a good thing because that would make the glide worse.


This mat is enormous, just to get a sense of its size I laid an AA-battery on top of it. The mat measures 50 cm x 36.5 cm which makes it one of the biggest around only rivaled by the desk mats and perhaps the SteelSeries QcK+. With a thickness of only 3 mm this mat is very comfortable to use.


The logo is really just a heat sealed sticker so the glide in that particular area of the mat is virtually non existing. Thankfully the mat is huge so it is not a problem at all.

Performance

The QPAD|UC line of mats are among the very best performing cloth mats on the market today, no doubt about it. The surface is a little harder than the mainstream soft mats and the build quality is a bit better than what I am used to seeing. QPAD sent me the extra large version of their UC mat for testing, but the only difference between it and the other UC mats is the size. Since the surface is solid black, tracking will be great with most normal mice. To test the mat I used my old and trusty Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer 3.0 which is one of the best low sensitivity mice out there, perfectly geared for use with a big mouse mat like the UC. As always mouse acceleration was turned off and the polling rate boosted to 1000 Hz for coherent tracking at high speeds.

With all QPAD mats you get a set of their "Glidz" Teflon which is really great, not only is it relatively thick, the adhesive used is also a bit better than what is on the usual after market skates. The mouse feet definitely boost the experience a bit. The Teflon preinstalled on the new version of the Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer 3.0 is alright, but does not provide you with the same level of glide as the QPAD feet.

To test the mat I played a lot of CounterStrike:Source which is a fast paced FPS game. The mat’s surface is near perfect for optical mice, the IntelliMouse's sensor did not make one wrong interpretation and it did not stall either. I found the glide to be really good for a cloth mat. Glide wise is not quite on par with that of the hybrid mats on the market today, but close enough not to annoy you while gaming. Needless to say I never ran out of space on this mat, I came close an edge once, but that was about it. The size is more than adequate for low sensitivity gaming and I am quite sure that most extreme low sensitivity gamers will like it as well.

The surface should not cause trouble for the majority of sensors although you can find the occasional mouse with bad tracking on black surfaces. Besides my games testing with the Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer 3.0, I also pulled out my old Razer DeathAdder and OCZ Equalizer laser gaming mouse just to test for compatibility issues. Suffice to say there were no problems at all, and the mice performed just like they do on a hard mat. The Razer DeathAdder's lift off distance was really low and the laser mice's lift off was not exaggerated either.

The mat is a bit lively on your desk and does not stay in the exact same place all the time. With the extra large you do not have to worry about that because of the abundance of space, but if you go for one of the smaller sizes it might become a problem. The problem comes from the fact that the mat is light and does not grip the desk enough compared to the friction between mat and surface. That combined with the fact that it is a bit elastic makes it move around somewhat.