ROCCAT have a seriously good mouse pad in the Alumic. The two sides are nice, but you have to bear in mind you can only use one at a time so it is borderline gimmick. Both sides perform really well, but there are some compromises due to the flip-flop design.
Take the stands for instance, they have to protrude on both sides of the mat to work, this means that you run into them occasionally while gaming. This issue could have been avoided if ROCCAT had focused on delivering a normal single sided gaming mat.
The graphics on the control side is probably an issue for some, because it is anything but anonymous. Even the heavily branded SteelSeries 9HD seems conservative compared to the color mayhem that is the control side of the ROCCAT Alumic. It also seems that the graphics upset the tracking of some mice under specific running conditions.