Introduction

Ratpadz is one of the oldest mousemat manufacturers. The pads itself hasn't evolved that much since the first time they were produced, in the sense "If it works don't fix it". All of the pads are black and made of highly durable polymer, and from my own experience the Ratpadz are anything but fragile, the robust construction and simple construction will last longer than your mouse.

Ratpadz was actually one of the first companies to introduce a plastic based mat made of high quality plastic, which is durable and has a surface that performs great. There are two versions of the Ratpad, the GS and the XT. The mat which I will be reviewing today is the XT version. Now let's see how this old school mat performs compared to the more recently released models out there.

Packaging

Well there isn't one, the pads are shipped in a standard cardboard envelope. Normally this isn't such a good idea because the pads usually get roughed up during transportation.

The pad I got from Ratpadz was a bit bend, probably due to high temperatures at a postal office somewhere between Denmark and the United States. I immediately contacted the company and I got some expert advice. Because of the mat is made out of high-density polymer it's bendable that means that you can shape the mat by bending it over the edge of a table. After a little messing around I got it bend into shape.

Even though the pad had been molested at a post office it was recoverable and to my surprise the surface wasn't harmed by my bending session at all. As a matter of fact the performance was really good.

A closer look

The overall layout of the mat is a simple square with an arched bottom so that you don't harm your wrist while using it. The edges of the mat have also been rolled up to make it more comfortable to use.



There aren't any extras with the Ratpadz XT, this is fine because the surface's texture performs really good with almost every type of mouse feet where some of the cloth and hybrids are more sensitive.

The basic construction of the Ratpadz XT is very simple, you have a piece of plastic laying on top of nine feet made of hard plastic.



The feet are placed so that the mat is in balance and doesn't slip around on your desk, which is nice if you play a lot of FPS-games.