Comfort

This is one of the areas where most hard mats have a serious problem keeping up with cloth or hybrid mats. Because they are hard and often taller than their soft core rivals. With the SteelSeries SX there wasn't such a gap. To my surprise this mat is quite easy on the wrist even though it's a bit taller than most mats. All the edges on the SX are filed down and are grate free, which means that you won't hurt your wrist on minor imperfections in the mat.

That was the good part here comes the bad. Since the mat is made of aluminum it feels quite cold. On of the problems that I've experienced with this mat is that after an hour of gaming or doing intense desktop work a little moisture builds up where you keep your hand most of the time. This is due to the fact that the aluminum dissipates the heat that you generate and therefore the temperature difference between you and the mat is so high that the water in the air condensates on the cold side. This isn't a major problem in my case because my room temperature is about 22-23°C. But if you like your room cool this could evolve into a serious issue because the bigger the temperature difference is, the more condensation will form.

One of the problems that I also noted was that the surface becomes quite loud to use when there is a little bit of dirt or dust on it. Of course it easy to clean so this isn't a real problem, but still something you should consider if you have your PC in a dusty environment.

Durability

When it comes to durability this aluminum mat is a bit ahead of the competition. The surface itself is actually quite hard to scratch and bend so this mat should outlive a gaming grade mouse or two. The rubber base is really durable and is glued to the aluminum piece in such a way that it's impossible to tear off. Since the mat doesn't slip and slide on your desk the rubber base won't get worn down in the same way as the one on the old S&S for example. Overall the combination of a natural rubber base and aluminum top makes for an extremely durable combo.

SteelSeries supply five Teflon skates with this mat and they should last really long even on this mat. The wear on the skates after a day's use was very low, unlike the QPAD|XT-R or QPAD|EC-R for example. This is probably because of the way the aluminum is polished and handled at the production facility.