Everglide Mousing Surface Review

A Little Target Practice

Thresh's comments in BLACK

Kenn's comments in BLUE

Thresh:
Now that it's out of the way, let's talk about performance. The first thing I noticed about the EMS is that it's really slick. Being that I switch to new mice regularly, I found that my mouse slid along a little too smoothly, making it hard to maintain precision. Everglide claims that its "non-slide backing prevents shifting/slipping," but I found it to be the opposite. One little push and the mouse slid across the length of the surface. On a regular pad, the mouse simply decelerated to a standstill within an inch or so. Do keep in mind that I'm not an average user - since I switch mice every few months, the plastic "feet" on the bottom of my mice are always smooth as a baby's butt.

Kenn:
This wasn't the case on more seasoned, worn-in mice however. On my eight-month old PS/2 mouse, the plastic feet under the mouse have worn down quite a bit, to the point where a normal 3M pad produced too much friction to be worth the effort using. On this mouse, the Everglide felt very comfortable, and not at all too slick. It allowed for even and effortless navigation across the Windows desktop, and in Quake I found it was much easier to pull off snap shots and 180s - very much like a brand new mouse on a new 3M pad. I would assume since not everyone has regular access to new mice, the Everglide would be an excellent alternative (and the fact that it doesn't wear out is an even greater incentive).

Everyone's got issues...

Thresh:
It's not all milk and cookies for Santa though. We ran into some big problems with the Everglide that really hampered its effectiveness and comfort. For one, the mousepad is roughly a quarter of an inch high, and with the mounted rubber feet to keep it from slipping, it's another 1/16 inch higher. While comparable to some of the foam pads out there, the Everglide is hard plastic, and you can definitely feel the added height on your wrist. To make matters worse, the edges are at sharp angles to each other. The vertical sides are smoothed and rounded, but the edges which directly contact with the top surface of the pad are unfinished, and using this pad for more than a few minutes really started to irritate the back of my palms and my wrists.