THE ROCCAT SOTA

ROCCAT provided us with 4 mouse pads, the first of which (and best of them all) is the Sota gaming pad.

The surface of the Sota gaming pad is made by a combination of both hard plastic and metal foil. Size-wise the pad measures 350mm in length, 270mm in width and 3mm in height.

This hard plastic/metal foil pad offers plenty of surface area for even the most demanding users.

For me hard plastic pads only come second to aluminum ones but the Sota with its metal foil coating comes really close to the first, at list appearance-wise.

The ultra-soft rubber base worked as advertised and kept the Sota in place throughout our days of testing.

CONCLUSION

    The Sota gaming pad may not be the most precise one in this comparison but it does offer very good tracking precision, a large surface area and excellent glide (at least with both the Sensei and Kone[+] gaming mice) so it comes highly recommended for casual users and gamers.
 

THE ROCCAT TAITO

Also with us we have the entire Taito line of cloth pads which includes the mini, mid and king size models.

The 3 sizes of the available Taito models are the mini-size measuring 265x210mm, the mid-size measuring 400x320mm and the king-size measuring 455x370mm. All three models are available in 3mm and 5mm thickness.

The Nano matrix surface featured on all three models may be superior to what we see with most cloth pads out there but is nothing to get excited over in terms of real performance, still as you can see both the mid and king sized pads offer a very large surface area.

For reasons unknown to me ROCCAT send me the 3mm versions of the mini/king size models and the 5mm version of the mid-size one.

All three models use the same non-slip rubber material at the rear which really works as it should.

CONCLUSION

    The rather entry-level Taito line of mouse pads is ideal for casual users and gamers but due to medium tracking precision and average build quality i can't really recommend them to people who spend many hours playing games. Performance aside however i really like the available size/height selection, a trend which i hope more mouse pad manufacturers follow soon (especially manufacturers of aluminum and hard plastic pads).