The back of the pad is what XtracPads calls “Sure Grip Rubber”. The name pretty much says it all- Put the pad down and it stays. This baby will stay put while fragging- a standard, yet welcome feature of any gaming surface.

Upon initial inspection, the mousing surface doesn’t seem as smooth to the touch as I would like it to be, but its pretty decent for a cloth pad and my MX1000's feet seem to slide across it reasonably well. On to the gaming test to see how the Ripper is in its element.

After playing a few levels of HL2: EP1 I can confidently say that this is the best cloth pad I have ever used. The extra real estate was more than welcome, and my mouse slid across its surface much better than I expected it to. I’m not sure what it is about the Ripper that supposedly better suits low to medium sensitivity settings as I found it to be more than capable of playing with my cranked sensitivity levels.

Once I was able to tear myself away from ripping the Combine a new one (pun intended) I did a finicky bit of detail work in PhotoShop CS2 to test the Ripper’s tracking. The accuracy was spot on throughout the procedure, no issues whatsoever.

With a MSRP of US$12.95 this pad is more than worth it. While it many not be quite as slick as some of the plastic pads out there, it is also not as expensive. The Ripper is as good as a cloth gaming pad gets. Oh, and in the off chance you actually need something with more area, it is also available in two larger sizes, the Ripper XL and XXL.

Review by Nigel Grammer.