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• The Steelseries QcK Heavy mousepad beats the small, flimsy mouse pads you get at work or buy for cheap. 
• It was well worth the $10 I paid back in 2017, and I'd buy it again for its $15 price today. 
• Its large size, thickness, and weight make for a more comfortable experience when using your mouse.

I just dug up an old, cheap mousepad I was given at work to see what it was like, and it has only confirmed even more that buying a $15 "gaming" mousepad was worth it. 

The Steelseries QcK Heavy Gaming Surface is marketed as a "gaming" mousepad, but it's been ideal for general use and work at my home office. It's a night and day difference in quality compared to those cheap, small, flimsy, standard-issue office mouse pads.

I bought the medium size, which is significantly bigger than standard mousepads and gives you more room to wave your mouse around.

Admittedly, I only ever use about a quarter of the vast surface while I'm working, but I love that I never have to worry about gliding my mouse beyond its borders. My wrist also rests more comfortably on the pad rather than on my desk, and I still have plenty of room to spare.

Its large size also means I could turn down my mouse's sensitivity and make longer sweeps with my mouse without having to lift it to get the cursor across the screen. Turning down the sensitivity also gives me better accuracy and control than when I had my mouse on high sensitivity to keep within the borders on smaller mousepads.  

Having such a large surface also means I can adjust the area where I use my mouse to another part of the pad for more comfortable use without having to move the pad itself — most of the time I naturally use the top left corner of the pad, and other times it's more comfortable to use my mouse around the middle area. It's been really nice to have so much room and flexibility.

The Steelseries QcK Heavy is primarily made of neoprene (or similar material) with a rubbery base and cloth top.

At 6mm thick, it's significantly thicker than the standard mousepad, which adds a surprising amount of weight. Along with its weight, the rubbery underside absolutely prevents it from shifting around my desk. 

The top surface is a pretty typical mouse pad cloth, but its quality feels noticeably higher and more natural than the cheap office mousepad I used to use. There's been some noticeable signs of wear since I bought the Steelseries QcK Heavy in 2017, mostly where my wrist usually sits, but it's purely aesthetic and doesn't affect the mouse pad's usability at all. 

You can clean the mouse pad per Steelseries' instructions, which is a good thing to do once in a while.

In the photo above, I had just cleaned the mousepad before taking the photo, which shows where my wrist and mouse wear the pad. I'll occasionally spin around the mousepad to prevent wearing down one particular area, but I don't think it's totally necessary. 

This is all to say that the Steelseries QcK Heavy mousepad is a great upgrade to your mousepad if you're still using one of those cheap, flimsy pads. If you don't like the large size of the medium, Steelseries has a smaller QcK mousepad, but it's not as thick as the Heavy model. Still, it should offer a better experience.

Steelseries also has mouse pads with stitched edges, but I've never liked those, as they feel like they're boxing in the freeing feeling of using a large mousepad.

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