The XTracPads Hybrid Mouse Pad

The XTracPads Hybrid arrives in a soft plastic tube with ‘Hybrid’ written boldly on a paper insert. This is alike the packaging on most other XTracPads products. Inside the tube is the pad itself – which is contained inside a plastic bag that can be easily removed and packed away if necessary.

Being roughly 25% smaller than the Fat Mat, it is a good size for a normal sized desk. This should fit easily on most users’ desks.

The Hybrid entails a cloth surface on top.  This is a big bonus for comfort as the cloth acts as a cushion for the hand/wrist.

The underside surface feels similar to the Fat Mat; a foam based structure which is spongy. Therefore, it’s a great benefit comfort wise.

Testing/Usage

When testing the Hybrid, we considered the following factors:

• Comfort
• Friction – does the pad move about in-usage?
• Gaming – how well does it perform in-game?

Comfort

Even being a relatively small size, the Hybrid sill has enough room for resting your wrist on whilst using your computer. This means that with the help of the soft and spongy surface, your wrist, nor hand will ache at all – even after a long gaming session.

Friction

The underside of the Hybrid uses “Sure Grip Rubber Backing”. This definitely works and dramatically improves upon game play as it doesn’t move about at all during usage unlike some other pads I have used.

As you can see in the photo below, the backing is made out of a black sponge-like rubber material (similar to the other XTracPads) and is about 3mm thick with a rough criss-crossed design which ensures that the pad will stay in a fixed position.

Gaming

I tested the Hybrid using the Logitech V220 and a generic standard mouse while playing Battlefield 2.  I found that even though the two mice are definitely not in the same price range as each other, they both performed very well on the Hybrid.

My overall points total at the end of the round was considerably higher when using the Hybrid than when not using a mouse pad at all.

Online games were not a problem for the Hybrid either as it improved accuracy in web based racing games, shooters and MMORPGs such as RuneScape.

I found that while using the Hybrid, headshots and other difficult shots were a little easier as the mouse didn’t slip or move unexpectedly while I was aiming.