The PC Gaming market has not short supply of great gaming mice. There are so many these days that someone could get lost looking through them all. You can even go so far as to choose a mouse that works for the particular game type that you like. The problem is that once you get this great mouse home you might have to run it across a surface that is… less that optimal. Here in the mouse pad vertical there are a number of products, but not all are suited to gaming and not all fill fit every gaming style. Today we are looking at a pair of mouse pads that can offer you either precision or speed. These are part of Kingston’s new dive into the peripheral market and are call HyperX Skyn. Let’s see what they have for us.
Performance -To test the performance of the Kingston HyperX Skyns I pulled out a few mice I have in the lab including my G5 laser gaming mouse, the CM Storm Sentinel Advanced II, a CM Storm Spawn, TT eSports Level 10M and Level 10M Hybrid just to see how each performed. I played through several levels of Thief, Modern Warfare 3, and Wolfenstein New Order. I played each of these for one hour using each mouse to gauge hand and wrist fatigue and also accuracy and ease of use. I then sat down for some detailed Photoshop CS 2014 editing. These tests would be using the eraser tool and the cloning tool to edit and clean up small details in images. Unfortunately as these tests are all subjective I can only offer you my experience with them at this time.
Gaming -Gaming on the speed SKYN was interesting given my playing style. Although it was a good surface and one that I can see people enjoying it did not give me the control that I prefer. I noticed this the most in Thief where I had some minor issues aiming for long-range headshots. Using the speed SKYN I felt like I needed to make more adjustments than with a normal pad or the control SKYN. It certainly was fast, but I personally felt that it exaggerated my movements and I needed to over control to get the same level of accuracy I am used to. On the other hand the control SKYN gave me an excellent experience with all three games. It was still fast enough (for me) to quickly change targets, but it had enough friction to give me the precision I like during gaming.
Photoshop Editing -As you might imagine the Control SKYN was much better suited to the detailed movements you need with image editing. Once the pad was stuck to the desktop it did not move and helped to keep things easily controllable. The speed surface was not especially suited to this although it was not a terrible experience when I used it during testing.
Reuse -During our extended testing we did not have too much trouble with the pads losing their grip on the surfaces we tested with, but I can see where this could become an issue. The problem is always going to be when you transport the pad. If any lint of dust gets on the sticky surface you are going to eventually lose the ability to stick this to any surface. This limits the SKYN’s usefulness as a portable gaming surface. This is a shame as they are thin and light meaning you do not need much space to bring them with you. Of course, depending on the cost you could just keep one handy to bring with you just in case.
