Today we’ll be looking at the Fnatic Gear Boost Control Mousemat, the new mousemat from Fnatic in their Fnatic Gear range.
On the Fnatic website they describe the mouse as a paper-thing mousepad designed to provide a nearly seamless tracking surface delivering unobstructed edge-to-edge gaming.
The mousemat comes in three different sizes medium, large and extra large. Not sure why there isn’t a small but hey, whatever floats your boat. On the Fnatic website they list the XL and L versions of this mousemat at 19 Euros, which kind of baffles me that they can offer a larger mousemat (400 x 305 x 2mm compared to 340 x 260 x 2mm) at the same price. Oh yeah, that’s right, they’re overpriced.
Yes I’m going in hard on this one. Fnatic released their Fnatic Gear range saying that the range will be built by esports professionals, for esports professionals wanting to manufacture high quality products. Well, I don’t think they’ve succeeded with this mousemat.
First off, it’s called the Boost Control Mousemat but there’s nothing controlled about this mousemat, it’s incredibly fast compared to my Steelseries QCK heavy, I have to lower my sensitivity to at least a third of what it is now to even get close to how it was before. I can’t imagine how fast the Speed version of this mat would be. Not good for first person shooting, I want to be able to aim pixel perfectly at someone’s head and not spin around five times from one mouse movement.
In terms of build quality, it’s durable. You’ll definitely be able to travel with this mousemat. It’s thin, so it’s not too obtrusive on your mouse hand, you won’t feel like you’re playing on two different levels.
The Fnatic website also says: “BOOST was developed by the world’s leading professional gamers to ensure precision tracking and reliability to support gameplay at the highest levels.” Now precision tracking isn’t the word that jumps to mind when using this mousemat. I have a Razer Naga mouse (which has a good quality optical sensor) and every time I lifted my mouse a little my aim would bounce around my screen like crazy. Not what you want out of a mousemat.
This mousemat has a hard polycarbonate surface, which is good quality and feels good on my mouse feet. It’d take some getting used to from my fabric mousemat for sure and I definitely prefer my fabric mousemat.
The backing of the mousemat is good quality too, it doesn’t move at all when using the mousemat. To back all this up you get a 2 year warranty from purchase date, which doesn’t seem necessary to me. What’s going to break on a mousemat? Not much. Unless the backing pulls away from the mat or you use it so much you wear the mat down, the warranty is just a sales technique.