The best gaming mouse pad is more essential than you'd think. Without a smooth surface to glide your mouse on, your precision in some games might wobble. A good mouse pad isn't as key as the best gaming mouse, but it's worth considering if you're well equipped with everything else.
The very best mouse pad on the market today is the Razer Firefly V2 Pro. What makes a mouse pad pro, you say? Well, that'd be the RGB lighting, of course. No, I'm just kidding, it's the low-friction solid surface, which lets your mouse glide from one corner to the next. The lovely lighting is just an added bonus.
If you don't want to stretch to the extremes of the Firefly V2 Pro, our pick for the best budget mouse pad won't cost you much more than a couple coffees. It's the Corsair MM100. A fabric pad with little flair, we've used this mouse pad plenty on team to know it's dependable, easy to clean, and plenty smooth for gaming. You can't go wrong with that.
Usually I'd use this opportunity to talk about my expertise with this product category, how long I've been testing it, or some such. However, we're talking about mouse pads. There's only so much testing I can claim to have done. What I can say is I have used every single mouse pad in this guide and I continue to use a few of them day-to-day. They're the mouse pads I, and other members of the team, use daily. We like them, hopefully you will too.
Quick list
The best overall
If you don't mind paying for it, the Firefly V2 Pro is the best mouse pad I've used. That's because it's a slick hard surface that my mouse glides over effortlessly, and it's easy to clean. Oh, and it's the most RGB thing ever.
The best fabric
The best fabric mouse pad is the Razer Strider. It comes in a few sizes, big or really big, and it promises to be nearly as good as a hard-top without the hard. It's pretty darn close, too.
The best budget
Sometimes simple is best, and I'm not going to force you to spend any more on a mouse pad than you absolutely have to. Here's a black rectangle that fits the bill, is good for gaming, and is importantly extremely affordable.
The best budget hard-top
If you want a slick hard-top mouse pad but don't like the price of some of them, take a look at this: the Logitech G440. It's just as smooth and as great for gaming.
The best looking
For pure aesthetic reasons, the Novelkeys lineup of mouse pads get our pick. Though they're pretty, they're also well made and great for gaming on.
Read more below
Recent updates
This guide was updated on August 8, 2024 to include a new entry for the best mouse pad for gaming, the Razer Firefly V2 Pro, and update our formatting and images throughout.
The best mouse pad for gaming
✅ You want the slickest mouse movements: I've used a lot of mouse pads over the years and I've stuck with this one longer than most.
✅ You're messy: I get thermal paste all over my fabric mouse pads and they're a pain to clean. The Firefly V2 Pro is a doddle, just wipe it with a damp cloth.
❌ You are sensible with money: Don't look at the price tag if you're squeamish. We have an amazing budget hard-top mouse pad option for you below instead.
Do you need an RGB mouse pad? No, but you might want to check out a hard-top mouse pad. There's none finer than the Razer Firefly V2 Pro, our pick as the best mouse pad for gaming right now.
A slick surface makes for easy mouse movement—truly, a decent mouse with proper PTFE feet will glide over the Firefly V2 Pro like it's gliding atop a cloud. Your mouse turned peak '60s British engineering: a hovercraft. Ahem—it's pretty good, anyways.
I've been using the Firefly V2 Pro on my desk for a good few months now. The thing I've come to appreciate most about it over that time is not actually how light and smooth my mouse moves across it, but instead how easy it is to clean. You might notice from a few of the images of the fabric mouse pads in this guide that there's a distinct grey smudging to all of them. That's thermal paste—I use a lot of it in this line of work and I get it everywhere, even though I swear I'm very careful. It's also very tough to get out of a fabric mouse pad.
The Firefly V2 Pro, however, I can simply wipe down with a damp cloth and it's sparkling clean again. That's worth a lot to me.
Though is it worth the price of admission for the Razer Firefly V2 Pro? With an MSRP of $100, you'd be clever to wait around for a decent discount before picking one up. Nevertheless, it is the best mouse pad I've used, and I've used a lot, hence why it's no.1 in this here guide.
The best fabric mouse pad for gaming
✅ You want top-tier fabric: This mouse pad is well put together. I've used it for a long time and it's not worn down or falling apart.
❌ You're messy: One of the reasons I appreciate the Firefly V2 Pro is because it's much easier to clean than the Strider I used it to replace.
The Razer Strider claims to be something of a hybrid; the flex and soft finish of a fabric mouse pad with the stick-to-itiveness and glide of a more rigid model. I dare say it actually delivers on both counts, too.
It's the mouse pad I am using at work, and I had used for a long time at home (one XXL and the other Large), which speaks volumes for the quality of the pad, as I've quite a few mouse pads to choose from. It was only topped by the Firefly V2 Pro at home due to how easy it was to clean, and I've been convinced by hard-top pads.
Nevertheless, the Strider's performance is top tier. A firm fabric lines the top of the Razer Strider's surface, and this is able to deliver a swift and effortless glide with any half-decent gaming mouse. It's not as soft a finish as others on this list, but it's still comfortable to rest your palms on for the better part of a day.
Beneath that lies anti-slip rubber to effectively stick this mouse pad to your desk with zero chance of lateral movement. This extra layer also firms up the entire mouse pad, and to keep it from fraying there's some smart black stitching around the mat's edge. This stitching is really tight to the edge of the mat, so you can actually push your mouse over the edge of the pad without issue.
For a zero fuss and well-made mouse pad, look no further than the Razer Strider.
The best budget mouse pad for gaming
✅ You want a simple, cheap mouse pad: With so many affordable fabric mouse pads to choose from, we've settled on the standard Corsair MM100 as the best of the bunch. Half the PC Gamer team has had one at some point, with no complaints.
❌ You want any flourishes whatsoever: The Corsair is a black rectangle. There's not even stitching around the sides, which does mean it can get a little frayed over time.
There's not much to say about the Corsair MM100. But it's that sort of simplicity, and its extremely low price tag, that we like. If you want a non-descript black rectangle with minimal branding that your mouse will glide across like ice, this is your pad.
It really is a back to basics design. If you can really call it much of a design at all. It's smooth on the top, rubberised on the bottom to stick to your desk, and, uh, that's it. There's no stitching around the edges, which mean repeated scuffs can cause some frays, but it's really pretty robust as far as textile mats go.
The MM100 is your regular, modern mouse pad style for gaming. It's not too small, not too big. Just right for generally big mouse movements. If you really want to crank down your DPI and go for full elbow-length swings of your mouse, you'll probably want something bigger than this that takes up the entire desk.
Otherwise, for most gamers, this is a great pick if you only want to spend a little on a mouse pad—which is totally understandable, by the way.
The best budget hard-top mouse pad for gaming
✅ You want a hard-top for less: You can spend a lot, too much maybe, on a mouse pad if you're not careful. The Logitech G440 is much more affordable than some.
❌ You prefer more space: You're probably better off grabbing a fabric mouse pad if you want space for big mouse movements or even your keyboard.
Nothing compares to a solid, hard surface mousepad when it comes to pure speed and low tactile resistance, except maybe Razer's hybrid. Though not everyone can afford Razer's proper hard-top Firefly V2 Pro, there are much cheaper options with plenty to offer. Our favorite budget hard-top is this, the Logitech G440.
PC gamers requiring subtle but rapid mouse movements often prefer these slick, low friction surfaces that allow them to glide their mouse with ease. The G440 happily provides for much less money than some.
Unlike their cloth counterparts that all use very similar textiles, hard mouse pads are made from a wide variety of components and blends, including aluminum, plastic, and rubber.
They vary dramatically in friction, weight, and design, so there is sure to be a hard mouse pad out there that is perfect for you. For us, the simplicity and ultra-smooth surface of the Logitech G440 make it our top choice when considering speed.
At a glance, the surface of the G440 might appear to be completely smooth, but it is a polyethylene surface featuring microtextures that offer the perfect amount of resistance. That's pretty similar to the Firefly V2 Pro, in fact. The mouse pad provides just the right amount of feedback without any excess noise generated from our rapid mouse movements.
Logitech seems to have found the perfect middle ground between abrasive and smooth as we were able to seamlessly move and stop our mouse with ease during intense battles. So, if you're hoping for a cheaper option to Razer but still want that ease of cleaning and the smooth surface on which to game, the Logitech G440 is your best bet.
The best looking mouse pad for gaming
✅ Aesthetics matter to you: If you demand good looks, first and foremost, look no further than Novelkeys. They're solid mouse pads too, by the way.
❌ You are prone to spilling things: It depends on which design you pick, but any of the white ones are a no-go for clumsy gamers.
Sometimes we just want to think about the aesthetic, and for those times Novelkeys' lineup of fantastically themed mouse pads comes in handy. Our pick for the best looking mouse pad for gaming, for sure.
Novelkeys is well-known for its custom group buys, covering everything a PC enthusiast could desire from key switches to mousepads. It specializes in colossal desk-sized pads in a range of often limited edition styles. You'll want to check out its website every so often to see the latest flavor, as it will often swap out old designs for new ones.
The Camping mouse pad featuring a sprawling mountain range used to live on my desk at home until I covered it in thermal paste and decided aesthetic desk pads aren't my thing anymore. That exact design is no longer available, but there are always many more to pick up throughout the year.
Most mouse pads come in at an accommodating 900 x 400 x 4 mm size with a rubber bottom, cloth top, and outer edge stitching to match. They're smooth, feel good to use, and last a long time, too.
While it used to be the case that most of Novelkeys' designs were limited run group buys, it appears you can now just pick them up right away so long as there's stock. There's currently an awesome Ghostbusters deskpad for sale on the site, so hopefully it's still there when you're reading this.
How we test mouse pads
It's not easy assigning value to a piece of cloth, but someone's got to do it. When we receive a new mouse pad to test, we do what we do best: Play lots and lots of PC games.
Once we've got a feel for how a particular mouse pad feels underhand, we play a couple more games to get a feel for things. After that, if we like how it looks and is built to last rigorous gaming, it gets a thumbs up. If not, it's a thumbs down, and it's tossed on the great mouse pad fire raging since '85.
That being said, it's nearly impossible to mess up a mouse pad, even an old book makes a solid substitute, so there's rarely a bad word to be had or a pad to be ritualistically burnt. Massive price tags and needless functionality will see a few occasionally sent to the naughty corner, however.
