The Roccat Taito mouse pad is pitched at gamers who want a surface that features a “heat-treated nano pattern” that is “ruggedized for high strain” and that offers “improved axis flow and exact x-y balance”. OK, whatever, maybe the marketing men are getting a bit carried away.

Never mind all that rubbish. What the marketing speak is trying to tell us is that the Roccat Taito is a cloth mouse pad. It has a smooth and shiny black surface that measures 400×320mm (15.7 x 12.5 in) and is 3.45mm (.13 in) thick. The underneath of the pad is rubber which unsurprisingly helps the Taito grip onto the surface of the desk without sliding around. The Taito’s MSRP is €14.99.

The surface is indeed very smooth and is easily comparable to other mouse pads such as the Razer Goliathus. I tested it with my Roccat Kone and Razer Deathadder and both mice worked extremely well with it. Both mice slid easily across the Taito’s surface and there was no skipping of the cursor, in fact I didn’t notice any problems with the sensors of either mice through a few days of desktop work and gaming.

One negative point about the Taito is that it is packaged in a plastic blister pack that has to be cut open. If you’re the sort of gamer who moves around a lot this means that you won’t have a handy container in which to carry the pad, as you would get with other cloth pads such as the Razer Mantis and Everglide Titan.

There’s little else to say about the Taito. I couldn’t detect the “nano-pattern” and didn’t notice any “improved axis-flow” but for a cloth pad it did work well. The Taito is priced slightly lower than some of the other big name pads such as the aforementioned Razer Mantis and Everglide Titan, but then it does lose out slightly if you take the packaging into account and is also slightly smaller.

The Roccat Taito is a good cloth mouse pad, but will probably be bought mainly by fans of the Roccat brand. If that includes you then you can look at www.roccat.org to find a place to buy the Taito, or alternatively try eBay as there’s usually loads on there.