Some of you may remember This video from Linus a few months back over viewing and reviewing the PadZilla Mousepad.
I've had my Padzilla for about a week now and I wanted to talk about it as it's a very neat addition to my desk.
Now let's get this out of the way. These things are BIG and Expensive, especially if you order a custom design. This is a product not meant for everyone and it is very niche. Personaly I ordered one myself (custom, more to come) to solve one issue in particular.
I live in Minnesota and it's cold up here in the winter. Due to my room/desk setup my desk also rests against a wall facing the outside of the house, near a window on the adjacent wall. Though it is insulated quite well it's still a cooler wall than the two facing the center of the house. This in turn makes my desk surface slightly cooler to the touch on my bare fore-arms. Actually I think I'm just more temperature sensitive and the walls/weather have nothing to do with it... nonetheless the mousepad solved my issue.
Padzilla is large. fairly thick[2], really soft, and NOT cold. Boom Problem solved.
For my custom design I ended up choosing a picture that I shot and edited. "Sky & Stars" They're not actually stars but due to shooting this in the middle of summer with lots of pollen I was able to capture them and edit them to look like stars are a deep blue sky.
They're not actually stars but due to shooting this in the middle of summer with lots of pollen I was able to capture them and edit them to look like stars are a deep blue sky. The unedited raw file looks like garbage
Full res download Link for best viewing
I received the pad on a large hard paper tube and thick paper on the ends that had no issues in shipping pardon coming from china. The actual pad had a bit of curl to it but it came out in a couple hours. "Factory Fresh" smell was very present and after a week I can still smell it, Another week of leaving my window open should do the trick though.
In my email chain with Patrick (the guy I was emailing for my custom order) I originally wanted a 'small' 23.5"x48" print but after a few weeks of back and forth and introducing his partner coordinator the size switched to 'large' 30"x60" without me noticing, whoops on my part looking back as I didnt stop to clarify once they started making it.
It worked out though as this extra size meant I just had to over hang ~2inches off of the back of my desk.
There was one error with the printing job, A splotch of black where there should be solid blue, but on my print it's not very noticeable unless you're analyzing it. [IMO]
Pentium 4 for scale
The edging is very nice an very soft. I worry about it's survivabilty though as it feels like threads could break an fray if anything tougher then plastic brushes on them wrong, in addition to some of the print showing through in some areas.
Thickness, I mentioned before it was thick but I don't really have a lot of experience with a large amount of mouse pads. But I do have an old SteelSeries QcK lying around for comparison.
(cell phone quality, DSLR offered too much
Final thought: Is it worth the money I threw at it? Eh, In the end I would say yes. It solved a problem that has bothered me for a while now. That and it looks freaking cool!
A few Glam shots
