It’s got a middling thickness of 3mm, no stiched edges (at least not on the regular version; there are team versions for sale that do have stitched edges) and a medium to fast glide which is quite similar to what you’ll find on the QcK line. It’s obviously not the most portable solution that you can find, and it can get awfully loud if you’re someone who is often picking up their mouse after swiping. Again: this is not something that everyone likes, so whether or not this works for you depends on your personal preferences. I mentioned this in the review, and the G-SR loses a bit of its original gliding qualities after about 1. This, in combination with the top texture feeling very consistent as well, makes for a mouse surface that feels extremely well-designed and crafted.

While humidity is something that all cloth pads are impacted by to some degree, it seemed like the Zowie pads in particular always had issues with it.Most pads stop feeling like their pristine new selves after a while so the G-SR is no exception to that. I have heard that faster gliding mousepads or harder mouse pads help with tracking but at the same time I recently changed my mice skates to see what the fuss is with the hyperglide feet and the extra speed they brought made my tracking and flicking worse so that is why even though I’ve heard tracking can be made worse in slower cloth pad (with the GSR being one of the slowest) but at the same time faster doesn’t seem to work too well for me either. If I had to summarize this G-SR II review in one sentence it would be the following one: it improves on the original in all the right ways (durability, humidity handling) without changing its very control-focused glide. There are tons of different kinds of gaming mousepads out there, so there’s bound to be one for you. Generally, with a quicker glide comes the sacrifice of stopping power, but I was pretty impressed here.

If that sounds a little bit familiar to you, then that’s not strange: it’s very much based on the same design principles as the ZOWIE G-SR-SE. That doesn’t have to be a big surprise since the founders of VAXEE are the same people that founded ZOWIE back in the day, but it’s an interesting bit of information.The stitching job is top notch, the pad comes flat packed and lays flat immediately, the softness of the foam is pretty much perfect, and the gliding experience is fantastic. Different G-SR-SE iterations can have slightly different glide characteristics, but they all share the same design principle: there’s a decent amount of static friction to aid with micro movements and not a whole lot (when compared to the static friction) of dynamic friction, making big swipes easy and smooth to perform.

This isn’t just a recolor of the G-SR-SE: this has an improved surface, and changes have also been made to the foam. If you are on a ‘regular’ pad and you just want a touch more stopping power and control I can recommend something like the Razer Gigantus V2, Zowie G-SR-SE, or the VAXEE PA. To me, it feels like there’s a bit less static friction, which could make sense given the fact that the surface is now smoother.

The surface is on the rougher side (as you’d expect from a control pad) but it feels very consistent, and the same can be said for the foam underneath the playing surface, though more on that later.

If you’ve got yourself a shiny new gaming mouseyou don’t want to be sanding down the feet of your mouse by sliding it around on a wooden desk or a plastic cutting board you’ve found in the kitchen, for example. The pad has stitched edges and is finished with a small stitched on Zowie logo on the side of the pad. At first glance, the G-SR-SE Rouge looks just like any other recent G-SR-SE release, but once you place it down on your pad you almost immediately feel the first difference: the foam feels softer. The gliding experience that you get out of the G-SR-SE still seems somewhat tailored to tactical shooters: the dynamic friction is pretty ‘middle of the pack’ which means that, once your mouse gets going, you’re going to experience a decently fast and smooth glide, but there’s still some static friction there that will hold you back a bit at first.

It’s a lot wider than it is ‘high’ so the G-SR(as a logical consequence) is more rectangular than some other mousepads out there. The ‘slowdown’ appeared after a couple of heavy gaming sessions, and it hasn’t slowed down any further after weeks of usage beyond that, so I’m inclined to say that ZOWIE’s claims about the improved durability ring true. The pad still feels every bit as consistent as it should be, though, and with its controlling medium glide (by this I mean that it’s pretty much a ‘medium’ pad, but it’s on the slower end of that spectrum) this Rouge offers an interesting glide experience for people who play tactical shooters or who just want a touch more control without losing out on gliding speed.