SteelSeries has announced the release of SteelSeries SX, a new professional gaming mousepad made of fibre polished aluminum featuring an anodised oxide surface treatment. "The exclusive gaming surface raises the bar for gaming accessories, offering what is probably the smoothest gliding sensation ever found in a professional gaming mousepad."

The gliding sensation of the SteelSeries SX is achieved by the most time consuming manufacturing process ever put into a mousepad from SteelSeries. Every SteelSeries SX is individually fibre polished and anodised, before being manually treated with a liquid silicone coating developed specifically for this surface. The surface on the SteelSeries SX was further developed and sophisticated from an original aluminum surface released by SteelSeries in 2001, once labelled “the sexiest mouse pad in the entire industry” by Angel Munoz, founder of the Cyberathlete Professional League.

SteelSeries says the glide and feel of SteelSeries SX does not resemble any other mousepad on the market. “With the SteelSeries SX we wanted to create something spectacular and exclusive,” says Kim Rom, Marketing Director for SteelSeries. “It feels good to create a gaming surface where the only focus is performance, glide and the overall feel of the product – without trying strike a balance between production cost, price point and volume.”

"With the SteelSeries SX we tried to reach new limits and I can honestly say we reached them. It was our goal to make a pad that would offer smoothness and be very durable and not lose it over time. We knew from experience that aluminum was a perfect material to achieve this goal,” said Jonas ‘Johnny R’ Bollack, SteelSeries Development Team. “Several months, and after countless tests by professional gamers, later we can finally present the result. An anodised aluminum surface that does the job perfectly and both we and our testers agreed: this is as good as (aluminum) gets.”

Included with the mousepad is SteelSeries Glide MS and SteelSeries Silicone Glide, a specially designed saturated cloth, to further improve glide and reduce friction. Development, refinement and testing of the SteelSeries SX has taken nine months and involved input and help from professionals players in Team NoA, mousesports, CompLexity, Team 3D and Reason Gaming.

SteelSeries SX is available in limited quantities at selected retailers worldwide. It is also available at the SteelSeries website as a single product - or in bundles with either a SteelSeries IME 3.0 SS mouse or SteelSeries 5H v2 USB and SteelSeries 4H headsets.