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Aug 01, 2023

The Best PTFE Dots for Glass Mousepads

A big concern with glass mousepads is that for many they are uncontrollably fast making it hard to recommend to beginner aimers. Another big problem is that PTFE skates wear out quickly on glass surfaces making this item the most common purchase for glass mousepad enjoyers.

You can get around by buying cheap (but still very good) AliExpress dots from the same OEMs as big brands, or polishing your used skates but there seems to be a better alternative that not many have talked about yet.

You can purchase control PTFE dots specifically made with a harder compound to last longer on hard surfaces. I was curious and wanted to test how good these control dots were on glass pads so I got some for myself.

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Most PTFE dots and skates are quite quick on glass pads while the hardened PTFE dots promise to offer more control and durability on glass surfaces by using a harder compound in their dots.

You can currently find these control/hardened PTFE dots sold by 2 vendors: X-Raypad and the OEM on AliExpress. There are functionally no differences so I would recommend you purchase them from AliExpress if you can wait for the extra shipping time since you can save quite a bit of money.

I swapped to the control PTFE dots on my HSK Pro 4K and started my testing on my glass pads: The Empress and the SkyPad 3.0. While the PTFE dots feel smooth you can tell there is more friction when gliding the mouse around and when trying to stop it. When compared to the Ice variation of PTFE dots from the same AliExpress OEM vendor, the control Ultraglide skates were slightly slower just as described by the marketing materials.

The differences in stopping power and glide between the control PTFE dots are not as stark as swapping to a control mousepad, but the difference is noticeable and will help you if you are struggling with precision on glass surfaces.

While the intended purpose of these red PTFE dots seems to be paired with glass mousepads, I was curious to see how usable these hardened variation perform on other popular surfaces.

The simple conclusion I have reached is that as the name implies the red Ultraglide dots will be somewhat slower than normal PTFE dots on every surface. This is by no means a scientific study and I simply swung the mice around on different surfaces, but even this simple exercise was good enough to differentiate the speeds for me.

Hybrid: Artisan Hien

Cordura: EGG MPC450

Control Cloth: Odin Eclipse

I did also re-test the control skates on my Padsmith The Empress pad just to be sure my findings are reproducible on every surface

If you enjoy playing on glass mousepads, want a bit more control, and want to spend less money buying replacement PTFE skates all the time – get some control PTFE dots.

About The Author

Custom Windows ISO enjoyer, FPS optimizer, and aim improvement enthusiast. Will disassemble all of his peripherals (and sometimes PC parts) to mod them even if all of them work perfectly fine. Discord/Twitter: vile_is_dead

please try sapphire skates on skypad, despite popular contrary belief, the people who did try this combo have reported 0 damage to the glasspad and very fast and smooth glide.

I did try both ceramic and glass skates on my SkyPad and the glide was not exactly smooth since you could hear the surfaces rubbing against each other. I would imagine Sapphire dots would be pretty much the same. For now hardened PTFE skates feel the best on glass for me.

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