My dislike for desk mats is pretty well documented, owing to a few things: they get dirty easily, you can’t write on paper with one on the desk, and I have sweaty hands so I end up with a yellow spot where my mouse goes. I’ve been using a razer aluminum mousepad I got maybe six years ago, which is easy to clean. Last time I was ikea I found they they actually make a desk mat now, called RISSLA, according to the site it’s made of some nylon material, I quite like it for a few reasons:
It’s hard, so you can write on it
it’s easy to clean
it has like a fake leather look that I think is nice
it has a lip than hangs over the front of the desk to protect against dings
It comes with a flap thing on the left that you could use to hold papers in place or something, I cut it off to have more space for a TKL and my big mousepad.
Nice i used the semi circle one from ikea for a few years. I don’t know if they make it anymore. My biggest reason for swapping out was I wanted something a little softer and with a pattern but it served me well for a long time.
I just use a dark green cutting mat as a desk mat. I also use it as a cutting mat and soldering-on mat and my kids use it as a drawing-on mat. It has a lot of battle scars and I quite like it.
I sort of dislike desk mats as well, but I still keep buying them for some of the designs
What I really want are large mouse pads with the designs from the desk mats, then I’d use a keyboard mat to reduce noise if needed. Too bad the large mouse pad option is rarely offered.
It’s huge, so it requires a bigger desk (comes in different sizes I think), but it’s designed to be a writing surface. It so happens it doubles really nicely as a mouse pad and slight padding for my elbows as well.
