If you watch gaming streams, chances are, you notice some streamers will have a camera feed focused on their gaming mouse and keyboard. It’s a popular setup for skilled players, whose mouse swipes and finger movements are frequently sought out by viewers hoping to emulate their moves. As useful as it may be for some viewers, others hate it, as it covers up even more of the game screen while serving just a small percentage of the audience. The Elgato Green Screen Mouse Mat gives streamers a way to keep both those segments of their audience happy.
Just like any desk mat, you can lay it over your desk, giving you a designated place to use your mouse and keyboard. Unlike them, it comes in that green screen color, allowing you to make the entire desk cover disappear when you’re showing it on stream, so viewers can see your mouse-and-keyboard gameplay while blocking as little of the game screen as possible. It’s a clever compromise.
The Elgato Green Screen Mouse Mat is a large desk pad, coming in at 37 x 15.7 x 0.1 inches (width x depth x thickness). That’s enough playing surface to accommodate a full-size keyboard on one side while giving you plenty of room to move your mouse during gameplay, ensuring even gamers who move the mouse with their entire forearms can put it to good use. Of course, the main selling point here is the chroma green finish that allows it to disappear in the frame just like a traditional green screen, allowing you to free up onscreen real estate to show more of the game going on in the background.
Aside from its chroma green color, the mat has a smooth glide surface that allows you to move your mouse with very little friction, so you can swipe, drag, and push it with precision. On the underside, it uses an anti-skid rubber material that keeps the mat in place the whole time you’re playing, so you won’t accidentally move it out of the way by simply pushing too hard on your peripherals. It also comes with stitched edges, by the way, ensuring it doesn’t easily fray and damage, so you can keep it as a regular part of your desktop setup without worrying about wear and tear.
While the Elgato Green Screen Mouse Mat is, obviously, a great accessory for players who show their mouse-and-keyboard gameplay on stream, that’s not the only group of streamers that’s likely to find it useful. As such, the outfit recommends it for any type of content creator who uses a hand cam, as it lets them eliminate the table surface entirely from their camera footage. We’re talking folks who spend their livestreams time poring over game cards, content creators making unboxing videos, arts-and-crafts streamers, tabletop gamers, and people who make tutorials, among a whole host of others. And if one doesn’t give you a big enough surface to hold everything you’re putting in the frame, just add another one next to it and you’re good to go.
The Elgato Green Screen Mouse Mat is available now, priced at $30.