How to Clean a Glass Mousepad
Unlike traditional cloth mousepads glass pads (SkyPad 3.0, Pulsar Superglide, Razer Atlas, Padsmith: The Empress, Cerapad Kin) have an insane advantage when it comes to durability and resistance to wear and tear.
Even the most resistant of cloth pads like the MPC 450 wear slowly, whereas a glass surface does not care much about how many times you swipe on it, and if you spill ketchup on it while snacking at your PC.
In case accidents do happen cleaning glass mousepads is extremely simple compared to a conventional mousepad and represents one of the biggest strengths of such a product.
Cleaning a Glass Mousepad: Easy Mode
Cleaning a glass mousepad depends on what exactly happened to the surface and how deep you want to go with it.
The very first basic step is cleaning by using a microfiber cloth. This is useful if you have some crumbs on the glass surface, or maybe you spilled some water by accident. As long as the drink is not sugary you can just take the cloth and wipe the water off instantly without having to wait for it to dry or being scared of damaging the surface.
Cleaning a Glass Mousepad: A Quick Wash
The second stage of cleaning a glass mousepad is when you can see residue sweat and other skid marks on your glass mousepad. You shouldn’t see those too often since most of the time you would be playing with a sleeve on, but on the occasions you do, a simple swipe from a microfiber cloth won’t suffice.
In this case, you need to go to your sink, pour some dishwasher soap on the surface and give it a scrub with the sponge. Dish soap dissolves grease easily so once you are done, wipe your glass mousepad and you should be fine.
It is important to mention that if your glass surface is coated you should investigate what kind of soap you can use since harsh solvents can damage the coating. Most glass mouse pads currently do not have coatings, except the Razer Atlas, but the coating on the Atlas is as hard as tempered glass on the Mohs Hardness Scale meaning you should be fine still.
Cleaning a Glass Mousepad: A Deeper Clean
One type of residue that is harder to remove from the surface of a glass mousepad is leftover PTFE from your mouse skates. Water and dish soap will not be enough for these tasks so here is where you bust out the big guns. I have used window cleaners or any other household cleaners on my SkyPad and it worked well in removing any PTFE residue or grease that was on the surface.
I have even used hand sanitizer (70% alc) and that worked perfectly fine for removing any sort of PTFE on the surface. Once again, using harsh solvents is fine on uncoated glass mousepads (since it’s just glass) but will damage coated surfaces by melting it away.
TL;DR
One of the biggest advantages of glass mousepads is their durability and ease of maintenance. You can use a microfiber cloth to wipe it, wash it in the sink with dish soap, or use household cleaners (window cleaner, hand sanitizer) to get rid of leftover residue from the surface.
for me 25% concentrated Vinegar works best.
I have hard tap water so if I wipe the pad with dish soap and water it feels like having tiny sand grains under the mouse skates. And it’s the same thing with my window cleaner. That apparently leaves some residue on the pad, too. After cleaning the pad with vinegar it feels noticably smmother.
I’m having the same problem where cleaning with a window cleaner(ammonia) would leave residue and make the glide feel muddy