I wasn't sure about Razer's new charging mousemat, until I tried it

It's fair to say that Razer has never been a gaming brand that's afraid of pricing things in a premium way – you only have to glance at its uber-desirable Blade laptops to underline that point. So when it debuted a mouse mat that could charge your gaming mouse while you used it, the Hyperflux back in 2018, it wasn't a surprise that it was expensive.

Ever since then I've assumed it was a bit of a party trick that no one actually needed, but now that Razer is bringing out a new version at last, I've been won over pretty quickly. I've been using the Hyperflux V2 for a week, and it's taken only that long for me to see how you could get used to this tech.

Hyperflux V2 works simply, from the user's point of view. It's a large square mouse mat that you plug into your PC, and it comes with a small charging puck that you can swap into compatible Razer mouse options: the Basilisk Pro, Basilisk Pro 35K, Cobra Pro and Naga Pro.

Once you do that, you'll have a mouse that automatically pairs to your PC over 2.4GHz wireless, removing the need for another dongle. The mousemat, meanwhile, will keep your mouse charged at an optimum capacity (meaning not 100%, since that would degrade the battery) at all times – so you can literally forget about ever having to recharge it again.

The mousemat has an indicator light at the top of it to let you know your mouse's charge status, and is available as of today in a hard-surface option, with a soft-cloth finish coming in August.

Auto-pairing is the main improvement over the last generation of Hyperflux, although Razer will doubtless aim to make it more widely compatible with its wireless mouse releases moving forward, too. It's an interesting product to use, since you don't actually notice the benefit all that often – it's more of a background bonus in the form of one chore being removed from your list.

That said, the pad is priced at $119.99, which absolutely dwarfs almost any traditional mousemat, even a jumbo-sized one, so there's no pretending that this is a mainstream option. If you have the cash and fancy being able to ignore your mouse battery forever, though, it's a cinch.