Old semi-rigid mousepad - do we still have something like this on the market?
I was sorting some old stuff, and this mousepad from around 20 years ago came out of one of the boxes. I had pretty much forgotten about this kind of pads, which were quite widespread between the late 1990s and early 2000s: standard foam bottom, some kind of semi-floppy plastic on top, usually with a picture (I haven't found it yet, but I remember also having one with the famous Bruce McCandless photo on it). Cheap as they come - IIRC the one in the pictures was something like 4.99. Back then, they weren't great because many optical mice had tracking issues on them, they only really worked well with the old ball-driven mice.
So I gave this one a try with a modern mouse, and I was in for a surprise - it's better than most modern stuff I tried. It grips the desk well enough, the mouse glides on it well, in a sort of "sweet spot" way (smooth enough to not stick, but offering a little resistance that makes fine control easier) and it can be cleaned in seconds with a wet sponge. I guess the trick is the fact the top plastic has some level of "roughness" to it, as visible from the close-up picture above.
In the end it has mouse glide characteristics that are close to that of a cloth pad, but without the downside of soaking up every dust particle in the universe.
Does something like this exist nowadays in "desk mat" form? How would it even be called? "Cheapo 2005 style desk mat"?