The mouse pad itself is extremely stiff and highly durable. I would imagine the $12 investement will provide hours and years of utter gaming ecstasy, there's no guarantee for more frags...if you suck.....you suck. I mean there's only so much a mouse pad can really do! I've also really been able to appreciate the accuracy and smooth tracking in photo editing applications where accuracy is important. I can imagine CAD users would be able to benefit from this design as well as the gamers.