HYTE CNVS Review: An Incredibly Bright And Excessive $99 Mousepad

Mousepads have come a long way and it’s now possible to splash more than $100 on a surface to slide your mouse over. No longer is the mousepad used solely for the pointer. You can now buy larger surfaces that stretch the length of a desk, allowing the keyboard, headset, and even monitor to sit atop the mousepad. Today, I’m sharing my thoughts on the HYTE CNVS (“canvas”), a colossal $99 feature-rich mousepad with flexible RGB lighting, USB passthrough, and full integration with HYTE’s Nexus software.

Is it a little too much? If you have the cash to spare on a mousepad, the HYTE CNVS is one of the better options. The coloring is tastefully done, the surface is excellent for gliding across in heated sessions, and the USB passthrough is at least useful.

About this review: HYTE shipped Flash Tech News a sample for this review but had no input to its contents.

Price, specs, and availability

The HYTE CNVS costs $100, a hefty price tag for any PC accessory, let alone a mousepad. You can find basic mousepads for $5 so does the flexible RGB lighting and expansive surface warrant the additional $95? That depends on how much spare cash you have and how you want to arrange your desk. If you don’t have enough RGB lighting from your mouse, keyboard, display, headphones, and PC case, the HYTE CNVS can add even more color to your surroundings.

The mousepad requires a single USB-C cable to be connected, though you’ll need to connect this thing to a desktop PC port that can provide enough power. HYTE includes a USB-C to dual USB-A link if you have no spare USB-C 3.2 ports. No passthrough is available, which is a shame as this could have made the mousepad slightly more useful, especially given there’s already a small plastic hub in the top-left corner housing the circuitry. Made of polyester, this premium mousepad was created as a labor of love.

What I like

The HYTE CNVS is packaged in a cardboard box, rolled up, and secured with two thin paper wraps. There’s a cardboard tube inside the mousepad to make sure it doesn’t deform during transit. A small box contains a USB-C to USB-C cable and a USB-C to two USB-A splitter. That’s all there is to the HYTE CNVS. Being a mousepad, it doesn’t require much in the form of accessories. I recommend using a USB-C port on your motherboard providing enough power through a single port.

Rolling out the mousepad confirms the dimensions. This is one huge surface, measuring 900 x 370 x 5 mm, and weighs 1.75 kg. The small hub in the top-left corner has a USB-C port and handles all the RGB lighting. A diffuser strip protrudes from the side of the mousepad and wraps around its entirety. The surface is smooth, and the HYTE CNVS’s bottom is rubberized to prevent it from moving. With a keyboard, mouse, monitor, and headset stand placed on top of the mousepad, this thing isn’t going anywhere.

Connecting the USB-C port to your PC and turning on the lighting effects is where this mousepad comes alive. By default, a rainbow effect will play. It looks impressive, especially in low-light environments with other RGB-enabled components. HYTE sells other parts with RGB effects, including fans and a keyboard so you can create a HYTE ecosystem with its Nexus software package to control everything. Using the Keychron M3 Mini 4K Metal Edition, the mouse effortlessly glides across the HYTE CNVS, and every movement, no matter how small, is picked up by the sensor.

The polyester material is comfortable for longer periods too, even without a keyboard palm rest.

What I don’t like

Don’t have HYTE’s Nexus installed? You’re out of luck if you want to control the lighting effects. This isn’t a major issue and is a problem shared by other manufacturers who forget to put any form of physical controls on such a product, but there’s no support for Linux. It’s the same story as other software whereby the lack of demand doesn’t warrant the development hours, but it would have been good to see HYTE do things differently and go cross-platform. I’ll keep asking for this to happen until they cease responding.

Then there’s the lack of any USB passthrough, which is a shame as there’s already a hub containing everything to make the RGB lighting work. Adding a single USB-A or USB-C port would be nice for hooking up a keyboard, mouse, or 2.4GHz receiver dongle, freeing up a port on the motherboard. This is a small complaint I don’t factor in as not many mousepads come with USB passthrough.

Should you buy the HYTE CNVS?

You should buy the HYTE CNVS if:

• You have $100 to spend on a mousepad.
• You want fancy lighting effects almost everywhere on the desk.
• You’re serious about PC gaming and want a superb mouse surface.

You shouldn’t buy the HYTE CNVS if:

• You don’t feel comfortable spending so much on a mousepad.
• You don’t particularly care for the type of mouse surface used.
• You don’t want any more RGB lighting.

The HYTE CNVS is a difficult product to recommend to everyone. $100 is too much to ask for a mousepad but it’s also impressive what HYTE managed to create with its first attempt. The CNVS gets a lot right, including flexible, bright, and colorful RGB lighting. USB passthrough would have been a nice touch that can help minimize cabling between your mouse and keyboard and the rear of your desktop PC tower. Software support is good though you’re out of luck running anything but Windows.

Using the HYTE CNVS is wonderful, particularly in games with a decent mouse. Trying out the Keychron M3 Mini 4K Metal Edition with its highly accurate sensor tested the CNVS and it performed excellently. Moving from an already premium mousepad, you likely won’t notice much difference as they all share similar materials. Upgrading from a basic $5 mousepad will be night and day. It’s expansive, allowing you to put more than just the keyboard and mouse on the mousepad, and will let your mouse perform at its best.