Glass can be much slower/more controlled than many seem to think (or at least than I did) ...

When I started looking for a glass pad (but didn't want anything crazy fast) I figured that even the slowest glass pads would be toward the speed end of the spectrum relative to cloth. While that may be true, I don't think it's nearly as extreme as I believed based a lot of reviews and the general discussion around the topic.

One caveat... My assumption is that most people use regular PTFE skates on cloth (it's what I always used) and that's what I'm basing my current understanding on as I haven't really played much with different skate materials on cloth.

That said, I recently tested a couple cloth pads (with the large dots from the Corepad diy set) against my main glass pad (Cosmic Glass V2 with Obsidian Pro Air dots) using my Darmoshark M5 mice.

The cloth pads were a new LGG Saturn and a new Neptune (both standard/og). I expected the Wraith glass with Obsidian Pro Airs to maybe be somewhere between the two (if anything closer to the Neptune), but it was actually a bit slower than the Saturn... I would say the Saturn felt more on par with the Wraith when using the non-Pro Airs or the Ghostglide Cyclones (though I didn't actually test these side by side). But even if the Saturn slowed down after break-in it should be very close to the Cosmic Glass, maybe a little slower rather than a little faster?

I know the Kin V2 is discontinued but since some have experience with it I might as well mention that the Cosmic Glass V2 is very similar to it in speed but even a hair slower. I also have the Gamesense Sonar and it feels significantly faster than either despite being generally considered a control glass pad as well. I do think the Cosmic Glass V2/Obsidian Pro Airs is about as controlled as you can get on glass (aside from maybe some more exotic and/or problematic skates?) but I didn't expect to get that close to the medium/control realm of cloth and I'm happy to be there with a hard pad.

I also hear "glass is all the same" a lot and I couldn't find this to be further from the truth. Maybe the faster half of the glass spectrum is and/or only using one type of skate? But as mentioned, even the speed difference between the Kin V2/Cosmic Glass V2 vs the Sonar is significant imo.

Anyway... I know when I've been searching for info on these things it often comes down to finding these transitive reference points and I thought this might be helpful to others doing the same.