If you’re a gamer but have never gone so far as competing professionally or spending hours Twitch Streaming, you may not realize there are peripherals out there that you’ve never heard of. One such peripheral is the gaming sleeve.
Using a mouse with your bare arm rubbing against the mouse pad tends to have some drawbacks that can make your mouse movements less accurate, less smooth, and less consistent. It can even shorten the life of your mouse pad.
Gaming arm sleeves actually have some excellent answers to these problems.
But are they really worth investing in?
Table of Contents
Is A Gaming Sleeve Worth It?
If you live in a hot climate, are a low to medium sensitivity player, and looking for new ways to improve your aim and mouse movements, a gaming arm sleeve may be worth it for you. A gaming sleeve will reduce friction at your forearm and this will allow you to perform smoother, more consistent flicks and sweeping movements.
If you are a very high-sensitivity player, a gaming sleeve is probably the last thing you need as it will speed up your mouse movements too much.
An arm sleeve also provides some external compression which can ease discomfort and increase blood flow, breathing a little more life into your arm.
However, the primary marketing point behind the gaming sleeve is a reduction of friction. The friction that comes from rubbing your forearm, wrist, and hand against the desk and mousepad. A secondary benefit is that it keeps your desk surface, including your mouse pad, free of dirt and sweat.
If you have a favorite gamer that runs a twitch stream, you probably think about their life only in terms of sitting at a desk behind a high-end computer setup and that’s about it. But maybe that gamer has some physical activities they do every day or maybe they have a regular job.
The point is, the gamers we watch do other things, like sweat (some of us live in Florida, after all), and get dirty.
You probably don’t realize how much of that dirt and sweat gets transferred to your mousepad and desk. A gaming sleeve minimizes that to a large degree.
One thing to note, though, Is that a gaming sleeve can make your hand sweat more than it ordinarily would. But that’s still better than having your whole forearm stuck to your mousepad from sweat.
What are Gaming Sleeves Made Of?
Gaming sleeves are usually made with a mixture of about 85% nylon and 15% spandex net. This combination of materials draws sweat away from your arm, provides a better level of friction, and makes gaming sleeves lightweight and breathable.
But not all gaming arm sleeves are made out of the same material. Various manufacturers are constantly competing with one another. That means there are bound to be slight tweaks in the different materials that go into gaming sleeve manufacturing.
- Polyester
- Spandex
- Nylon
- Cotton
- Poly-Spandex
- Knitting fabric
- Wool
Some of these materials dictate price and some of the materials dictate useability. For instance, you may love the feel and compression of polyester but polyester is not very breathable, so you will sweat to a degree inside of the sleeve.
Then along comes poly-spandex, which is simply a combination of polyester and spandex to give your more breathability while retaining the feel and compressed stretchiness of the regular polyester.
Breathable cotton is another good choice but it does tend to get itchy for some. Wool might just astonish you. Wool is not the sweaty mess that people think it is and it’s not something that you wear only when it’s cold enough outside to freeze the nose off your face.
Wool is really good at wicking away sweat. There are several sock lines that are outstanding for hikers, most notably the Darn Tough Wool Socks. Some gaming peripheral businesses have adopted that strategy as well.
Knitting fabric and nylon are popular materials as well. Some of the materials on the above list are not just helpful in reducing friction against the desk and mousepad. Due to their compression designs, they also help with inflamed joints or sore muscles.
Depending on the material of the gaming sleeve you get and the surface you’re using it on, you might not like how the movement feels.
Before writing off that particular sleeve, it’s always worth turning it inside out to see if you get better results.
Which Arm Sleeve Fabric Is Best For Gaming?
The best gaming sleeve fabric for you to use will depend on your setup and personal preference. Different sleeve materials will interact differently with the material of your mousepad and desk.
For example, the Nike Pro Dri-Fit Sleeve – which isn’t even a gaming sleeve – is made from a smooth material that provides a little more friction giving you more control over your movements compared with some of the eSports-type sleeves.
Sleeves like the Prosicion Gaming Arm Sleeve (which are made from nylon) can make your mouse movements feel fast. They can work well for games like Overwatch and Apex Legends where larger arm movements where you pivot from the elbow are more common.
However, if you’re a beginner, you might struggle to find a suitable sleeve for tactical shooters like CSGO that require faster, more precise swipes.
Consider The Thread Count And Weave Of Your Gaming Sleeve
Apart from fabric, you also need to keep an eye on thread count. Sleeves with a higher thread count tend to glide better and be of higher quality.
You also need to consider the direction of the weave on your arm sleeve and the direction of the weave on your mouse pad. If the weave of your mousepad and sleeve are going in opposite directions, your sleeve will not glide over the mousepad. It will stick to it.
Try to make sure that the gaming sleeve will at least glide smoothly from side to side.
What Is The Point Of A Gaming Arm Sleeve?
There are four main points to a gaming arm sleeve and we’ll walk you through them from the most important to the least important.
Reduced Friction and Drag
If you sit at home playing tactical RPGs and things like Minesweeper all the time, you may not see the point in friction reduction. But, when it comes to competitive gaming, friction can get pretty irritating.
Gaming compression sleeves are designed to reduce that friction, making the surface of your mousepad and desk slick. That’s enormously beneficial when you are a precision, competitive gamer and you really need that competitive edge.
When the fastest way from point A to point B is a straight line, companies make it their business to develop something that gets you across that straight line faster.
Better Consistency
If you are gaming without a sleeve, there are a number of variables that can change. A warmer temperature can cause your arm to sweat and to start sticking to your mouse pad and the different fabrics of your shirts and jackets will provide different levels of friction between your arm and the mouse pad.
When you wear a gaming sleeve and use the same mouse and mouse pad, you are always dealing with the same amount of friction and that allows you to build better muscle memory and be more consistent with your mouse movements.
To Prolong The Life Of Your Mouse Pad
Regularly wearing a sleeve can seriously increase the lifespan of your mouse pad by stopping the dirt and oil from your skin from being constantly ground into your pad’s surface.
Reduce Dirt and Sweat Build-Up
If you don’t spend a lot of time cleaning your desk surface, turn on a bright light and grab a magnifying glass one day. What you see may blow your mind. Hands are filthy things, which is why doctors are always trying to tell us to wash our hands and stop picking our noses.
Gaming sleeves help keep all that filth transference inside your sleeve, reducing friction even more. Now, all you have to do is wash your sleeve routinely and you’re good to go.
Joint and Muscle Support
It’s not an arm brace or anything but a compression sleeve naturally helps when you have sore joints or sore muscles. Perhaps you had a rough workout before your gaming session or you spent way too long on that last game and your elbow is complaining loudly. A compression sleeve will help with that.
Placebo Effect
While all of the above is certainly helpful, is it going to rock you to the top of the competitive gaming world all on its own? Probably not. It will certainly help. However, if your thought process on the gaming sleeve is an overwhelmingly positive one, that may help more than what the sleeve itself is actually doing.
Related Article: Are One-Handed Keyboards Good For Gaming? (Answered!)
The Pros And Cons Of Gaming Sleeves?
There are several pros when it comes to gaming sleeves but, as with everything else, there are also some cons. The reality is, that gaming sleeves are very much one and the same as sports sleeves and there are a lot of good reasons for athletes, especially at the professional level, to wear compression sleeves.
| Pros | Cons |
| >Reduce friction on the desk and mousepad >Reduces dirt, oil, and sweat transfer from your hand and arm to the desk >Keep your elbow and wrist warm, improving blood flow >Helps relieve sore or inflamed joints and muscles | >Doesn’t improve your health if you spend too much time gaming >Some materials may make your skin itchy |
Although you may have some of the materials that gaming sleeves are made out of in your regular wardrobe, you may not be used to wearing it compressed on the length of your arm. Some people might find that a variety of materials compression sleeves are made out of making you itchy.
There’s also the problem with spending too much time staring at a screen each day. While a gaming compression sleeve will certainly improve your joint movement on one arm, it’s not going to make staring at a screen all day healthier for you. Be sure to get up and exercise every now and then. It won’t kill you.
Who Should Buy A Gaming Sleeve?
Competitive gamers, either at a professional, amateur, or even a friendly level, should consider buying a gaming sleeve. Speed and precision are important after all, especially in the kinds of games that require rapid execution of commands with excellent hand-eye coordination.
If you’re a casual gamer and don’t do much outside of playing some online Carcassonne or Solitaire, you really don’t need a gaming sleeve. It would be like an 80-year-old man purchasing a Ferrari to park at his retirement home. It just doesn’t make much sense.
Of course, if you would like a tiny edge over the competition or to make your mousepad last longer, wearing a game sleeve will certainly do that. So, if you prefer a clean environment on the surface of your desk, even if you don’t play anything too crazy, you might consider a gaming sleeve.
Do Pros Use Gaming Sleeves?
Pros invariably use gaming sleeves and they do so for all of the above-listed reasons. Despite the fact that the placebo effect is very real, the other advantages that we listed are real as well.
Professional gamers have an intense competitive mindset and they will seek out just about anything if they think that it will give them even the slightest edge. Since gaming sleeves do offer some advantages, it only makes sense that they’ve been widely embraced at the professional level.
Gaming sleeves have become notable enough that some of the major news organizations have begun to pick up on them, most notably the Washington Post back in September of 2021. Performance wear is the new fad in professional gaming and the entire article was focused on wearables that are coming to eSports.
What Gaming Sleeves are the Most Popular Among Gamers?
It would be difficult to nail down the exact brands that are the most popular among gamers unless they directly reference them in a Twitch Stream, other gaming streams, or in professional interviews.
From the information that we can glean from what gamers say and what we see them wearing in their various streams, there are a few popular brands out there that stand out from the rest.
The Prosicion Gaming Arm Sleeve is one of the best-reviewed gaming sleeves out there. At a measly $10.95, you don’t have to break the bank for a small, competitive edge. It’s really good at stopping the “stick” and making the surface of your desk super-slick.
B-Driven Sports Athletic Compression Arm Sleeves are another good choice for gamers. Not only do they keep your surface area slick, but they also come with 10-15mm HG compression which is supposed to improve blood flow, provide plenty of support, and reduce pain in your joints.
