I have two other friends that feel the same way.
I'm one of the friends, and I do feel the same way. :-)
I have two cloth mats, and I love them. Two of my dogfight-gamer friends liked mine so much, we placed a group order for a bunch more, so now we have about a half dozen of these things floating around the area.
The cloth Deep Cut uses is a heavy synthetic fabric, which is really durable, non-absorbant, highly stain resistant, extremely wrinkle-resistant, smooth and snagless. It's heavy enough to hide minor table irregularities underneath, not quite heavy enough to hide big ones (like felt does), probably not flexible enough to drape over hills without making wrinles (but I honestly haven't tried). The material is supposed to be colorfast and launder-able, but I haven't had to try yet. My mats are HUGE (roughly 7'7" x 11'6") and very hard to store, so I roll them up around a flexible tube of PVC insulation, then bend them in half to store and transport them. No problems with wrinkles or creases yet, in 4 months of use.
In the stock sizes they offer (up to 6'x4' I think) they have other materials available (PVC and "mousepad mat"); I haven't seen any in person yet, so can't comment. In photos, one of the materials looks shiny (probably the PVC…?), which I would like for water and dislike for open countryside.
The background images are amazing, vibrant and bright and very clear. There is one downside: the background images can be so busy and bright and clear that they overwhelm the miniatures. One of our local dogfight gamers bought the Aerial Fields mat and discovered that his accurately painted 1/144 scale planes are very difficult to see in photos because the cammo works.
FWIW, the Deep Cut site says they can make adjustments to the image, so you can probably get them to fade or tone down an image if it's too "loud".
I placed two custom orders for very odd sizes with precisely specified hex grids; I found the process of working out all the details very easy. They were very communicative, sent me preview images of each design change, and didn't proceed with anything without explanation or approval. I was extremely happy with the process.
If I have any complaints, it's that Deep Cut Studio doesn't have a desert background image I want to use. I need the desert as seen from 5k-10k feet in the air; their stock images are all at "directly underfoot" resolution. <sigh> Someday I'll figure out how to acquire an aerial desert image I can upload, and then I'll have 3 Deep Cut mats.
My dilemma is the cost of getting them to the US
They charged me
€15.00 EUR, about the same as shipping large items within the US. Shipping time was roughly a week.
- Ix