Gamer Specific Chairs: Are They Worth Buying?

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Okay, we can all agree that a gaming chair may look a little nerdy sitting on the floor in front of the monitor, but the big question is whether or not the chairs actually improve or enhance the overall gaming experience. So what do you think of gaming chairs; too nerdy or too good to be true?

Besides offering an allegedly improved seating position, these chairs often bundle cup holders, speakers and other features designed to enhance your enjoyment.
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I don't know how much the licensing fees would be, but I'd really like to have a Star Trek TNG chair, or perhaps one from a Bird of Prey. Imperial throne chair would also work! :D
 
Ducman69 said:
I don't know how much the licensing fees would be, but I'd really like to have a Star Trek TNG chair, or perhaps one from a Bird of Prey. Imperial throne chair would also work! :D
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+1. It could also have the chair inside your man cave(a shuttle from ST). :eek:

I have also wondered about the chairs, but not fond of sitting that close to the floor.
 
Well, that low end chair is only good for little kids sitting in the living room in front of the TV maybe. They're tiny.

The "mid-range" chairs listed are just gimmicks.

The high end... those are purpose built for racing or flight sims. Those aren't really "gaming chairs".

In my living room I want a damned throne. A comfortable couch or chair that I can slouch in, eye level with the TV. Not some cheap $100 gimmick chair. I have a real sub in the living room, no need for a transducer built into the seat.

For the computer, haven't found anything better than my steelcase leap high back. A quality, "high end" office chair for use at a desk just can't be beat. My choice is personal preference, but there are plenty of options out there for other people that aren't the cheapo garbage chairs from officemax, office depot, staples, etc. that within a couple of years are on the verge of falling apart, or have their cushioning obliterated into a useless layer that you can feel the frame through.
 
I like how all of them look horribly unergonomic.
 
I love to see a forum thread or folder devoted to desks/chairs/furnishings. I'm starting to look for a higher end chair for my desk and would love some ideas. I'm currently using a leather chair from officemax (although it wasn't cheap) and it has lasted quite well over the last 6 years.
 
Worth buying? Depends on the same single feature all chairs are judged on:
Is it comfortable to sit in for long periods?
If these gaming chairs are extremely comfortable, then yes, they're worth buying. If they're not comfortable then they're trash.

I've used good chairs and bad chairs. I spend too much time in a chair to sit in a bad one, those suckers get trashed asap. My current chair looks like it was pulled from the trash, but it's got a dozen adjustments and is uber comfortable...for typing, or gaming or most any active computing task. I just wish it had a headrest for movies though.

There is one exception, I would use an uncomfortable Mech Warrior cockpit chair.
 
i have a playseat, the first thing shown under "high end gaming chairs" and it's as much of a gaming chair as a steak knife is a shovel. it might work dual purpose, sort of, but why do that? it's meant to have ONE type of controller connected to it, for ONE genre of gaming.

and yes, the experience is awesome, and i absolutely love it for iRacing. ive had cookouts and friends over, and inevitably somebody pulls it out and then the whole damn evening centers around the husbands/guys taking turns trying to set lap records. in fact i have a picture of one of my friend's 8 year old girls playing GT6, and she was loving it.

you dont hear people say "oh wow, you have the latest racing game that EVERYBODY has? lets play!" but i do have people want to pull out the race seat and then ask what racing games i have around.

give me something that can do that for FPS or action games, and i'd buy it, too. til then, a "gaming seat" is absurd, and a race seat is not a "gaming seat."
 
High-end office chairs I'm aware of but have not sat in yet:

Herman Miller Aeron: the famous one. Comes in 3 sizes: A for really short people, B for normal people, C for really tall people; B is for 95% of the population, and the size differences are purely height-based, NOT weight, so if you're 5'11 and fat, you should still go for the B version. Was a corporate status symbol before the 2007-8 market crash, so you could (and maybe still can) find bazillions of used ones that hit the market after the crash. Common complaint was the edge of the seat digging into the back of the leg.

Herman Miller Embody: the "holy shit that's expensive" chair. Supposed to be the best... if you can afford it.

Steelcase Leap V2. The high-back version is probably best for gaming. I intend to go try one out next weekend. Seems to be good pricing at madisonseating.com, who sells on amazon too.
 
I found a used herman miller chair at goodwill once. Solid stuff. Definitely a good one to score if you can.
 
Forgot in previous post:

Humanscale Freedom

Lifeform Chairs: costs more than the Embody.

Humanscale Float: with customizations, costs as much or more than the Lifeform
 
Just get a good comfortable office chair and it will probably be both cheaper and more comfortable. Almost everything with the word "gaming" attached to it is a gimmick or overpriced for the average gamer. Pretty much the only exception are gaming mice (where extra buttons and "on the fly" dpi adjustments come in handy)
 
One word: Aeron

Nothing else matters. The best ~$650 you will ever spend on anything ever.
 
evilsofa said:
High-end office chairs I'm aware of but have not sat in yet:

Herman Miller Aeron: the famous one. Comes in 3 sizes: A for really short people, B for normal people, C for really tall people; B is for 95% of the population, and the size differences are purely height-based, NOT weight, so if you're 5'11 and fat, you should still go for the B version. Was a corporate status symbol before the 2007-8 market crash, so you could (and maybe still can) find bazillions of used ones that hit the market after the crash. Common complaint was the edge of the seat digging into the back of the leg.

Herman Miller Embody: the "holy shit that's expensive" chair. Supposed to be the best... if you can afford it.

Steelcase Leap V2. The high-back version is probably best for gaming. I intend to go try one out next weekend. Seems to be good pricing at madisonseating.com, who sells on amazon too.
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I would highly suggest actually sitting in the chairs before just dropping a few hundred dollars on one.

You're right about the aeron though. I'm in the SF bay area, and there are furniture liquidators with tons of the things. One place I went to when looking for a new chair, had an entire warehouse of nothing but aeron chairs. It was a weird experience seeing such a massive room with a sea of hundreds of the same model of chair.

The last place I went to, I spent about an hour just sitting in chairs, finding every goofy angle imaginable I might want to sit at my desk at home, found a desk in the showroom that was roughly the same height as mine, dragged chairs back and forth, till I found the one I liked. Pretty much everything from Herman Miller, Humanscale, Steelcase, etc. for 50 cents on the dollar or better, not everything was in great shape but a lot of it was pretty much like new. I think I paid around $250 for mine, great condition, just threw it in the car and took it home so no shipping to deal with.
 
There have been some interesting ideas for gaming chairs, but I really hate that most of the ones out there are too low to the ground. I think they were mostly designed with a playroom in mind rather than a living room.

simko1ra said:
I love to see a forum thread or folder devoted to desks/chairs/furnishings. I'm starting to look for a higher end chair for my desk and would love some ideas. I'm currently using a leather chair from officemax (although it wasn't cheap) and it has lasted quite well over the last 6 years.
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Really depends on your budget. Personally I splurged on a BodyBilt customized chair and I think its incredible. Their customer service was great, the service rep kept in touch, gave me a ton of pointers on how to set up the chair, take care of it, help improve my sitting comfort according to my tendencies, etc. They design and build the chair according to your dimensions. I have had the chair for about 8+ months now and love it. Best chair i have owned by far.

Also they try to sell the chair that is right for you, not necessarily the most expensive one. For me, I got that top model because I spend a ton of time in my chair, especially when teleworking and had both neck and back issues.
 
Ducman69 said:
I don't know how much the licensing fees would be, but I'd really like to have a Star Trek TNG chair, or perhaps one from a Bird of Prey. Imperial throne chair would also work! :D
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I've always wanted a A Star Trek TNG captains chair.
 
evilsofa said:
Steelcase Leap V2. The high-back version is probably best for gaming. I intend to go try one out next weekend. Seems to be good pricing at madisonseating.com, who sells on amazon too.
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Yikes, $900.....

I need a good office chair. My butt is parked in one for 12+ hours a day, and these $150 ones from Staples are not getting it done. The ass cushion is always first to go and I have to bust out a pillow... then maybe another pillow for lumbar. The chair I have now is 6 months old tops and it looks brand new, but without the pillows is as comfortable as a park bench.

But I just couldn't spend $900.... no way I could justify that unless I won the lottery.
 
Burticus said:
Yikes, $900.....

I need a good office chair. My butt is parked in one for 12+ hours a day, and these $150 ones from Staples are not getting it done. The ass cushion is always first to go and I have to bust out a pillow... then maybe another pillow for lumbar. The chair I have now is 6 months old tops and it looks brand new, but without the pillows is as comfortable as a park bench.

But I just couldn't spend $900.... no way I could justify that unless I won the lottery.
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Which is why you don't spend $900.

If you're in an area with a lot of businesses, there are office furniture liquidators you can buy them from used, dirt cheap, in excellent condition.

Some dotcom finally goes under, the 150 chairs scattered about the various conference rooms along with the desks, tables, chairs, etc. get sold to companies who clean them up if necessary and sell them off to the next random company looking to buy batches of chairs. Of course such places will also sell furniture individually.
 
When I was a kid we had Atari 2600 joysticks and bean bags.
Then as I got older, NES controllers and bean bags.
Now, its a La-Z-Boy and a Xbox 360 controller when I play on a console, but mostly its a heated leather office chair with vibrating massager in front of my Win7 PC.
 
I just went on a little tour of trying out several of the high-end chairs I mentioned earlier. I've used the $200 or so Costco chairs over the last 5 or 10 years, and they just fall apart after 3 or 4 years and aren't that great. I've been trying out dozens of the low-end chairs at Staples, HomeDepot, and Ikea, and didn't really like any of them.

A place very local to me had a showroom with the HumanScale Freedom and a bunch of Lifeform chairs. I spent over an hour waffling on deciding which one was better, and left not really convinced that I wanted them, though they are very definitely better than the low-end junk in the big box stores.

Another place that took me all afternoon to get to had the Steelcase Leap V2 in its showroom. Two seconds after I sat in it, I bought it. Awww, yeah, that's what I was looking for, and for much less than the Freedom or Lifeform chairs.

I can't emphasize enough that if you're spending that much for a chair, you need to go and sit in them to find out what's right for you; someone else may have the same reaction to the Freedom or Lifeform over the Leap.

If you can't imagine why you'd spend so much on a high-end chair, you need to go and sit in one. If you're spending half your life in one, I can't imagine why you would spend less.
 
Megalith said:
I like how all of them look horribly unergonomic.
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Problem with marketing crap, make the chair look like race seats which are designed to hold people in abnormal G environment. As opposed to actually making chairs that gamers would use that work with them hunched forward or slouching down
 
evilsofa said:
I just went on a little tour of trying out several of the high-end chairs I mentioned earlier. I've used the $200 or so Costco chairs over the last 5 or 10 years, and they just fall apart after 3 or 4 years and aren't that great. I've been trying out dozens of the low-end chairs at Staples, HomeDepot, and Ikea, and didn't really like any of them.

A place very local to me had a showroom with the HumanScale Freedom and a bunch of Lifeform chairs. I spent over an hour waffling on deciding which one was better, and left not really convinced that I wanted them, though they are very definitely better than the low-end junk in the big box stores.

Another place that took me all afternoon to get to had the Steelcase Leap V2 in its showroom. Two seconds after I sat in it, I bought it. Awww, yeah, that's what I was looking for, and for much less than the Freedom or Lifeform chairs.

I can't emphasize enough that if you're spending that much for a chair, you need to go and sit in them to find out what's right for you; someone else may have the same reaction to the Freedom or Lifeform over the Leap.

If you can't imagine why you'd spend so much on a high-end chair, you need to go and sit in one. If you're spending half your life in one, I can't imagine why you would spend less.
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100% agree - I spent a couple years looking for a chair and actually went to showrooms for Steelcase and others. I bought two leaps - one for home and one for work.
 
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Of the ones listed in that article? No all of those are trash low end products targeted at idiots. There are however gamer specific chars that are vastly superior in quality to anything on the market under $1000. None of them are really designed for the living room floor though as they are all PC or rather PC style setups oriented in their design. Also none of them have speakers and other stupid shit built into them. Maxnomic and DX racer are a couple that spring to mind as good chairs, but they are going to set you back $300-$500.
 
Get a Steelcase Leap V2 and be done with it, they can be had for ~$300 if you look around a bit.
 
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