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Seeking the best gaming chair? We have tested hundreds of chairs, and in this update, we bought 6 top models for side-by-side tests. A gaming chair is the perfect investment if you want to take your game-playing comfort and performance to the next level. Having a comfortable and supportive chair can make a critical difference for both short rounds of first-person shooters and multi-hour campaigns. We researched the most promising models available today, then bought and tested them in a comprehensive set of side-by-side tests.
The world of gaming is becoming increasingly more complex with a growing number of gaming mouse pads, gaming mice, and the best gaming headsets, alongside many other gaming products. Our review will provide expert advice, so you can select a chair that best matches your gaming needs and general gaming setup. For those in the market for a different type of chair, whether for your yard or your office, check out our best chair review.
Editor's Note: We updated our gaming chairs review on December 7, 2023, with alternative product options to make it easier for you to assess worthwhile choices in each award subcategory.
Adjustable Armrest: 4 Way | Adjustable Lumbar: Yes
REASONS TO BUY
Super comfortable
4D armrests
Replaceable armrest toppers
Magnetic pillow
REASONS TO AVOID
Limited tension adjustment
Lumbar is difficult to get just right
The SecretLabs Titan Evo 2022 gaming chair is a top-tier product for its comfort and adjustability. It features a reclining function with a massive range of tilting and locking, allowing you to find the perfect position for gaming or even taking a quick nap. The added memory foam padding in the seat and backrest further enhances the overall comfort, making it a joy to sit in for extended periods. However, it is on the rather firm end of the padding spectrum and would benefit from a greater break-in period.
Standout features of the The SecretLabs Titan Evo 2022 are adjustable lumbar and neck pillows that adjust to your preferences, as well as completely adjustable armrests that can be customized to suit your preferred height, width, angle, and inward or outward rotation. This flexibility ensures optimal ergonomics and prevents strain on your wrists and shoulders for either pc games or console games. Overall, the SecretLabs Titan Evo 2022 gaming chair is a top-tier choice for gamers who prioritize comfort, durability, and style. Its robust construction and thoughtful design offer an exceptional gaming experience that will keep you comfortable and supported for many hours of gameplay. Another fully adjustable, high-comfort option is the Iskur by Razer. Its bucket race design is a bit more stylized than classic options, but it also proves a powerfully comfortable seat for any gaming command center, and it sells at a significantly lower price.
Adjustable Armrest: 4 Way | Adjustable Lumbar: Yes
REASONS TO BUY
Comfortable
Fully adjustable armrests
Headrest pillow
REASONS TO AVOID
Restrictive seat bolsters
Limited headrest adjustability
The Razer Iskur gaming chair is a standout option for gamers seeking a premium and immersive gaming experience. Its ergonomic design is engineered to provide exceptional comfort and support and delivers. The chair features high-density foam cushioning, and its aggressive bucket racing seat design conforms to your body shape, ensuring optimal comfort during short or long gaming sessions. The lumbar support system is one of the most extreme of the products we tested, offering an adjustable curved support panel that targets the lower back, providing excellent support, reducing strain, and is sure to keep you comfortable so that you can focus on gaming and not your chair.
The Razer Iskur also incorporates fully adjustable armrests customized to your desired height, width, angle, and rotation, ensuring perfect ergonomics for your arms whether gaming at a desk or a console. Its extreme recline makes taking brief power naps between gaming sessions easy. Our team found the Razer Iskur to be an all-around exceptional gaming chair that combines ergonomics and an aggressive and stylish design. It is a great solution for gamers who value the comfort of a bucket-style seat and is worth serious consideration, as it may suit some gamers even better than our overall top pick by SecretLabs, the Titan Evo 2022. Both chairs deliver superior comfort with impressive support as well as comprehensive adjustability. So where budget is no obstacle, it will really come down to personal preference and individualized fit.
Adjustable Armrest: 2 Way | Adjustable Lumbar: Raise & Lower
REASONS TO BUY
Affordable
Built-in speakers
Leg rest
REASONS TO AVOID
Flimsy tilt when leaning back
Not great for taller gamers
The GTRacing Music Series gaming chair is a fantastic option for gamers looking for a budget-friendly chair without compromising comfort and features. With its ergonomic design and sturdy construction, this chair offers a comfortable seating experience for extended gaming sessions. However, our test team collectively agreed that it was suitable for up to 5 hours, a few less than the most premium chairs in our lineup. The chair features thick padding on the seat and backrest, providing ample support and cushioning. The adjustable lumbar pillow and headrest pillow are a great addition, allowing you to customize the support based on your preferences, and it uses PU leather and breathable mesh, which enhances breathability, which is especially beneficial during longer gaming sessions.
The GTRacing Music Series also offers a range of features to enhance your gaming experience, like a reclining function that allows you to tilt back and lock the chair at different angles, providing options for relaxation or finding the perfect position for gaming, although some might find the tension knob lacks adequate tension overall. Armrests are adjustable and raise or lower to suit your preferred height, but this budget-friendly model lacks the full adjustability that most premium models offer. Built-in Bluetooth speakers in the headrest help deliver a more immersive experience and are convenient for those who don't feel like wearing a headset. Overall, the GTRacing Music Series gaming chair offers excellent value for its price, combining comfort, a good range of adjustability, and built-in speakers to create an enjoyable and affordable gaming chair option. An even lower cost option that is also worth taking a look at is the GT800A Footrest from GTPlayer. It offers a similar degree of comfort, plus a lumbar massager to help keep you comfortable and on track during gameplay.
The GTRacing Music Series gaming chair features built-in Bluetooth speakers in the headrest to help deliver a more immersive experience for those who prefer not to wear a headset
For about the same price as most modest office chairs, the GTPlayer GT800A Footrest offers comfort, adjustability, and a footrest to gamers operating on the tightest budget. This model provides the base features of a good gaming chair, including adjustable lumbar and neck pillows, a footrest, and a very aggressive reclining angle for quick cat naps between gaming sessions.
In addition to the features mentioned above, the lumbar of the GTPlayer GT800A Footrest includes a massaging feature, which is no replacement for a masseuse and generates some unwanted noise but is functional. The armrest design is interesting and moves at two pivot points, which auto-adjusts with the chair's reclining but lacks other adjustments. Lastly, our larger and heavier team members felt the tensioning knob was too weak to provide adequate tension, and the entire team rated the chair to a maximum of 5 hours before needing a serious break from being seated. Shortcomings aside, our team thought highly of this model and would recommend it as a replacement for an office chair for gaming or gamers who may be tight on cash. A second budget-friendly option that offers a comparable degree of comfort and even a step up in adjustability, not to mention built-in headrest speakers and adjustable armrests, is GTRacing's Music Series.
The Modway Articulate Ergonomic Mesh isn't as exceptional as the top gaming chairs. Still, it costs hundreds of dollars less than those models, and was well received by our test team for its respectable adjustability and good comfort all-around.
It also does not recline as much as the premium gaming chairs we tested, and it lacks the same level of adjustability and features, like a more robust lumbar or aggressive bucket racing seat design. However, its mesh design will keep you cool when your gaming rig is running hot or you are cooking your processor to crank through large spreadsheets or rendering a final cut. Overall, the Modway Articulate Ergonomic Mesh is a good option for those who want a chair that is comfortable enough for gaming but will primarily be used for work. If you are exclusively hunting for a gaming chair but you're still on a budget, take a look at either the GT800A Footrest or the Music Series for nice entry-level options with decent comfort ratings and varied feature sets that won't break the bank.
The Modway chair may not recline as much as other gaming chairs we tested, but it still provides moderate adjustability for a chair in this price range.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
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Take gaming to another level with comfort and support from a high quality gaming chair.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Why You Should Trust Us
For this review, we brought in lead tester Austin Palmer. Austin has a rich background in research and objective review, having honed that expertise while earning a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice from Sam Houston State University. He now spends the typical work week sitting at a desk for his job at GearLab, so he has more than a few opinions on everyday office chairs. Moreover, he is a serious PC gamer who spends even more time sitting in a gaming chair during his free time. So he came to the task ready to extract the facts and explore the subtle nuances in design or performance that might appear along the way. Our test team has employed a systematic approach to testing and devoted hundreds of hours to testing our carefully narrowed product selection. We also sought the input of other in-house GearLab test team members who spend many hours a day sitting at their desks, researching, testing, and analyzing varied products.
Their collective input provided a wide range of opinions about comfort and adjustability due largely to their different body shapes and heights, ranging from a 5-foot 4-inch tester weighing in at closer to 120 lbs to individuals weighing around 200 pounds at a height of over 6 feet.
We divided the scoring of each gaming chair into three key metrics:
Comfort (55% of total score weighting)
Adjustability (35% weighting)
Setup (10% weighting)
Each metric is detailed in individual sections below, explaining the component testing that makes up submetrics and highlighting the top performers within each metric.
Lumbar support adjustment is a little awkward to reach, but effective nonetheless.
Neck pillows and headrests were considered where applicable in our evaluation and ratings of each chair.
Our test team intensely scrutinized every aspect of each chair.
Analysis and Test Results
Our test team spent countless hours collectively sitting, reclining, testing, and evaluating our gaming chair selection so that we could bring you the most unbiased and objective data available. You can choose the best model for elevating your gaming experience with our testing results.
Value
The quality and comfort of gaming chairs are directly correlated to cost, with only a couple of opportunities to purchase bargain options on tighter budgets and still get a good balance of comfort and adjustability. The SecretLabs Titan Evo 2022 is the most costly model we tested, but also one of the best overall, incorporating next-level features in both comfort and adjustability. Whereas the GTRacing Music Series is a more modestly priced model, but also offers a majority of the features and comfort of the most premium chairs.
With only one outlier, the different models fall in a fairly straight line when you look at the slope of the line in the above price versus the overall score chart. That's not to say cheaper models are bad. A couple offer plenty of comfort and adjustability for the casual gamer at what our team felt were more approachable prices, making them exceptional values for most.
Comfort
The comfort test metric holds the greatest weighting in our testing, as it is the most important aspect of a gaming chair. We specifically enlisted judges from our in-house GearLab team to evaluate the comfort levels of each chair's three submetrics: seat, backrest, and armrest comfort. Our test team also assessed the comfort of sitting in each chair for an extended period to produce an averagemaximum amount of time one could sit in each chair with reasonable comfort. Our panel consisted of individuals of various weights and heights who had the opportunity to test each chair side by side over several months.
Regarding comfort, two models our team tested stood out, with one slightly edging out the other. Our team found the SecretLabs Titan Evo 2022 the most comfortable model in our product lineup and slightly more comfortable overall than the Razer Iskur.
An adjustable magnetic pillow enhances the comfort of this model and is a nice touch.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Except for seat comfort, when analyzing specific components of each model, the SecretLabs Titan Evo 2022 narrowly outscored the Razer Iskur. On the Iskur, larger test members reported the aggressive bucket seat styling as comfortable but restrictive above the upper knee and lower outer thigh.
The firm seat of the SecretLabs Titan Evo 2022 could use a little break-in but is still very comfortable, and the less aggressive design does not restrict leg movement like the Razer Iskur. However, jockeying for the top spot, the more forgiving cushioning of the Razer seat scored just a little bit better than the Titan Evo.
The backrest comfort of the SecretLabs Titan Evo 2022 is also quite firm, and the seat would benefit from a good break-in period. Our team found it more comfortable than the Razer Iskur, as the materials seemed to do a better job of dissipating heat, whereas the Razer became warm in a hot spot on the back. Armrests across both models are comfortable, with the Titan Evo offering near-perfect comfort, while the armrests on the Iskur are overly firm.
An extreme design for some extreme lumbar support.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
The lumbar support of the Razer Iskur stands apart from other models for its noticeably aggressive lumbar panel. Instead of a pillow that changes position over time or fixed supports that cannot be adjusted, the Razer Iskur offers complete lower back support through a panel that matches a natural lumbar curve, which adjusts to some really serious extremes.
While two leaders outshined the majority of the product test lineup, our team still felt two other models, the GTRacing Music Series and the GTPlayer GT800A Footrest, both from GTRacing, offer serious gamers a high level of comfort at more approachable prices. They offer similar bucket seat designs, adjustable lumbar pillows and headrests, and a comfortable footrest when you want one.
A footrest enhances the comfort of this model, and retracts out of the way when you don't want it.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Our team rated the seat on the GTRacing Music Series as the more comfortable seat, with the GTPlayer GT800A Footrest offering a firm seat cushion with less give. A massage feature of the GTPlayer GT800A Footrest may seem a little gimmicky, but it is functional and unique to this chair. Whether it enhances a gamer's comfort is subjective and depends on a person's preference for a lumbar massage.
Concerning more serious gaming sessions, like campaigns lasting more than 5 hours and multiplayer cooperatives, you'll find adequate comfort from the SecretLabs Titan Evo 2022 and the Razer Iskur. Our team's final assessments rated these chairs to 8 hours of use with adequate comfort, while they rated the runner-ups, the GTRacing Music Series and GTPlayer GT800A Footrest, to 5 hours.
Behind our duration comfort leaders, our team rated the Cooler Master Hybrid 1 and BestOffice High-Back Ergonomic to a maximum of 3.5 hours of adequate comfort before needing to spend some time moving around. So they may be good options for fast rounds of first-person shooters and shorter campaigns, or even for less serious gamers who might use these chairs for office work but don't expect to spend all day or more than half a day gaming in comfort.
Too much tilt resistance can hamper your style and comfort.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Lastly, if an extreme and supportive reclined position is your gaming position, then the Razer Iskur has your back. It has good backrest tension and can be locked into a wide range of positions, more so than any of the other chairs we tested, so you'll be sure to get the most comfortable reclined position possible. The rather aggressive lumbar support continues functioning, even in the most extreme reclined positions.
While the SecretLabs Titan Evo 2022, GTRacing Music Series, and GTPlayer GT800A Footrest all offer impressive reclining angles, with the GTRacing chairs offering a little more of a recline than the Titan Evo, the Cooler Master Hybrid 1 offered the most impressive, nearly perfectly horizontal reclining position that would only be enhanced by a footrest, and a little better comfort overall.
The ability to completely recline is impressive on the Cooler Master.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Adjustability
For our second most important test metric adjustability, our team assessed the extent to which each chair is adjustable and evaluated the ease of making those adjustments. We more specifically examined the diverse options available as five submetrics and scored the ability to modify the armrests, seat height, and backrest of each chair, including features like lumbar support and tensioning knobs, but also evaluated whether we could achieve a good gaming position with each model.
The SecretLabs Titan Evo 2022 and the Razer Iskur performed well in our adjustability tests, with the Iskur getting a slightly better score than the Titan. However, while a few models didn't score consistently well for adjustability overall, they scored exceptionally well for adjustability of individual components that you may value and may still be good options for a wide range of people.
The Razer Iskur led the SecretLabs Titan Evo 2022 by a thin margin for its greater seat height range of about an inch but also for its significantly better tension knob, which offers very positive engagement of a wide range of reclining positions. In contrast, the Titan was limited to only a few positions and lacked the tension that our heavier testers desired to keep from having a spongey, boat-like experience.
The GTRacing Music Series also earned an overall decent score, trailing behind the top chairs, but in a coincidental similarity to the SecretLabs Titan Evo 2022, could have earned a better score if not for its rather weak reclining tension knob.
Whether you are tall, short, or just like a large range of seat height adjustment, you'll be pleased with the Razer Iskur and the SecretLabs Titan Evo 2022, which have consistently outperformed the rest of the products in our test lineup. Still, you'll also be pleased with the BestOffice High-Back Ergonomic. The BestOffice offered about the same height range as the Razer Iskur, but it loses a little of its peak height with an overly supple seat cushion.
If you have a large positive ape index, lanky arms, and boney elbows, you may value adjustable armrests that accommodate your preferred gaming position. It's nice to be able to widen or narrow your armrest positions, as well as raise and lower them. The Razer Iskur and SecretLabs Titan Evo 2022 are both near perfect when it comes to adjustability, while the GTRacing Music Series trails rather far behind with only adequate adjustability. The rest of the chairs we tested will leave you wanting much more.
4D armrests are highly adjustable, and replaceable tops allow you to further tailer the chair to your own needs.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
The top models all offer armrest adjustments for pivoting, height, and width and offer comfortable cushioning with a small range of densities. Although the rest of the group offers fairly comfortable armrests, they do lack adjustability. The GTPlayer GT800A Footrest incorporates an interesting design that pivots and adjusts with the backrest as it reclines. While interesting and comfortable, it limits it to being unadjustable in any other way.
While they are relatively comfortable, these armrests lack the robust adjustability of more premium models.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Tension knobs were another specific component of each gaming chair that our team evaluated, and the Razer Iskur again earned a top score for the submetric. However, we found the location of the tension knob to be a little difficult to reach and adjust while seated.
Our team was pleasantly surprised by the Cooler Master Hybrid 1's good tension knob, and it earned a high score, while the SecretLabs Titan Evo 2022 and the BestOffice High-Back Ergonomic earned fairly unimpressive scores.
Neither the SecretLabs Titan Evo 2022 nor BestOffice High-Back Ergonomic have an impressive tension nob, and both are a little cumbersome to reach. The Titan Evo offered weak resistance, while the BestOffice offered too much resistance, even on the lowest setting. Unfortunately, the GTRacing Music Series and GTPlayer GT800A Footrest also missed the mark for weaker or non-existent tension.
Adjustment levers on this model, and many others, are located a little far from the reach of the average sized person.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
As mentioned, from a comfort perspective of achieving the ideal gaming position, the Razer Iskur and the SecretLabs Titan Evo 2022 led the way. Similarly, their adjustability is largely why they scored so well for gaming position comfort, and they led here as well.
Behind the top models, the rest of the models we tested were fairly average or below average for their lack of adjustability and inability to dial in a perfect gaming position. However, it's worth reiterating that GTRacing Music Series reclines to about 150 degrees, the GTPlayer GT800A Footrest to about 135 degrees, and the Cooler Master Hybrid to an impressive nearly horizontal position. While these models aren't ideal for PC gaming when using a keyboard and mouse, they are good options for those dedicated to console gaming.
Elevate your game with support and comfort in the best gaming positions possible.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Setup
Our final test metric setup focused on the effort required to go from a boxed-up chair to sit in and gaming. Whether the setup task is painstaking or a breeze may make a difference in purchasing decisions. However, considering it only needs to be done once, we didn't attribute too heavy weighting to each model's overall score. As such, setup accounts for only 10 percent of each product's final score. Within this metric, some products stood out for their ease of assembly and short time to get from unboxing to comfortable gaming.
Our test team member responsible for the assembly of each chair put together the top performing model, the SecretLabs Titan Evo 2022, in under 10 minutes, and the Razer Iskur in about 14 minutes. Also impressive was the BestOffice Gaming Cheap Desk Task Executive with a 15-minute assembly time.
Overall, most models were reasonably easy to assemble, and even the most mechanically un-inclined person can assemble any chair in our test lineup with either the included tools or basic tools and instructions in under an hour.
Credit: Austin Palmer
Conclusion
Gaming chairs may seem unremarkable or even unnecessary to some. Still, an ergonomic gaming chair can significantly impact your gaming performance and contribute to whether you have a good gaming session or one filled with discomfort, backaches, and disappointing performance. Therefore they can be a great investment and are worth careful consideration. Our intensive side-by-side analysis of the top gaming chairs on the market is enough to equip you with the information to select the ideal chair that aligns with your sitting requirements, budget, and gaming preferences.
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Austin Palmer, Benjamin Hickok, and Graham Faulknor
