Expensive garbage.
No doubt, this is ridiculous! It doesn’t even have that weird aesthetic most gaming chairs have. Instead you’re paying $500 more for a logo I guess?
“Gaming” in this sense is nothing but a bait-term to lure in ignorant people that just wanna be comfy and have a good time without the research that’s required for it. Feels shitty and exploitative. Reminds me of how unregulated whisky terms are (at least here in Canada), that’s a fun lil’ rabbit hole.
Near-identical chairs designed for people who sit all day - minus the gaming premium! woah!
Racing Sim chairs going for similar value, but still without the ‘gaming’ premium. Without drawing premature conclusions as to why, it’s peculiar that a chair in a niche market with more unique parts is going for less than the ‘gaming’ chair.
Like fug, where’s the cool shit on the ~$1000 chairs? USB ports? RGB lighting? Nope - acoustic panel for the niche situation you dumped most of your budget into a chair instead of sound-cancelling headphones.
Ugh.
🥵🥵 now THAT’S a chair.
Thanks for sharing :)
Any chair you can buy at Best Buy is garbage, really. If you have $1000 to spend, go get yourself a used Steelcase Amia and save yourself $600, or splurge on a used Aeron or Gesture. Almost everything else uses the same cheap components.
That sounds delicious, you wouldn’t happen to have a convenient link on hand would you?
There’s a great seller in the US on eBay, but I don’t think they ship across the border. For Canadians, I always advise that you search Craigslist/Kijiji/whatever locals use for buy-n-sell these days. You can easily find mint condition stuff in most cities.
I advise against buying Leaps these days, however. The were good in the V1 days, but V1s are all coming up on end of life. V2s are nowhere near as robust or comfortable, and they’re paradoxically more expensive than an Amia despite being an inferior chair. Plus, unless you know what to look for, you might be duped into buying a V1 that a seller has labeled as a V2.
Amias are extremely solid chairs for the price. They’re my budget recommendation if you want an upholstered chair. The Gesture is the luxury recommendation — and I don’t recommend it lightly. Compared to any other chair you’ve tried, it’s like sitting on a cloud. Built like a tank. Since it’s a newer model, the used market doesn’t have as much yet, but you’re also guaranteed not to be getting anything too old.
If you prefer mesh, then the Aeron is really the only choice. There are some cheaper ones, but I don’t think they’re worth the money for the build quality. They don’t last as long, and they aren’t as comfortable. Mesh seat chairs will be good for people who run hot, but they also won’t be as cushioning as an upholstered chair.
I see very good condition chairs that are less than 5 years old for the following prices locally on the regular:
- Amia: $350–450
- Leap: $500–600
- Gesture: $900–1100 (harder to find)
- Aeron: $800–1000
Other good brands exist, but I haven’t seen enough of them personally to recommend them.
Thanks for the tips! My experience with chair research has always been a bit meh, so this is a ton of help~ :)
If there’s a dealership near you, you can go sit in them all and pretend to be interested in buying new, then go home and start your Craigslist search. It’ll help you contextualize what I mean when I say that the different models are more comfortable than one another, or “built like a tank.” Trying before buying is always a good idea!
