Don’t Buy a “Gaming Chair” – Office Chair vs. Gaming Chair Round-Up & Review

Gaming chairs have become prevalent, but shameless copy-pasting by most “manufacturers” has led to a stagnant industry with poor value vs. even cheap office chairs.
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This video includes mini-reviews of several office chairs that we’ve now been using for about a year at the office. The project started in December of 2019, then we filmed the bulk of the video in August of 2020, and added concluding thoughts in December of 2020. All of these chairs have been swapped around between the team for months now, and we eventually all picked our favorites. Patrick ended up preferring the ErgoChair 2, Steve preferred the Aeron after much adjustment and struggling to find the best positioning, Keegan and Andrew use the Komene Mesh chair (whoever comes in first — we’re buying a second one to solve this), and Mike uses the SL4000, but will probably also switch to an office chair once he decides which one he prefers. He does not like the SL5000 as much as the SL4000, due to the 5000’s wider base.

We’ll talk about whether a gaming chair is worth it, how they compare to similarly priced office chairs, and the few times we think a gaming chair makes sense. Please remember that this is completely subjective, but to help smooth-out the subjective nature of a chair, we involved the entire GN team in the editorial process of the content. Even still, it’s likely that your own unique needs, setup, and your body may demand a different chair than what we all came to like. That’s completely fine, and feel free to share your own favorites in the comments in a constructive way that may help other viewers. Our biggest problem with gaming chairs, though, is how little innovation they have — but there’s room to make them better, if only someone would try and commit to it. We even went through the process of getting quotes to make our own gaming chair (we’re not actually making it) to determine the cost and difficulty. Both are low.

RELATED PRODUCTS

Memory Foam Office Chair Armrest Pads that GN uses (on Amazon):
Smugdesk Office Chair (Amazon) –
Komene Mesh Office Chair (Amazon) –
Autonomous ErgoChair 2 (Autonomous) –
Herman Miller Aeron (Herman Miller) –
Vertagear SL5000 (Amazon) –
Vertagear SL4000 (Amazon) –

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TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – Office Chair vs. Gaming Chair Round-Up
01:46 – Gaming Chairs Come from Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V Factories
02:59 – Sales Data on Gaming Chair Popularity
03:43 – Glorified Sticker Factories
04:04 – One Place Gaming Chairs Can Shine
05:07 – “Making” Our Own “GN Chair” (Not Really)
08:53 – Office vs. Gaming Chairs in This Round-Up
10:32 – Blind Quality Test Preview with GN Staff
12:55 – Chairs Take a Long Time to Evaluate
14:19 – Gaming Chairs in Review
17:41 – Herman Miller Aeron Office Chair vs. Gaming Chairs
20:50 – Cheap Amazon Office Chair Mini-Review
23:15 – Komene Mesh Office Chair (Well-Received)
25:42 – ErgoChair 2 from Autonomous (Well-Received)
28:04 – Conclusion
29:05 – Personal Fitness Might Matter More Than the Chair
30:40 – Some Reasons to Buy a Gaming Chair – Don’t Feel Bad

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Host, Editorial: Steve Burke
Testing, Editorial: Patrick Lathan, Keegan Gallick, Andrew Coleman, & guests
Video: Keegan Gallick, Andrew Coleman

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