Top Picks for Every Budget

Gaming chair FAQs

How much money will a good gaming chair cost?

Gaming chairs can get pretty expensive. A budget gaming chair comes in around $150 to $300, but these chairs are usually missing features and aren’t super comfortable. You can find chairs for lower than this, but they’re rarely even worth considering. Normal gaming chairs — like our top pick, the SecretLab Titan Evo 2022  — range from $500 to $800. These are the comfortable chairs that feature adjustable parts, lumbar support, and sturdy construction.

Once you pass the $800 mark, you’ll start seeing diminishing returns. Premium furniture brands like Herman Miller make fantastic chairs that feel wonderful to sit in for long periods, but they’re probably not so much better that they’re worth breaking the bank for.

Does every gaming chair fit every body type?

No. Some gaming chairs will be too thin to sit comfortably in, some will be too short to avoid cramping long legs, and so on. In general, bigger chairs are easier to get comfortable in than small ones.

For example, in this guide, we recommend the X-Rocker Torque 2.1 as a great immersive chair, but it’s also too short to comfortably support all body types. In contrast, the AndaSeat Kaiser 3 XL is great because of how roomy it is.

The best gaming chairs are adjustable, which means that they’ll be accessible to a wider variety of body types. But before you buy any chair, check the specifications to make sure that you’ll fit comfortably in it, and that it’ll fit in your office or home.

Does a gaming chair actually make you better?

This is a complicated question to answer. There hasn’t been much research on gaming chairs, or how they compare to other sorts of chairs for improving game performance. The large majority of claims about gaming chairs are made either anecdotally through product reviews or by the brands that build the chairs themselves, neither of which are totally trustworthy.

The research that does exist, like this 2019 paper from De La Salle University’s School of Industrial Engineering, suggests that gaming chairs do improve gaming performance, although in an indirect way. Their research says that gaming chairs tend to be more ergonomic, meaning that gamers can play for longer periods without strain — so, over an extended period, their focus, alertness, and skill stay higher than that of gamers in other chairs.

Some chairs are built in specific ways to encourage focus. The Herman Miller Vantum, for example, slightly tilts the user forward so they’re closer to the screen. But the research suggests that when it comes to improving game performance, being comfortable is the most important thing.