Don't Buy a "Gaming Chair" - Office Chair vs. Gaming Chair Round-Up & Review

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I just switched back to an office chair from a gaming chair. The back pain I had for years is gone, my swimming performance improved and I'm even sleeping better. Gaming chairs are worse than sitting on a box

I was a bit confused since I thought they did this a while ago, and yes... video posted 3 years ago. Still a good watch.
My current chair is a gaming chair, but whenever it gives out, I'll most likely go back to an office chair. I do like the reclining feature that most gaming chairs have, though.

Y'all don't just steal office chairs?
That what the pandemic was for. Empty offices with no one at their desk ...
- Yep I scored two fancy chairs and a huge stand up desk when my old office closed during COVID.

Not only because office chairs are better in general, but because gaming chairs are UGLY as fuck. I don't understand why those chairs became the norm, who the fuck wants a car seat in their bedroom?
- Children

buying a steel case gesture years ago was a great decision for me personally.
The chair is made to be sat in 8hrs a day nearly everyday. Office chairs at stores just aren't built that way I find.
The way I see it... I spend the price for this chair now... Or spend the equivalent or more over the years on replacements as cheaper chairs deteriorate.
While we're on the subject of chairs...stop buying those plastic chair mats. Buy tempered glass chair surfaces. They're tougher than you think, buttery smooth and don't flex and crack like the plastic ones.
- Cut out the middleman and get some rollerblade wheels for the chair with sleeve bearings. They go over short carpet and hardwood floor and don't cause any damage.
  
  Every single office chair I buy for myself and my family is followed by an immediate purchase of rollerblade wheels for that chair. Standard office wheels suck, and replacing them is really easy. They glide so well.
  
  I have those on my chair and the glass chair mat, lol
- How flexible is flexible? The room I game in has uneven floorboards. I'd be worried that a glass mat, tempered or otherwise, would immediately shatter on anything other than a perfectly flat surface.
  
  That's the reason I didn't buy one and made my own. Get a thicker piece of plywood in the size you want, get a box of stick on tiles, and get some decent trim to hide the edges of the plywood and you're set.
  
  Let's just say the tempered glass is rated for 1000lbs? Assuming the product description isn't exaggerated.
  I bought it when I was a big dude weighing around 334 before I lost about a 1/3rd of that.
  I have carpet floors but are on a slight slant. Unless you have a bump I assume you should be okay.
  Edit: here is what I bought in the larger size: https://a.co/d/gP83Nab

Plenty of excellent office chairs out there, that have to meet strict ergonomic requirements (Herman Miller, Haworth, bruinzeel, Steelcase to name a few). They are built for sitting in all day and have to have quality fabric to last some years. Above office chairs is a tier for the operators of emergency services and other monitoring stations but these chairs start at 3k.
Gaming chairs don't have to meet any requirements.
- What requirements exist for office chairs?
  
  They have to meet requirements in terms of the seating, and be configurable in a number of points, size and spacing of the wheels. In the EU the governments actually regulate the stuff so it's easier for "big office chair" to make sure it all meets the requirements.
  And then if the quality is shit, companies will not buy dozens to thousands of them.

Night and day difference between a gaming chair and even a mid tier office chair. I ended up splurging on a steelcase chair and honestly it's been the best thing for gaming/home office set up.
Unless the gaming actually starts caring about ergonomics, I'll stick to office chairs going forward.
I will caveat that while reviews are nice, I was looking at a lot of BTODtv YouTube videos, and informative, definitely find a retailer/seller even if you have to make an appointment and try them out if you can, or actually shifted on what I thought I wanted.
Also, a good new office chair is expensive so see if you have a used office furniture seller/refurbisher lots of deals on used office furniture from major brands at great price.

100% recommend only buying a Herman Miller if you can find one secondhand. It's a decent chair but I'd never in a million years pay retail price for it.
Also, they do have one flaw: if you're on the heavier side, when you lean back all the way your ass kinda high-centers on a ridge in the middle of the base. It's not horrifically uncomfortable, but it is rather off-putting when it happens.
- 100% recommend only buying a Herman Miller if you can find one secondhand. It’s a decent chair but I’d never in a million years pay retail price for it.
  I bought the Embody last year during their Black Friday Sale, sadly it was the worst chair I ever had. I gave it a solid 4 months of testing but regardless of what I was doing with the settings it never felt comfortable and I got a bad neck and shoulder pain after an hour or two sitting in it.
  Sold it for a nice price, made some additional money because those chairs go away like crazy and bought me a Leap from Steelcase.
  So keep in mind that even expensive office chairs are not made for everyone
- I got my job to buy my Embody during WFH pandemic since our office was stocked with them and Aerons. I used to have major back problems from my old chair and I can't emphasize this enough: they disappeared within a month of getting this chair.
  I'd honestly buy one myself retail if I had to. Yeah it's expensive and people can use that as an excuse not to like it but it is in fact legit properly designed. The way I look at it is like mattresses: you spend 1/3 your life on one so it's worth the investment. If you work at desk, that's another sizable percentage of your life so why not invest accordingly?
  As a funny related note, I did end up getting the gaming version of the Logitech x Embody because by some fluke it was slightly cheaper than the standard model at the time. I've sat in both and definitely like the fabric feel and slightly extra padding of the Logitech model. Also teal and black/grey are my favorite color combo without looking overly "gamer".

The single best chair I've ever used is some random "leather" office chair I probably picked up at OfficeMax years ago. It's the single most comfortable chair.

This video is quite old, and while I have always been an Office chair > Gaming chair guy, and a lot of things in that video are still true I have a Secret lab Titan Evo, i.e. a gaming chair, even though I despise the aesthetics of it. When I was looking to get a new chair my options were very limited, I had essentially ruled out every other option one way or another and was about to buy an Autonomous ergo chair when a friend of mine did, so I tried the chair at their place, and it sucked. And it sucked in a very specific thing, the cushion was too soft, it felt like almost no cushion at all, and I understood exactly why no reviewer mentioned it, being tall and fat meant I weighed quite substantially more than any of them.
With my last option for an office chair gone I had to look elsewhere. I had never even considered looking into gaming chairs because I know they're all cheap uncomfortable things, but in my research for a chair I found lots of people saying the Secret lab was different, so I started to look at a lot of reviews about it and the consensus was that it was the best gaming chair, even some channels that exclusively review chairs were commenting on how good it was (for a gaming chair), and there was one comment that lots of them did that made me pull the trigger, i.e. "the seat is hard, but not in an unpleasant way, it's kind of like a car seat". I'm used to driving for multiple days at a time, so I know a car seat was better than my current chair and better than any of the office chairs I've tried.
I ended up buying an XL model, and indeed the seat was too hard, but with time I grew used to it, and I also read lots of articles explaining that harder seats are better for the back. I've been using it for a couple of years and the pain I had in my back from sitting on a cheap amazon chair is long gone, I now consider it one of the best chairs I've ever sat in for long periods (which includes a Herman Miller I had at my previous job). Is it the best chair in the world? No, it lacks several adjustments that I had in old chairs that I miss. Is it for everyone? Probably no, if you're not heavy enough I don't think the cushion will feel comfortable even on the long run, and I consider it to be the most comfortable while reclining which is something I do periodically to take the weight off my lower back, so if you don't do this it might not be great. However at that price point it's competitors are cheap office chairs that also lack features or have shitty materials, or good used chairs, and the used market is very specific and might not have what you need when you need it.
So all of this rant is essentially to say that, yes in general Office > Gaming, but there are exceptions and I think that while their conclusions will be very similar they should do another run at it with the Secret lab as a competitor.
- I think a different way to spin this whole conversation is “you get what you pay for.” Prior to investing in a Secret Lab, I’d gone through several of the “top of the line executive office chairs” at some big box stores. They were shit. They fell apart, didn’t support me, and were made poorly. Most mass market gaming chairs are in that price range too so I expect their quality to be the same. Coincidentally, this is the point they make almost as soon as the video starts. I’m not able to pull up prices on the chairs they link (too lazy to Wayback those links) so I don’t know if I’m talking out of my ass or not.
  For me, the $400 I spent on a Secret Lab was way better than the $1800 I could spend on an Aeron because I don’t feel comfortable in Aerons.
  Edit: forgot to mention I am a totally different body type from you and my partner, who loves her Secret Lab, is very small. I think they’re great for all sorts of people.
  
  Yeah I have both a secret lab omega and steelcase leap. The omega is an excellent fully featured chair that you can sit in for hours. Some offices even use them for work because it's good build quality for the price. Mine is 4 years old and the material is still flawless.
  The steelcase is great too but it was multiple times more expensive and it didn't come with a headrest.
- Thanks, good to know that me saving up for a new secret labs was a good decision.
  I've also always found my Dxracer chair to be very comfortable and really help against back pain. Then again I'm not very tall and quite skinny and on threads like these I've often asked others that liked gamer chairs, and they seem to be skinny too.

I like my SecretLab Titan Evo, it is well made and comfortable for long periods of time. Only thing is it's a bit tall for me but a footrest pillow solved that.

I can't find good office chairs that are for "extra large" people.
- Check out IKEA office chairs. Their display rooms let you sit in them. They're a 10th of the price, so even if they only last half as long you're still in front.
  
  I have an IKEA office chair, the nicest one they had when I moved into my apartment circa 5 years ago, and I've grown to hate it. Too narrow, not enough padding on the seat or the armrests and it needs to be able to go about 2 inches higher.

100%

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