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10 Best Gaming Chairs

Best gaming chairs to enhance your experience on PC or Console: PlayStation, Xbox & Nintendo Switch

best gaming chair for pc and console
  • Gaming chairs offer you the maximum comfort possible when sitting for long periods, enhancing your concentration and ensuring there are no distractions when you are in the thick of battle or an intense sporting fixture!
  • Standard PC gaming chairs offer neck and lumbar (lower back) support to improve your posture and eye level when gaming, while console-built chairs provide a more casual, laidback design that still keeps you upright and in the game.
  • Immersive chairs now offer wireless connection to your console or PC, where in-built audio systems, LED light displays and vibration responses can respond with your game in-time, creating a more life-like and absorbing experience!
  • PC gaming chairs are also a fantastic alternative for office workers, providing plenty of mobility with swivel and wheeled bases, but with the added bonus of more posture improvement and support cushions for the back and neck.

The Top Gaming Chairs For PC & Console

The Best Gaming Chairs

It’s frightening these days that playing video games can actually be considered a career.

But people with nimble thumbs and lightning speed reactions would rather be e-sports players than real-life athletes in today’s world and those that are successful often go on to make much higher salaries and spawn larger adoring fan bases than they would if taking up football, rugby or athletics.

And just like a footballer might need a flash pair of boots, lightweight protective shinpads and other such gear to give them the edge over there competitors – pro gamers also need a few things added to their arsenal too.

One such item is a gaming chair, as without one, you risk losing concentration to discomfort, as well as worsening your posture over time.

If just a casual gamer though, you’re also missing out on some of the more immersive features a gaming chair can bring to your playing experience, including surround sound, light displays and vibration responses.

To help you find exactly what you’re looking for, we’ve trawled through hundreds of chairs to find the very best options for both PC and console gamers – from laidback gaming lovers to the more serious wannabe pros.

We promise that once you’ve tried one, you’ll never go without a gaming chair again.

Gaming Chair Buying Guide

Types of Gaming Chair

There are three main types of gaming chair and which one feels right for you will depend on which you perceive to be the most comfortable, the amount of manoeuvrability you need and the space available to you in your home.

The main types are:

Rocker

A fairly new and revolutionary style of gaming chair, rockers are what often come to mind when you think of gaming chairs.

Most often used by console gamers, they have no base and sport a curved design which is great for reclining and playing casually.

Swivel

A sort of twist on the classic office chair design, swivel gaming chairs model themselves after racing car seats, with neck and lumbar supports and extra padding designed to make sitting in it for long periods of time more comfortable. These seats are then placed on the familiar 360-degree swivel base with caster wheels, helping you to manoeuvre around a room easily and effectively.

Swivel seats are therefore most popular for PC gamers or those who mainly play video games at a desk, as they keep you upright, provide great support and allow you to quickly adjust positions across the desk if needed.

Pedestal

A pedestal gaming chair is most commonly just a rocker-style seat with a pedestal base. This base usually allows a 360-degree swivel but is overall less manoeuvrable than a wheeled office-style chair. These are best for console gamers who want to be relaxed and reclined while playing but dislike the low, ground-level style of the standard rocker and its lack of static support.

Immersive or Non-immersive

Another key difference between the different types of gaming chair is whether they are immersive or not.

In general, it’s very rare that a PC swivel chair will boast immersive features and it’s mostly rocker and pedestal chairs that host such features.

The main immersive features a chair might have are built-in audio surround sound or vibration settings designed to correspond with actions in-game. These can help you feel more involved in what you are playing and make the gaming experience more enjoyable.

Audio Quality

If you are purchasing an immersive chair, you want to make sure the audio quality is sufficient and to your liking. Most sound systems will come with ratio descriptions, which can be confusing if you don’t know what they mean. Generally though, the numbers pertain to the number of audio channels and the number of subwoofers offered by a chair.

For example, a 2.1 sound system hosts two audio channels and 1 subwoofer.

In layman’s terms, this is a left and right speaker on the chair, with 1 subwoofer to provide plenty of bass.

So if you want your chair to provide an even more immersive experience, you’ll want more channels (speakers) and if you want it to be more powerful, you’ll want more subwoofers (although this is quite rare).

Gaming Chair Connection

Ideally, if using an immersive gaming chair, you want connecting it to your console, TV etc. to be a simple and hassle-free experience. The easiest way to do this is of course with a hardwire connection, in which you connect the chair via a cable.

However, this also leads to trailing wires and a less clean set-up, which is why wireless and Bluetooth compatible options are becoming increasingly popular!

Size

If you’re of a larger build, there’s no use buying a skimpy little chair with armrests that make you feel imprisoned on either side. Make sure the dimensions of a chair are accommodating to your size and that the chair can also support your weight.

Adaptability

One of the most important features of any gaming chair is its adaptability, as it needs to be able to be altered into your perfect seat.

A good quality gaming seat should therefore offer an adjustable height, reclining features and adjustable armrests to help you fashion it into the most comfortable chair possible.

Storage

Sometimes gaming chairs can take up a lot of space in a room, so it’s not convenient to have them out all the time. To solve this, some gaming chairs are foldable and so can be more easily stored away should you need them to be.

Ergonomic Support

Gamers are known for sitting at their console or PC for hours at a time, which can be bad for your posture and uncomfortable over time. The best gaming chairs will help alleviate this through an ergonomic shape that moulds to your posture.

Many comfortable designs also feature neck and lumbar pillows, while memory foam features will also help to make your seat more in-tune with your body.

Colour/Design

Although this isn’t really that important, most gaming chairs feature a flash of colour of some kind and in some cases feature designs and graphics to appeal to certain gamers. There’s plenty of choices out there, so why settle for a boring black model if that’s not your style?

Material

Standard gaming chairs should reflect a racing car seat in terms of shape and material. This means a quality chair should provide a steel or alloy framework inside to ensure maximum durability and an authentic ergonomic style. Most gaming chairs then choose to use a kind of faux leather that’s both breathable and aesthetically pleasing as the outer material.

Assembly

Something a lot of people forget when purchasing a gaming chair is that they almost always require you to assemble them! Before you buy, try and check the specifications to see how many individual parts make up the chair to judge whether the assembly will be overly long or difficult.

Occasionally, some gaming chairs will flat out tell you how long the assembly takes, with the longest sometimes taking up to an hour!

FAQs Regarding Gaming Chairs

Why should I use a gaming chair?

If you take gaming seriously or find playing video games for long periods uncomfortable, then a gaming chair is often a wise if not crucial bit of kit.

For e-sports and professional gamers, gaming chairs help keep the spine aligned, holding your position perfectly and ensuring you won’t lose concentration through discomfort and placing less strain on your back and neck.

If you’re a casual gamer, a gaming chair can still be incredibly useful, as they help prevent you from developing poor posture through excessive gaming in uncomfortable positions.

Are all gaming chairs multi-platform compatible?

When buying a gaming chair, a lot of people want to know whether it will work with their Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo device or other video games console.

Generally, it’s in a gaming chair’s interests to be compatible with as many consoles as possible, so it’s very rare that you would buy an immersive gaming chair that is non-compatible with your console or PC type.

If you’re unsure, just look at the specifications of your chosen gaming seat, which should clarify which platforms it works for if not all of them.