Office Chair vs Gaming Chair
If you’re deciding on a new chair, odds are you’ve seen the office chair vs gaming chair debate. Various tier lists and online discussions mention how one is better than the other, but the reality is a bit more complicated than that. Both types of chair serve the same purpose, they just have different styles and target audiences. In this article, we’ll talk about the differences, and we’ll also let you know how to recognize a quality chair.
What Is An Office Chair?
An office chair (also named desk chair) is quite simply a chair that’s meant to be used at a desk. A good office chair is adjustable and ergonomic, allowing the user to sit in the chair for prolonged periods of time without experiencing discomfort in the long or short term. Important to note is that there isn’t one ‘best chair’. People have vastly different body types, so there’s no way to make a chair that suits everyone.
Office chairs come in a vast variety of styles and prices can vary wildly. From designer chairs costing well over $1,000 to simple plastic budget chairs: the market is huge. As such, there isn’t any one design that is synonymous with an ‘office chair’. In the past, bombastic leather chairs were very trendy, whereas today’s most popular options seem to use mostly mesh and clean lines in their design.
Entire books can be written about office chairs and their designs over the decades, but to put it shortly: an office chair is a chair that’s meant to be used at a desk.
What Is A Gaming Chair?
A gaming chair is a type of office chair. Contrary to office chairs (which come in a huge variety of designs) there’s one particular design that’s associated with gaming chairs: the racing chair.
Basically, this is a design that’s pulled straight out of racing cars and put in front of a desk. These bucket seats are characterized by the winged backrest that extends all the way to the back of the user’s head. They are also often wider than regular modern office chairs.
Racing chairs first started appearing on the scene in 2006. Since then, tons of companies have started producing these types of chairs to the point where they’re basically synonymous with gaming chairs. If you look at streamers or professional gaming tournaments, odds are high that you’ll see this type of chair at some point.
Is A Gaming Chair Good For Regular Use?
In short: yes, a gaming chair can be a good overall chair. There’s no reason why a gaming chair cannot be a great office chair.
However, due to the popularity of the design, many companies have tried (and are trying) to make a quick buck with racing-style chairs. This has unfortunately lead to a lot of subpar products flooding the market, giving these types of chair a bad reputation.
Essentially, you should consider racing chairs as another style of office chair. Just like the big leather chairs of old and the current minimalist mesh chairs, racing chairs are just a category of the wider desk chair product segment. Within this category, there are good products and there are bad products.
Real Racing Chairs vs ‘Office Racing Chairs’
One important thing to note is that real racing chairs and office chairs serve very different purposes. A racing chair is designed to hold a driver perfectly in place and minimize movement. Racing chairs generally also don’t have to care about ergonomics or comfort, as their main purpose is to keep the driver safe and performing at their peak during a race, which usually only lasts for a couple of hours at most.
Because of this, it’s not a good idea to basically copy + paste a car racing seat onto a five-point base for an office chair. The side bolsters restrict movement, the backrest has little to no lumbar support, and the whole thing quite simply isn’t made for people to sit in it for multiple hours each day
However, that doesn’t mean that a chair made in that style is automatically ‘bad’. There are many companies out there that produce racing-style chairs with some modifications that make them great as office chairs. If you like the sporty style of these chairs, there’s no reason to automatically exclude them from your list when shopping.
What Makes A Chair Good?
A good office chair should have the following:
- Lumbar support – This supports the lower back and follows your spine’s natural curve. This is preferably adjustable so that you can finely tune it to match your body.
- Reclining backrest – While this isn’t technically necessary, it a reclining backrest can help with achieving a comfortable seating position.
- Adjustable armrests – If they are present, you’ll want armrests that are at least adjustable in height.
- Reclining mechanism with tilt lock – This allows you to recline without sacrificing your posture. It helps accommodate natural posture shifts.
- Adjustable seat height – Being able to adjust the seat height is essential to creating a good sitting posture.
- Five-star base with smooth wheels – A good desk chair needs five ‘legs’ for stability. Ideally, this base has wheels that allow you to smoothly place the chair in a different position.
- Curved seat edges – Smooth edges reduce the pressure on your legs, which improves circulation.
Everything else is pretty much down to personal preference. Things like the firmness of the seating material can greatly influence the way a chair feels, but there’s no specific guideline on how firm a seat should be.
In essence, a good office chair should allow you to sit with perfect posture. This doesn’t mean that you need to sit in that exact same position for the entire day though. Moving around and changing your sitting position is a good thing. The perfect posture is just a good guideline when shopping for chairs. If you cannot get to an ideal posture with a chair, it’s not meant for you.
Are Gaming Chairs Ergonomic?
Yes, gaming chairs can definitely be ergonomic. In fact, various chair brands are making gaming chairs that definitely meet the requirements for a good office chair.
We’ve established that a good office chair should be adjustable and allow you to sit in an optimal position. Having a racing-style design in no way prevents a chair from meeting the requirements for a good office chair, provided the manufacturer actually puts thought and effort into creating a good chair rather than just taking a non-adjustable OEM chair and calling it a day.
With that said: there is no ‘winner’ here. A good racing-style chair can be just as comfortable and ergonomic as a similarly priced regular office chair. You also don’t need a gaming-styled chair for gaming. Any good office chair will do just fine.
Comfort and Style
As we’ve established by now, a gaming chair is quite simply just a different style of office chair. The specific racing style has now become synonymous with ‘gaming’, but functionally there’s no difference between a gaming chair and an office chair. They both serve the same purpose.
With that said: there’s one feature that most gaming chairs have that tends to not be present on a regular office chair, which is the reclining aspect. Office chairs usually allow you to recline the backrest somewhat, but gaming chairs go to the extreme on this front. The Secretlab TITAN Evo, for example, allows the backrest to recline to 165 degrees. This allows you to turn your chair into a lounge seat, which is nice if you want to take a break after a hard-fought game.
Price
When browsing for chair recommendations online, people often recommend specialty brands like Herman Miller as an alternative to gaming chairs. While those are obviously fantastic chairs, they also come at quite the price, often costing multiples of what a gaming chair would cost.
Most people don’t have the budget for the absolute top end of chairs, so they gravitate towards more economically priced options around $500. That’s also the price range at which most gaming chairs are priced.
When comparing brand new chairs in the $400-$500 region, there’s no reason to say that a gaming chair from a quality brand offers an inherently worse value proposition compared to an office chair from a reputable brand. It just comes down to what you prefer as far as the style and features go.
A good rule of thumb when chair shopping is that you shouldn’t go too budget. It’s often better to save up for a bit longer than to spring for a very cheap chair that might start creaking or falling apart after barely a year of use. Furthermore, a lot of very low budget chairs simply don’t perform as well in the ergonomics/comfort department as the offerings from more reputable brands.
Good chair brands offer years of warranty, with the top end brands even offering over a decade of warranty support, so your investment should be safe.
Office Chair vs Gaming Chair – The Verdict
To put it simply: a gaming chair is just a style of office chair. As such, there’s no reason to say that gaming chairs are inherently worse. They’re not worse, and they’re also not better. They’re just a different option.
With that said: it is true that there are a lot of brands looking to make a quick buck by capitalizing on the hype behind racing-style chairs. This means that there are comparatively more products on the market that simply aren’t worth their price. However, there are definitely brands that are making very high quality gaming chairs that will have you sitting comfortably for many, many years.
If you’re shopping for a new chair, we recommend you to do your research (you can use our gaming chairs comparison list for help), find out what you like, and then decide on whether you’ll pull the trigger or not. It doesn’t matter whether you end up with a gaming chair or a regular office chair. The most important thing is that you like it and that it suits your body. Quality options can be found in both product categories.
