Introduction
A gaming/desk chair is a substantial investment, but there’s one aspect that’s almost impossible to judge before buying: long-term durability. Reviews can tell you about comfort, build quality, and ergonomics, but they can’t tell you what a chair will look and feel like after seven years of heavy use. Luckily, we have access to exactly that. To help contextualize a bit how a chair might age, we have access to a seven year-old, heavily used chair made by one of the biggest brands in the gaming chair space, and we put it to the test. In this Secretlab TITAN long-term review, you’ll find out if this super popular chair can stand the test of time.
The Chair in Question
Before kicking things off, it’s obviously important to contextualize things. The chair we’ll be reviewing here is a Secretlab TITAN 2020 Edition that was first reviewed by me back in 2019.
After that review, I gave the chair to a close friend of mine. This person partially works from home and spends a lot of leisure time at their desk. By a very rough estimate, I’d say this chair was used for 7000-9000 hours over the past seven years. That works out to 20-25 hours of use per week, so it’s fair to say that this chair has been used extensively.
The chair was used in a pet-free home and did not sit in direct sunlight. The user weighs approximately 95kg and is around 175cm tall.
For the purpose of this review, I spent a working day in the chair and asked the person I gave it to some questions to figure out how the chair evolved over time.
Obviously, this is a sample size of one. Different body weights, climates, usage habits, and maintenance routines can all influence how a chair ages, so this shouldn’t be taken as definitive proof of how every Titan 2020 will look after seven years.
Some photos have had the background removed for privacy reasons.
Wear and Tear
For the pictures in this article, I mostly focused on the wear and tear in order to give a complete picture of how the TITAN wore down over time. With that said: I pretty much pictured all of the wear. I personally expected this chair to look way worse, given how much usage it has seen over the years.
I’ll go into more detail on the individual aspects of the chair further down in this review, but if you want the short summary: the actual chair holds up really well, with most of the damage being cosmetic.
Upholstery
The most obvious damage can be seen in the upholstery. The PRIME 2.0 PU leather has actually held up quite well throughout most of the chair, but the ‘high-stress areas’ (the seat pan sides where various different panels of PU leather are stitched together) did noticeably degrade. That’s annoying, because once PU leather starts peeling or delaminating in an area like this, continued use can cause the damage to spread. In practice, that means you’ll find small black flakes of PU material around the chair as the damaged sections continue to break off.
All of the missing/torn pieces of PU leather can be found around the seat pan seams, so perhaps Secretlab could consider covering the whole seat pan with one piece of faux leather for future models, or upping the number of stitches used. I’m not a chair designer, so I don’t know what the best answer here is, but it’s quite obvious that the faux leather only tore around the seams, so this seems like a weak point in terms of durability. The larger sheet of PU leather used on the seat pan was still totally fine near the middle (which is the most-used section of a chair) for example.
With that said, for a chair that’s been used this extensively, I’m actually quite impressed by how well the faux leather held up. The areas that haven’t torn do look a bit more faded and less textured than they did when I first reviewed the chair, but on the whole the PU leather feels quite good still.
The stitching has also fared very well. Even on the seat pan, where the PU leather gave up after some time, the stitching is still intact. I saw one section near the headrest where a piece of stitching had come loose, but other than that it still looks brand new.
Armrests
In terms of feeling, the armrests still feel exactly as they did when I first got the chair. However, they did suffer some damage over the years. A part of the rubber has cracked over time, for example. Additionally, the top of the armrests looks noticeably shinier now than it did in 2019. The adjustment button near the front also has some chipping where parts of the paint fell off.
On the whole, though, I’d say that the armrests are still in surprisingly good condition. Secretlab now uses replaceable armrests, so given the fact that the mechanism is still very much okay, I’d imagine multi-year users of newer Secretlab chairs could just order a new pair and have them look and feel brand new.
Foam
Secretlab’s signature foam seems to hold up great over the years. There’s a tiny bit of visually permanent sagging present (you can very faintly see the outline of the user’s legs if you look hard) but that’s not something that I really noticed when sitting down on the chair, and might also be a combination of the foam giving way a tiny bit and the PU leather of the seat pan stretching out somewhat as well.
In general, the TITAN 2020 felt pretty much the same as it did to me back when I first tested it. The user also reported that they didn’t notice any obvious softer spots or a different sitting sensation over the years. That’s a major pro for the overall long-term durability of the Secretlab TITAN.
Headrest
An obvious point of failure is the headrest. On this version of the chair, this still used an elasticated band, and those types of bands inevitably stretch over time. The head cushion does have a strap tightener on it, but that still leaves something to be desired in terms of headrest placement.
This issue has been fixed in later versions, though, as Secretlab added magnetic head pillows. When they first debuted those, I was not a fan, as the magnets weren’t strong enough and the headrest would often fall off. However, these days, the headrests of Secretlab chairs attach reliably and strongly.
So, while the headrest is a noticeable point of failure on the TITAN 2020, this is not an issue anymore on newer chairs. The foam of the pillow itself still feels great, and there are no visual signs of wear on the pillow exterior either.
Mechanisms
As I mentioned earlier, the mechanisms of the chair still work completely fine. The lumbar support works as it should, the wheels roll smoothly, the hydraulic base stays put, and there’s no creaking in the backrest when leaning into the chair. All in all, the Secretlab TITAN 2020 mostly feels like a chair that’s still quite new, rather than almost seven years old.
It should be noted that the person who has used the chair for the past seven years treated it relatively normally. They don’t slam the armrests, bounce around in the chair, or frequently use the full recline. They also tend to sit down normally rather than dropping their full weight into the chair.
All of the above isn’t meant to tell you how you should use a chair, but rather to give an indication of how different usage patterns can influence the longevity of a chair. But it does seem that, if you take care of your Secretlab, it will take care of you.
Conclusion
I was pleasantly surprised by how well the Secretlab TITAN 2020 has aged. After roughly seven years and somewhere around 7,000–9,000 hours of use, all of the important mechanisms still work as they should. The hydraulic base holds its position, the lumbar support works, the chair doesn’t creak, and even the foam still feels very close to how I remember it. That’s also backed up by the person who used it for all those years.
The weak point is clearly the upholstery. The PU leather around the seat pan seams has started tearing, and that makes the chair look significantly older than it otherwise feels. The armrests and elastic headrest strap also show their age, but both of those areas have been redesigned on newer Secretlab chairs, so I’d say those are not points of concern for new buyers. The headrest is now magnetic, and the armrests can be replaced, so I consider those issues fixed.
All in all, is the Titan 2020 a chair that will stay pristine for a decade? No, it’s not. The upholstery in particular betrays its age quite quickly. But this particular example does show that, when treated reasonably well, the actual chair can remain comfortable and fully functional for a very long time. And for a product that sees this many hours of use, I think that’s a pretty impressive result.
