When you’re watching streamers on Twitch, or browsing the set-ups of the top esports pro players, you’ll likely see their specific choice of gaming chair. These can look pretty different to a standard desk chair or just be slightly more ergonomically designed, but it doesn’t exactly feel clear what they do. It is a common question to ask what exactly does a gaming chair do? A chair can’t exactly magically grant you the power to start winning more Warzone games or racking up the elims in Fortnite Arena mode. So why exactly is a gaming chair, and what does it do? There are actually lots of benefits of gaming chairs, especially when it comes to posture and comfort.
A lot of the difference comes down to the design of your specific chair, but they can make a real difference. Gaming chairs offer better posture when gaming. They come with enough adjustable supports to get a comfortable position while gaming. They’re specifically designed for the long use that gamers need them for. That’s while keeping you from destroying your posture from hours of gaming! These are the main benefits of gaming chairs, and what exactly it is that they do.
What Do Gaming Chairs Do?
Gamers can play for quite a stretch of time, hours and hours. Over time, this takes a serious toll on your health. Now, you probably know that it’s good to take breaks for the benefit of your eyes and posture, but that often doesn’t happen. If you’re playing in a tournament in a game or really trying to grind out for some improvement, then it isn’t always convenient to hop off and stretch out. So gaming chairs are set up to allow you to game for longer periods, with impacting your health.
You can safely play for longer, without sacrificing your comfort. That’s the main benefits of gaming chairs. They’re ergonomically designed to suit the length of time people game for, and how they sit to play games. Normal office chairs are designed for sitting and typing or other general office work. That’s not made up to let you make large mouse movements for aim and react as quickly as your game allows you. On top of that, gaming chairs typically cost less than ergonomic office chairs, since they’re built for consumers not corporate purchasers.
There are a number of major differences between gaming and normal chairs, but these are the main benefits of gaming chairs:
Main Benefits of Gaming Chairs
Ergonomically Designed for Gaming
This is the major feature. Gaming chairs have the ergonomic benefits of high-end office chairs, but they’re specifically designed for gaming. Using a PC for gaming has different needs rather than just using one generally. This manifests in a lot of different ways, even down to your eye level placement. To perform well in a game, you need to be able to sit in comfort without straining yourself to control your PC.
Gaming chairs typically come with the support for your posture and long-term health that you need. This comes from the extra padding which is specifically designed for more comfortable gaming. The backrests, headrests, and other components can be adjusted to a much greater degree of angles than a typical office chair.
Gaming chairs get their design from race car chairs. They’re supposed to be comfortable to sit on for a long period of time while facilitating quick reaction times. Most gaming chairs feature a lot of foam, for added comfort. However, they’re also shaped to encourage good posture. Poor sitting positions over long periods is seriously bad for your posture, and cause long-term health effects.
Benefits of Gaming Chairs – They’re Adaptable
Part of what makes a great gaming chair so comfortable is that they’re adjustable and customizable for you to use. You can tailor them to your specific build. This ensures everyone can get the health benefits and comfort, not just someone with an average body type.
Things like adjustable headrests make sure you can always sit in comfort. You can also tailor these aspects to suit the way that your gaming PC is set up. For example, adjusting the headrest to get a perfect eye level view of your monitor.
The adjustable armrests are a feature which are a bit more important than they might seem. While it does help people of different sizes get the same level of comfort, there are other bonuses. If you use a bigger mouse pad for more accurate aiming in games, adjustable armrests allow you to configure your chair for comfortable bigger movements. You can sit comfortable, and have the full range of movement.
The Aesthetics of Gaming Chairs
This is one of the benefits of gaming chairs which is kind of obvious at first glance. You can tailor how they look to suit your set-up. If you have a set-up that goes with a specific color scheme, you can get that done. If your set-up is tailored to a specific game, there are even gaming chairs that suit that too!
On the other hand though, if you’re looking for something that can pass for an ordinary office chair, then a gaming chair can be used too. You can get a gaming chair with a relatively plain look. Essentially, the design isn’t going to be an issue here.
Long Term Comfort and Health
While it might not be the most interesting, one of the biggest benefits of gaming chairs is for your long-term health. They help you keep a decent posture and stay comfortable. If you’re going to be gaming for an extended period, you really need to be watching out for the way it impacts on your posture and your health. A properly set-up gaming chair is going to take care of this problem for you.
Specifically though, the long-term thing needs to be stressed. Sitting badly doesn’t cause a problem until its done a lot and for a long-term, then it is a bit too late. A gaming chair can avoid this by facilitating longer periods of sitting with the right posture.
Benefits of Gaming Chairs – Price
The price of a gaming chair is actually quite a bit lower than your average ergonomic chair. So if you’re looking for comfort and health benefits at a better price, this is the way to go. Ergonomic chairs with the same benefits are often more costly and for a good reason.
Ergonomic office chairs are primarily produced for use in professional settings. These chairs are manufactured and priced to be bought by larger organizations with budgets for buying in bulk. Essentially, they’re not really made for consumer or domestic use.
Because of this, they’re priced high on the consumer side. Bigger corporations have more cash to burn and the incentive for buying in bulk is more important. So ergonomic chairs aren’t really priced to buy for use at home, which makes them more expensive than they really need to be. The target market for gaming chairs is gamers, playing at home on a decent set-up. They’re priced to be bought in singles, not over priced so a salesman can cut a discount on a bulk order. If you go for a quality gaming chair, you’re probably going to be getting more for your money than with a professional ergonomic chair. One of the most important benefits of gaming chairs.
Are Gaming Chairs Worth it?
Those are the major benefits of using a gaming chair over a normal chair or an ergonomic office chair. So are they worth a purchase? There’s a lot of reasons why you should consider them. The long-term health effects make them a slightly more sensile and boring purchase than that fancy new graphics card, but one that is definitely going to pay off in the longer run. That’s just the start of your set-up though Read more below about the more exciting parts of building a great gaming setup: the PC itself.