Gaming chairs, whatcha recommend?

@Becoming @ArmandoPenblade Thank you both, appreciate it

But did you manage to get the drive letter changed!?

Ugh, yes. I juggle way too many hard drives and the primary media drive lost its letter to some rando backup drive. Cue half the software on my PC losing its entire goddamn mind in confusion :)

Nothing but the best for my boy Mando.

our_boy_mando

The Disney+ spinoff we didn’t realize we needed.

Those lovely lustrous locks

It’s been interesting reading the comments about chair mats etc. Over the years, especially with having to rent different properties, I’ve ran the full gamut of solutions to avoiding floor damage such as buying small mats (with and without teeth, plastic and fibre) and, at one point, ordering a custom-cut sheet of polycarbonate measuring 3m x 2m approx.

They’re all problematical. For carpet, no teeth guarantees slippage and annoyance. With teeth it’ll eventually crack due to the pressure concentrations caused by said teeth and the malleability of the underlying carpet. Either mat type will leave you with a patch notably lighter in colour than the surrounding carpet after a year or two of use and will necessitate getting the entire thing professionally cleaned to rectify.

Laminate wood flooring has its own problems. Unprotected, it rapidly becomes extremely scuffed and will eventually become so bad the only fix will be to replace the affected area. So you’re back to mats, and mats that can’t have teeth at that. So you’re condemned to them slipping around like crazy no matter what you do - until you cave and buy a 3m x 2m approx. sheet of polycarbonate to literally cover half the room in a manner that makes it impossible for slippage to occur. You’ll then spend the next couple of years of your life being mercilessly mocked by a bit of dirt ensconced firmly in centre of the now-covered and completely inaccessible area.

When I was finally able to buy my own home, one of the first improvements I made was to remove the office carpet and put in high-resilience artificial flooring (EvoCore, for anyone in the UK that’s interested). Unlike natural laminate it’s waterproof, less noisy and doesn’t warp or expand. I also torture-tested it (alongside a bunch of samples from other types) with knives, hammers, sandpaper etc. and found it to maintain the best appearance overall. I’m a year in with it now, no mats and no visible scuffing whatsoever. I imagine similar products exist in other countries, and would heartily recommend (do your own torturing, though).

It’s a nuclear option, I know, but it’s the only one that’s left me where I really wanted to be - simply not having to care any more. Pretty easy to cut and fit too, easier than laminate since you don’t need to ‘leave a gap’ for any expansion.

They call this luxury vinyl plank here, I think. Lots of different brands. You can do the same thing with it that you can with the laminate in terms of building some sort of… platform for the chair area. The main idea is to get away from the weaponized plastic you can get in office and box stores.

Sounds like you needed a glass mat…

My “temporary” chair that I had been using for 2 years having broken under my mouse usage, I went to try out the new Aeron, and they had to kick me out of the store because I wouldn’t leave my chair anymore.
Hopefully it will be here soon. I had forgotten how amazing this chair was to people with a back in shambles like me.

I probably would’ve tried it at the time if I’d known/thought about it. Though I don’t think it would’ve helped with the issue of ending up with a ‘clean patch’ of carpet (that dirt congregates more at the edges does not help). I guess the weight would’ve helped with slippage, though? Overall I think mats look kinda ugly no matter the matte of the mat so I’m happy to have moved away from them.

Everybody is replacing their wheels with roller skate wheels right.

I am now! I’ve actually needed to replace the wheels on my old Humanscale Freedom chair, so I just ordered something similar.

In non-pandemic times, I’d say if it’s possible to go to a store that sells lots of these sorts of chairs it’s nice to spend an hour or three and try out a lot of them, which is how I discovered my favorite chair.

I have a Haworth Zody chair that I love the hell out of (preferred to Aeron I used at work for many hours and the leap that my wife owns.) When searching for a link for the thread, google served up an add that someone is selling 'em pretty cheap. I wonder if a lot of office spaces are clearing these out due to covid and the anticipated lack of need. There’s probably a ton of deals on many options…

https://seatingmind.com/haworth/zody/?sort=priceasc&gclid=CjwKCAjwxuuCBhATEiwAIIIz0djFUn4dysw5LotlmeAzS1E0ZwmdMsFEbLPELGpdHZxn0XWwu7H70RoCkcIQAvD_BwE

Be warned that sometimes this can affect the min height of a chair. I have a chair that is for some reason quite tall, so I normally have the hydraulic lift at the lowest setting. Tried slapping roller skate wheels on it, and it lifted the chair enough that I couldn’t use it with them on. Disappointing, but they where wheels from a much much older chair so not a huge loss (and maybe they were non-standard themselves…)

A few days ago I caved and ordered a Titan XL. Delivery estimate is sometime in June… Really looking forwards to it! From your pix it seems that you put some “sleeves” onto your armrests @ArmandoPenblade - were the old ones too low or just not supportive enough?

On my old chair I replaced the wheels with the rollerblade style ones. I’m assuming the Titans have some decent ones, or should I hang on to these and xfer them?

Yeah, the original armrests are just very hard; the padding is just much more pleasant to have your arms up against all day long.

One friend put the rolletblade style wheels on his, but I haven’t made the switch myself. Default ones seem good to me, at least!

Thanks for the feedback. Here’s hoping it’ll get to me quicker than their 2 month estimate…

A week into my Aeron experience, and I woke up during the night experiencing a loud crack in my arm.
The lingering pain that was maiming my right arm is now gone, I can even take on my backpack using it, something I haven’t been able to do for years.

This chair should be covered by health insurances.