I’ve been through the gamut on these a little bit… The cheaper “gaming chairs” on Amazon are absolutely freaking horrible. I had an AKRacing chair that had such an extreme forward tilt that it would cause me to slide forward out of the chair constantly. The seat had little to no cushioning, so it felt like I was resting my thighs against a metal bar with a thin layer of sticky vinyl over it. And then I’d slide out. Over and over again. It had a full horizontal recline, but then it would just tip over.
I did get an employer to spring for a DXRacer King “executive” chair once (~$400 in 2016ish dollars), and that was tolerable. It was just another office chair, but with goofy aesthetics and a lumbar pillow. All in all, not that bad, but not really worthwhile if you were to buy it out-of-pocket. I imagine the same could be said of the SecretLabs Titan/Titan XL or the Noblechairs Hero. I haven’t used either because I was able to score a refurbished Herman Miller Aeron for cheap with my TrumpBuxTM back in the early days of the plague. If you’re already at the $400-500 tier, this is the way to go. The upshot to having an Aeron is that, 99% of the time, if you need to buy replacement parts, they’re readily available. So far, I’ve had to replace an arm rest mounting brace and seat link bolts, but I’m also occasionally in this thing for 16-18 hours out of a single day.
If that’s out of reach, then my recommendation is the OfficeMax/OfficeDepot “WorkPro Quantum 9000” mesh chair if you can find one on sale in the $300 range. My only complaint on those is that the back doesn’t lock in place very well and will occasionally just fall down because the “lock” is cheap plastic. They’re not horrible for prolonged use on account of the mesh, but going back and forth between that and the Aeron was definitely noticeable.
I’ve been through the gamut on these a little bit… The cheaper “gaming chairs” on Amazon are absolutely freaking horrible. I had an AKRacing chair that had such an extreme forward tilt that it would cause me to slide forward out of the chair constantly. The seat had little to no cushioning, so it felt like I was resting my thighs against a metal bar with a thin layer of sticky vinyl over it. And then I’d slide out. Over and over again. It had a full horizontal recline, but then it would just tip over.
I did get an employer to spring for a DXRacer King “executive” chair once (~$400 in 2016ish dollars), and that was tolerable. It was just another office chair, but with goofy aesthetics and a lumbar pillow. All in all, not that bad, but not really worthwhile if you were to buy it out-of-pocket. I imagine the same could be said of the SecretLabs Titan/Titan XL or the Noblechairs Hero. I haven’t used either because I was able to score a refurbished Herman Miller Aeron for cheap with my TrumpBuxTM back in the early days of the plague. If you’re already at the $400-500 tier, this is the way to go. The upshot to having an Aeron is that, 99% of the time, if you need to buy replacement parts, they’re readily available. So far, I’ve had to replace an arm rest mounting brace and seat link bolts, but I’m also occasionally in this thing for 16-18 hours out of a single day.
If that’s out of reach, then my recommendation is the OfficeMax/OfficeDepot “WorkPro Quantum 9000” mesh chair if you can find one on sale in the $300 range. My only complaint on those is that the back doesn’t lock in place very well and will occasionally just fall down because the “lock” is cheap plastic. They’re not horrible for prolonged use on account of the mesh, but going back and forth between that and the Aeron was definitely noticeable.