Can the costs actually be justified?
Updated: Jan 11, 2023 5:23 pm
Gaming chairs seem tempting, don’t they? Fun designs, reportedly outstanding comfort, even RGB lighting?
You cast your eyes down to look at the drab office chair you found on the street a couple of years ago and think it’s time for a change.
So you start googling. Maybe you search for Secretlab, Vertagear, or maybe even noblechairs. Your heart then sinks when you realize you can’t get anything for less than $400, which would make it one of the most expensive bits of your gaming setup.
So why are gaming chairs so expensive? How can a piece of furniture command such a large price? Well, there are a few things at play here.
Secretlab Titan EVO 2022 Series
Height range (Medium Size)
5’6″ – 6’0″
Why are gaming chairs so expensive? The ‘gamer tax’
You might have noticed that stuff like gaming keyboards, gaming mice, gaming monitors, etc are all priced far higher than their non-gaming counterparts.
You could argue that this is because these products are more purpose-built, offering higher performance than the normal alternatives.
This is true to an extent, you find that gaming keyboards feel nicer, and gaming mice are more comfortable in the hand, but that’s not the whole story.
Vertagear PL4800 gaming chair
Recommended height
175cm-198cm/5’9″-6’6″
Height adjustability
1355mm-1430mm/53.3″-56.2″
The rest of the story is provided by a nebulous pricing convention known as ‘gamer tax’. This isn’t literal taxation, instead referring to things branded for gaming being inexplicably more expensive than they otherwise would be.
By and large, it’s true. You can quite easily get a set of headphones offering better sound quality than a gaming headset for the same price.
We aren’t really sure where it came from, buts certainly part of the reason that gaming chairs are so expensive.
noblechairs Epic Copper Edition gaming chair
Backrest angle range
90° to 135°
Annoyingly, the same performance benefits we mentioned above can’t really apply to furniture, however, that’s not to say that gaming chairs are always bad, but you really do have to shell out for them.
