Comfy cross-legged cushiness — OPSeat Grandmaster seat review

There is a specific gaming seat design that has become extremely popular recently. They all have a certain kind of arms, a bucket-style seat, scalloped back, and a pair of cushions with two ports near the top. You know the one. What you may not know is that there are miles of difference between them, and many times it’s not immediately obvious from a quick glance. I have an early reference design from one company that holds up flawlessly to this day (other than an errant squeak here and there), but Holly got one that damned near killed her. While they looked almost identical, this second chair manufacturer moved the center of gravity too far forward, swapped the casters for cheaper ones, made the arms non-adjustable, and did such a shoddy job with the stitching that it held together for less than a week. You can imagine it’s enough to make me a little leery when another similar looking model shows up on my doorstep. To that end, I got my hands on a Grandmaster Gaming Chair from OPSeat and have spent the last three months putting it through its paces — I wanted to be sure that it’d hold up. As we’ve all had a lot more time to sit on our ass for the past few weeks, I figured I’ve got enough cheek-to-chair time to really talk about this chair. Let’s sit in and see what’s what.

I suppose after that intro the first question I should answer is that, no, this chair will not try to kill you. It’s perfectly balanced (as all things should be), letting me tilt the chair back to a hair raising 180 degrees, or lean forward pensively without fear of flipping forward like a Chevy Chase skit. Better still, the class IV pneumatic gas shock on the chair is very high quality (offering two inches of height adjustment), holding up to all sorts of abuse without giving up any movement. The chair’s frame is a heavily reinforced steel, supporting up to 300lbs, with a multi-tilt angle of 12 degrees. The adjustable arms are attached with two rather lengthy allen head bolts to hold them in place. In fact there are only five steps once you get everything unpacked to go from packed-in-box to butt-in-seat.

The arm rests on the Grandmaster have several adjustments. You can raise them high enough to be in position for typing, lower them to be out of the way entirely, and every step in between. You can slide them towards the front of the chair, or backwards to the rear so your forearms can rest comfortably. You can even adjust them horizontally, angling them about 20 degrees towards or away from the center of the chair. This “4D” adjustment is something I’ve only seen on the most premium of chairs, and it’s greatly appreciated.

The back of the chair is slightly taller than the norm at 33” (most chairs are 29” tall), which is greatly appreciated by the taller crowd. At 5’11” I found that this extra height put the headrest pillow at exactly the right position. Most gaming chairs have a width of 19”, including the flared sides. OPSeat makes a second chair called the Master that is a standard width of 21”, and a depth of 18”. I sit with my legs folded, so the Grandmaster’s generous 20” depth and 21” width with more flared side wings makes it possible to sit comfortably with my feet pulled under me. Whether you have a wider keister, or if you like to sit like a weirdo like me, this chair is comfy.

Much of the comfort, beyond the extra room, comes from the materials OPSeat has chosen to make the Grandmaster out of. The inner materials are cold molded memory foam wrapped in breathable vegan polyurethane leather. As this is faux leather, you can choose from 9 color variants with matching stitching colors to hold it together. Better still, the OPSeat team has double stitched the seams, ensuring that you won’t likely need the 2 year warranty.

Every Grandmaster chair comes with two adjustable memory foam pillows — one for your headrest, and another for lower back support. The headrest gets removed and put back on frequently as my wife doesn’t like it but I do. Unlike other chairs I’ve used, the Grandmaster uses a quick release clip to hold it in place instead of just using straps, keeping it secure when wanted and easily removed when it is not.

All of this quality shouldn’t come as a surprise, as all of the parts in the OPSeat Grandmaster are BIFMA certified. BIFMA stands for the Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturer’s Association — a company devoted to certifying furniture for maximum safety. This means that they’ve met stringent standards set for office and consumer environments — no dangerous knockoff crap here. My father-in-law, a rather rotund man (he’s working on it!), put that to the test when he plopped himself down in the chair like he was pulling an RKO out of nowhere. The chair’s gas cylinder scoffed at his weight and the Grandmaster held together without a complaint for a month without loosening a single bolt or thread.

The team at OPSeat believe in their product. So much so that they offer a 30 day money back guarantee, including shipping — no questions asked. OPSeat’s Grandmaster chair’s MSRP is $299, and the Master’s is $229. Having spent roughly 100 days with the chair, I have to agree with them — it’s worth every single penny. If this review sounds like a love letter, it’s because I simply couldn’t come up with a single thing I didn’t like about this chair. Sure, I spent $20 to swap out the casters for ones that roll easier on carpet, but that’s customization, not a con — the default works just fine. It didn’t even develop the squeaking problem my other gaming chair has. In short, the OPSeat Grandmaster may just be the best gaming chair on the market today.

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