If you spend a lot of time sitting in front of a desk, for any reason, the extra comfort throughout the day may be well worth the price of entry.
A gaming chair is basically a super comfortable, often super-adjustable office chair. Slap a few splashes of color on it and, in this case, the name of a well-known esports brand, and all of a sudden it costs much more than a standard office chair.
That can’t be worth the price tag, can it?
Design
If you’re even remotely familiar with esports, you’re probably familiar with the Fnatic name. In case you’re not, Fnatic is an esports brand with several teams across major games including League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Fortnite, Dota 2, Rainbow Six: Siege, and more.
Now that you definitely know what Fnatic is, it’s important to know that it doesn’t matter. What really matters is whether you like the look of the team’s name and logo on your chair.
The Fnatic name appears prominently on the chair’s trim and the lumbar support pillow. Its logo appears on that same pillow and is emblazoned on the back of the chair, albeit in a relatively classy black-on-black print.
The AndaSeat name also appears, but less prominently. Neither of these really matters as much as the color scheme, which is eye-catching, to say the least. While most of the chair is black, the splashes of orange—the same used in Fnatic’s official logo—offset this nicely, with just enough asymmetry to give the chair a modern look.
This orange extends to the controls for the height adjustment and rocking function underneath the chair. Aesthetically this is nice, but it also makes these easier to spot if you’re peeking under the chair trying to find them.
Features
You might be thinking “What features? It’s a chair!” Clearly, you’ve never met a gaming chair before.
Part of the sleek look of the AndaSeat Fnatic Edition comes down to the PVC leather. This is meant not just to look nice, but to add to the chair’s comfort as well.
The chair also features much larger pillows than what I’ve typically seen on gaming chairs. The lumbar pillow specifically is both wider and taller, without being so large as to promote back issues rather than keep them at bay.
Most of the time, you need to choose between a chair that rocks back or a chair with an adjustable backrest. The AndaSeat Fnatic Edition gives you both, with a recline angle up to 160 degrees as well as a rocking mode.
Finally, the chair features what AndaSeat refers to as “4D armrests.” This is a fancy-sounding feature that basically means these are super-adjustable armrests that can go up, down, in, out, forward, and backward. You can even rotate them laterally.
We’ll see how these features actually stack up in a little bit, but first let’s look at what it’s like putting the chair together.
Assembling the Chair
The AndaSeat Fnatic Edition came out of the box less assembled than I’ve ever encountered with a chair before. This didn’t make it any more difficult to assemble than any other chair, but there were a few more steps involved.
You should have no problem assembling the chair by yourself. The included manual does a good job of walking you through the steps and everything you need to put the chair together is in the box, including a dual-sided hex wrench.
The most difficult portion of assembly—and one that I’ve found equally difficult on other gaming chairs—is attaching the back of the seat to the bottom. Lining up the screws with their posts, which are somewhat inside of the material on the back of the chair, is slightly tricky, but you’ll get it with a little time.
Despite the fact that this chair is heavy, even for a gaming chair, lifting the body of the chair on to the wheel assembly wasn’t difficult. I imagine this has something to do with how the weight is balanced, because I’ve had a harder time with lighter chairs.
Overall, this was probably the easiest build I’ve ever had with a gaming chair. If only the factory had the same luck.
Build Quality
Overall the chair feels solid and well-built. I’m sure part of this solid feel has to do with the sheer weight. That said, there were some spots that felt a little flimsy.
Specifically, the armrests—which AndaSeat talks a big game on—felt a little cheap. In my case, the button for adjusting the height of the left armrest sticks, meaning you need to manually push it back down in order to get it to stay put.
Fortunately, none of the other buttons for adjusting the armrest have any issues. Moving them forward, backward, or toward or away from your body works as intended. Adjusting the angle of the armrests always feels a little like I’m about to break them, but so far they’ve held up fine.
The AndaSeat Fnatic Edition is also one of the most well-balanced chairs I’ve ever encountered. Leaning the back of the chair back as far as it will go, engaging the rocking mechanism, and leaning back feels like you should fall over. Thanks to the heavy base and the Z-shape design, you don’t.
This isn’t exactly practical, but it is fun. Speaking of which, this chair feels like it features almost no rotational resistance. If you judge a chair by how many spins you can get out of it, prepare to get a little dizzy.
Comfort
Given the price combined with the issues with the relatively cheap-feeling armrests, I was ready to write this chair off as absolutely not worth it. Then I sat in it and all of a sudden, those other issues didn’t seem to matter as much.
One of the major factors in just how comfortable the AndaSeat Fnatic Edition feels is the use of memory foam in both the bottom and back of the chair. Even before verifying on the AndaSeat site, I could tell it was memory foam, partly by the feel, but also by that tell-tale smell of freshly unboxed memory foam.
The neck pillow and lumbar support pillow use memory foam as well. This means both of them feel firmer than the pillows I’ve used on similar but lower-priced chairs in the past. I personally like this, but your mileage may vary here.
The “4D armrest” feature is something I’ve never encountered on a chair, and aside from the issues I mentioned above, this helps a great deal with comfort as well. Setting the armrests low, far forward, and tilted outward almost gave the chair the feeling of a high-tech take on an old-fashioned wingback chair.
My expectations weren’t all that high when I first signed on to review this chair. Having tested gaming chairs before, I just figured this one be another one of those. I was wrong.
This is the most expensive chair I’ve tested to date, which I initially chalked up to the Fnatic name being attached. That said, it was far more comfortable than similar chairs in the $300 range that I’ve tried in the past.
One thing to keep in mind if you’re considering buying the AndaSeat Fnatic Edition is that if you’ve got a smaller build, the fit may be odd. I’m not a small person, but even for me, the chair felt somewhat on the wide side.
Compared to a standard office chair or even a gaming chair, the AndaSeat felt more like sitting down in an armchair. Some people, even smaller people, will love this, but it’s not what you may be expecting.
On the company’s website, it mentions a recommended height range of 180cm (roughly 5'10") to 210cm (roughly 6'10"). Similarly, when it comes to weight, AndaSeat recommends 150kg (330lbs) or less, though the maximum static load is 200kg (440lbs).
Should You Buy The AndaSeat Fnatic Edition?
The AndaSeat Fnatic Edition is pricey, not Acer Predator Thronos Air pricey, but still pricey.
It also had some surprising issues with build quality, and it is quite frankly completely unnecessary. If that’s the case, why am I still feeling the urge to recommend it? Probably because I’m sitting in it as I write this review.
After I’d gathered my own notes on the AndaSeat Fnatic Edition, I looked around the web to see if others had encountered the same issues I had with the armrests. It seems I may have just reviewed the odd bad unit. This makes the AndaSeat far easier to recommend.
Yes, for the price of this chair, you could almost buy one of the next-generation video game consoles. That said, this chair isn’t only for gaming. If you spend a lot of time sitting in front of a desk, for any reason, the extra comfort throughout the day may be well worth the price of entry.
