The SecretLab Titan Chair (Review)

At one point in time in my life I used to manage the service department of a Computerland, and our particular store was chosen by the state to deliver custom software and accommodations enabling individuals with disabilities to use computers.  As part of this, I wound up spending a good bit of time investigating computer ergonomics, and have for some time paid significant attention to the ergonomics of my home workspace, especially after aging a bit necessitated a change in my setup.

I invested in a very good office chair, but that poor chair is not quite a decade old, and the foam on the seat has degraded to the point that I've had to put at least two additional cushions underneath.  It was time for a new chair.  I'm in this thing like eight hours on a regular day, and even more on some of my irregular days, and so money was less important to me than comfort (having thrown my back out twice in the last two quarters).  I spent the time investigating, and finally decided on getting myself the Titan chair from SecretLab (I get nothing if you click that link).

I wasn't impressed with stock on hand when I did my initial search (it was the smaller unit), and I didn't want to wait for a month or more for a new chair (I'm thinking that Amazon has spoiled me).  Fortunately, over the course of a week of research, they actually wound up with both the unit and colors I wanted for immediate shipping, which meant I'd only need to wait a week.  Your mileage may vary, but I can tell you, if I could have seen and tested the chair in a showroom, I would have waited a month, but it's difficult to wait a month for something that you aren't quite sure will do the job when you needed it last week.

The chair arrived today (one day early). UPS dropped it in the middle of my long driveway instead of bringing it to the door.  At about 70 lbs, I can understand why they didn't want to walk it another 50ft to my doorway.  The humor of me having to haul a 70lb box into my house by myself to help my back wasn't lost on me (my old chair only weighed about 45 lbs or so).

The unpack itself confirmed to me that I'd made the right choice in chair, and the build was also good.  The box was huge, well packed and padded, and came with high quality assembly tools (a Philips screwdriver that I'll likely be using for a while around the house, and steel hex wrench), and the four steel bolts you need for the bottom all packed neatly in a foam insert, instead of shrink wrapped plastic.  The chair itself went together in less than fifteen minutes, and I spent about a third of that time just moving it from the living room through the narrow hallway into my office (I probably should have done final assembly in my office).  

• This thing is a monster.  The construction is much more impressive than my older office chair, but I would expect that having paid 2.5x as much for it.
• It's the first chair I've ever owned where, when the hydraulics are all the way up, my feet DON'T lay flat on the floor, which is thrilling.
• The placement of the included neck pillow, again, not a feature I thought I'd care about, but leaning back to think about something, that's perfectly placed and sized (and completely adjustable)
• It has a reclining feature which I NEVER would have thought to include as a requirement for an office chair, but having tried it out, I can tell you that yes, I COULD fall asleep in this thing.
• The armrests (also adjustable up, down, sideways and rotating) were perfectly placed as shipped.  I tried other orientations to be sure.  And again, I have room up, down, sideways or otherwise.
• It rocks (and that's adjustable).  I twitch and bounce while in deep thought, and there's something comforting about a chair that responds instead of basically being a dead weight.  My old chair did too, but that was more wobble than rock.  And I can adjust from locked in place to free rocking with a simple click.
• For a simple tweet, my 3 year warranty just became a 5 year warranty.

Frankly, so far, there are only three cons to this thing:

• I had to wait longer than I wanted for it to arrive.
• It's expensive [about $450 depending on the model] (but worth it).
• It's heavy, so if you've done something stupid to throw out your back, have someone to help you move it around.

As with any piece of furniture, the true test will be time.

My youngest is laughing at me, b/c dad has a massive gamer setup for his "work". A powerful laptop, three displays (44" ceiling mounted, 37" desk mounted swivel side monitor, and my laptop screen with a 16" 4K display), a gamer keyboard with blinking LEDs (that I turn off), and to my side, my XBox with noise cancelling headset, and flashy rainbow light wired extra-button controller for when I want to kick back, and now a fancy gamer racing chair.

I could have gone with the D.Va model, but I don't play that character so well, and the pink would clash with my office décor.

     Keith

P.S. A couple of you asked for a review, so here you have it.