Well, after never reviewing gaming furniture, this is my second review in the space of a month after the Velvet Hi-Back Gamer Bean Bag. This one is almost four times the price of the bean bag, and it is tricky to recommend this for that price point.
This Backforce V Gaming Chair does come all the way from Germany, and whether it is due to the joys of Brexit or just the difficulty in making the product, from putting in the order with the customised patches, it took around six weeks for the chair to arrive at my door, and it is really a huge box (but will be useful for when I move home again).
Well, once you take all the components out of the box (the elements are quite heavy), I’d recommend putting this together with someone else by your side as the components do require some technical screwing and lifting and placing certain components in place.
I will be honest, putting this together with my partner, she did swear to me to never, ever get a chair that needs to be put together ever again. This statement comes from the rather poor instructions.
Included with the packaging were the instructions, and there were no words on the manual to tell you what to do; it was purely just diagrams with pictures of what screws you will need to screw in during each part.
This would be fine if the screws didn’t look incredibly similar, and the diagrams are not particularly helpful, and what I thought would be quite a simple task took us close to two hours to put together, and to this day, I do not believe we actually did all of it correctly. But since we can sit on the chair without it falling apart on us, we took that as a win.
So, now we come to the part you actually want to read about. How does it feel to sit on this chair while you are playing for hours at a time?
Overall, I would say it is a very comfortable chair, but I will be honest, the back is a lot firmer than I am used to, but this may be due to the fact I sit on either the standard office chair for work, the aforementioned bean bag, or on a leather sofa when watching TV.
The material itself is lovely and does sit well. The actual seat is really comfy, and if you were to just use it on the floor as a cushion, it works great like that as well.
The armrests aren’t very wide and could not rest much, barring a standard smartphone or the TV remote.
This chair did not come with a cupholder or can holder, so I still have the first-world problem of getting up for a drink. There was also a little light at the back of the chair, but I’m not sure what the point of it is, to be honest.
There was also a nice customisable trick of changing the velcro patches on the shoulders of the chair, which is a cool little addition, but when you are sat on the chair, you will not notice this. Maybe this is a feature more for those who stream their games on Twitch.
In summation, yes, this is a comfortable chair that can handle several hours of gaming at a time, and you will appreciate the lumbar support that the chair supplies.
However, the chair is extremely cumbersome to move as it is really big and heavy, and if you live in a tight space, this might not be suitable for you.
If you asked me if I would stump up £400 plus shipping to get this chair into my home, I would say no, but as this is my first gaming chair, I can’t say how it compares to others in the market.