If I asked you to name one of the best office chairs offhand, there&#;s a strong chance that you might bring up the Herman Miller Aeron thanks to its iconic design and popularity. Now if I did the same thing with the best gaming chairs, it&#;s very likely you&#;d bring up the Secretlab Titan Evo. However, while Herman Miller is known for its premium office chairs, the company has been making great strides when it comes to gaming too.
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Several years ago, Herman Miller announced that it had entered into a partnership with Logitech G, which is the Swiss peripheral maker&#;s gaming division. This collaboration was intended as a way for both companies to create the next generation of high-performance home office furniture for gamers.
Just like Haworth did with its Xbox line of gaming chairs, the first products to emerge from this partnership were gaming variants of several Herman Miller office chairs. These included the Embody Gaming Chair, Aeron Gaming Chair and the Sayl Gaming Chair, which were all released simultaneously back in . Herman Miller and Logitech G weren&#;t done there though. A few months later, the first true gaming chair to come out of their collaboration was released in the form of the Herman Miller Vantum.
Over the summer, I visited my local Herman Miller store and had a chance to try out every single Herman Miller office chair. It was great going hands-on and learning more about the research and work that went into every one of the company&#;s chairs. While I actually preferred the Cosm over both the Aeron and the Embody, the Vantum immediately caught my eye.
I reached out to Herman Miller, and they sent over their Vantum gaming chair for me to test out. I&#;ve been using it for several weeks now, and while I&#;m still putting together my full review, I have to say that so far, I&#;m thoroughly impressed. Here&#;s everything you need to know about the Vantum including the one thing that sets it apart from every other Herman Miller office chair and gaming chair.
Breaking tradition
(Image credit: Tom's Guide)
If you&#;re familiar with Herman Miller&#;s office chairs, you&#;ll immediately notice the one thing that&#;s different with the Vantum. Unlike the Aeron, Embody, Sayl or even the Cosm, it features an adjustable headrest &#; and for good reason.
With an ergonomic chair, you technically don&#;t need a headrest. This is because they&#;re designed to promote good posture by supporting you from the bottom up. When you don&#;t have a headrest, you&#;re also less likely to hunch over when seated at your desk or even one of the best standing desks.
With the Vantum though, Herman Miller decided to break tradition by adding a headrest. The chair itself was designed specifically to support a gamer&#;s upright, active posture. This is great when you&#;re focused on a more competitive game like a first-person shooter or a fighting game like the recently released Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection. However, what if you&#;re playing a more story-driven, single-player game? If you&#;re working your way through Persona 3 Reload or even Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, then you might want to kick back and relax instead. Hence, the headrest.
(Image credit: Tom's Guide)
One thing that I really like about the Herman Miller Vantum is that it&#;s more like an office chair than a gaming chair in a similar way to the Razer Fujin Pro. It doesn&#;t feature an all-mesh design like that chair but it does have a mesh back to keep you cool while gaming. However, the Vantum&#;s backrest which is made from a proprietary elastomer and polyester feels like fabric to the touch while still providing plenty of airflow.
The Vantum foregoes a mesh seat for an adapted seat pad with Herman Miller&#;s PostureFit which supports your lower back and reinforces the pelvis. Like the rest of the chair&#;s design, this helps prevent slouching and fatigue.
(Image credit: Tom's Guide)
Even though the Vantum has a mesh backrest, both your upper and lower back still get plenty of support. At the base of the backrest, there&#;s a lumbar support pad which has a second part above it to support your back&#;s sacrum. However, at the top of the backrest, you also get a thoracic support pad to support your upper back, neck and even your head. It works in conjunction with the Vantum&#;s headrest to relieve pressure buildup.
While the Vanum is the only Herman Miller chair with a headrest, it&#;s also the first and only gaming chair with a thoracic support pad. Hopefully, we see other gaming and office chair makers follow suit as trust me, it makes a big difference when you&#;re seated for extended periods.
Posture meets comfort
(Image credit: Tom's Guide)
Although the Herman Miller Vantum is available in several different colorways from lilac to teal along with your standard all black and black and white, I went with the black and red version as I&#;ve also been partial to this color scheme. It&#;s worth noting that regardless of which colorway you get, the Vantum&#;s seat, backrest and headrest all come in black while the secondary color is used for the chair&#;s base, frame and as accents on its tilt adjustment knobs.
As I have a separate desk dedicated to gaming outside my home office, I decided to pair the Vantum with the Secretlab Magnus Pro where I have my Xbox Series X and the AtomMan G7 PT mini PC which I recently reviewed. There, I spent time playing the best Steam games on the mini PC while working my way through an upcoming RPG from Atlus that I&#;m in the middle of reviewing.
When seated in the Vantum, I immediately noticed a difference compared to some of the other office chairs I&#;ve tested in the past. I felt as if I couldn&#;t slouch in the chair even if I had wanted to. My posture was pristine and though I didn&#;t need the headrest when sitting upright, I found that the curve on the bottom perfectly aligned with the back of my neck when lowered all the way down. I actually stumbled upon this when taking my initial photos as I need the chairs I photograph to be as low as possible so that I can fit the whole chair in the frame more easily.
(Image credit: Tom's Guide)
I also spent some time leaning back in the Vantum while gaming and here, the headrest certainly came in handy. Getting the perfect recline angle with this chair was easy too as Herman Miller has included numeric feedback when adjusting the knob on its right underside. This is easier to see for yourself in person but essentially, as you move through the Vantum&#;s tilt adjustments, the knob stops along the way instead of rotating continuously. That way, you can easily remember your preferred settings even if someone else uses your chair.
The Vantum was extremely comfortable to use while gaming to the point that I played for a lot longer each time I started a game, almost like back when I was a kid without any responsibilities. While there&#;s still more testing to do ahead of my full review, I&#;m very impressed with Herman Miller&#;s first chair purposely built for gamers.
The best of both worlds
If you&#;re in the market for a gaming chair but also want the added support and better ergonomics of an office chair, the Vantum really hits that sweet spot between the two. You get that gamer aesthetic and comfort without having to sacrifice good posture. Likewise, you won&#;t look out of place in a video call, granted you don&#;t get up from your seat and spin the Vantum around.
Even then though, this is the type of chair that&#;s sure to turn heads and it looks fantastic when pushed into your desk. Back in June, Herman Miller added more color variants to the Vantum lineup which include a deep blue color (Nightfall) and the lilac variation (Mystic) I mentioned earlier. However, there&#;s even a bright orange version (Helio) and a green one (Abyss). Besides these new colors, Herman Miller also gave the Vantum a significant overhaul with an enhanced headrest with improved adjustability and a new rotation pad design.
The Vantum is on the higher end when it comes to gaming chairs at $895 but it does come with a 12-year warranty. If you&#;ve always wanted a Herman Miller chair with a headrest and even if you don&#;t have a penchant for gaming, this chair doesn&#;t disappoint.
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In our new advice column, Ask the Strategist, we take your most burning shopping questions and scour friends, call up experts, and draw from personal experience to answer them. As always, please comment with one of your own &#; we&#;re here to help.
Question: I&#;ve always wondered about those gaming chairs. I&#;ve seen quite a few people sit in them in Twitch videos, and if anyone sits in a chair a lot, it&#;s professional gamers. But they look so uncomfortable.
Gaming chairs: so obvious, so niche, so fugly. We&#;ve written about the best home-office chairs and the very weird, but also very comfortable, ergonomic kneeling chairs, but wouldn&#;t a seat specifically designed for people sitting and practicing video-gaming for 12 hours a day actually be the best?
&#;There&#;s a perception that they&#;re only good for gaming, but they&#;re good for anyone who spends ten hours in front of a computer,&#; says Daniel Yamilkoskim, a full-time, professional Overwatch player for CL Gaming. &#;Once more people try them out, they&#;ll become more acceptable.&#;
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So let&#;s begin with a little history: The first gaming chairs arrived in the mid-aughts, around , with a company called DXRacer that originally manufactured seats for luxury sports cars. Ever since then, gaming chairs were designed to look like race-car seats, which kind of makes sense, considering that&#;s really the only possible way to make sitting for long periods of time look sporty.
DXRacer makes an office version of their gaming chair.
But there was something else about racing seats, &#;That&#;s how you get the most possible support without feeling compressed,&#; says Thomas Klein, the CEO of Need for Seat, a gaming-chair company founded a few years later. &#;The main secret with gaming chairs is that the backrest is much higher than a regular office chair. We support the shoulders and back so you don&#;t start feeling tired. The more support your muscles have on the back and shoulders, the more the chair pushes you straight.&#; It&#;s a mix between being comfortable and being challenged, so your body is pushed upright and doesn&#;t feel pain from sitting in the same position for so long.
And they were also more adjustable than any other chair on the market, &#;Gaming chairs are more comfortable because they&#;re very customizable,&#; says Yamilkoskim, the Overwatch player whose first gaming chair was a DXRacer that he bought even before he went pro. &#;You can adjust the back of the chair, the lumbar support, the tilt, the headrest, and the armrests go all possible ways.&#;
The key with PC gaming, and sitting at a computer in general, really, is that the desk is fixed, so the chair should be completely adjustable to make you as comfortable as possible at that unmoving desk. That&#;s what gaming chairs do. You&#;ll be hard-pressed to find a regular office chair that can adjust in as many different ways as a gaming chair is designed to do, like sitting back at a full 165-degree angle, or angling the armrests every which way, or just taking them off completely. Even the lumbar support moves up and down according to the user&#;s needs.
Back when DXRacer decided to get into gaming, there wasn&#;t much else going on in the space. But a year later, Twitch &#; the online service where gamers livestream themselves gaming &#; was founded, and it became even more important to have a cool chair, one of the only ways to stand out and also mark yourself as a legit gamer. Since then, DXRacer sponsored several tournaments in and , inspired other companies to get into the gaming-chair market and remains the original inventor and standard-bearer of the chairs.
Maxnomic Classix Pro
$399
As eSports expanded, so did the gaming-chair market. Now, a company called Need for Seat, named after the founder&#;s favorite game, Need For Speed, has become the official chair partner for Microsoft (and Xbox), the League of Legends Championship series, Red Bull gaming, and CEO Thomas Klein told me that Shaquille O&#;Neal uses one when he covers sports on TV because it&#;s the only comfortable chair for his seven-foot frame.
Klein admits that when he started Need for Seat, he was selling adjusted DXRacer seats, but he&#;s since become the official distributor of his own brand, Maxnomic chairs, and specifically advertises his midrange chairs as being fit for the office. Klein also makes sure to note that his chairs mimic the firmness of a Tempur-Pedic because they&#;ve found that when the chair is too soft, muscles get tired quicker, and they&#;re made of cooling materials that&#;ll regulate body temperature as you sit all day.
$399
at Need for Seat
Buy
Noble Chairs Icon Top Grain Leather Gaming Chair
$674
Alexander Müller, managing director of SK Gaming, prefers Noble Chairs. These land on the higher end of the gaming-seat spectrum, are made in Germany, and claim to be the first gaming chairs made out of real leather. They are perhaps making the biggest push of the gaming-chair circuit to look less like they&#;re meant for teen gamers and more for a corporate executive (with a price tag to reflect that as well).
$674
at Overclockers U.K.
Buy
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