Hunting down that perfect chair is quite an effort, especially if you don’t want to spend tons of money on what you seat while gaming.
As we’ll see in the Merax gaming chair review, Merax is the best of all budget gaming chairs. It contains the majority of features the high- and mid-end chairs have (like adjustable armrests and thick comfortable padding) but at half the cost.
If we have a fair look at the majority of chairs under $100, there are usually non-durable pieces of… cheap materials all crammed in to make a cool looking gaming chair.
Just one glance of a gaming chair and you can easily notice superior build quality, striking racing colors and the triple ergonomic support (lumbar, high back support, left and right back). Not the mention the 3.6 inch broad and comfortable armrests.
But, of course, we don’t want just a glance, we want a thorough assessment of Merax chairs to look under the hood and see what makes it one of the best selling gaming chairs in the world (with Amazon’s Choice badge):
Merax PP033082CAA Gaming Chair Review (With Racing Design)
There is a bunch of different Merax gaming chair. Just to clear the confusion: we’re going to cover the best-selling Merax PP033082CAA chair. I don’t really know why Merax chooses ton name their chairs in such a complicated manner (I mean, my passwords are simpler than that, and I couldn’t recall any of them – thank you, auto-login).
All that matters is that Merax does design some of the best gaming chairs (but can’t name them properly for the life of them).
Also, let’s get the ‘racing chair’ tag out of the way here. Merax chair is primarily a computer gaming chair.
So why it’s the racing chair?
Simply put – the design. It does look like a cockpit, feels like a cockpit when you sit in it, but the naming ‘racing chair’ comes only from the strippy design (which is kind of cool looking, to be honest).
Build Quality Of Merax Chair
The easiest and quickest way how to assess if a gaming chair is built with quality materials is just by looking at the weight of the chair.
Lower quality chairs will usually weigh under 40 pounds because they are made out of hard plastics and plastics don’t way as much as thick foam or steel.
Merax gaming chair weighs 55 pounds; that’s quite a lot! The heavier the chair, the better. It might be more difficult to move around but the Merax chair is more stable and sturdier because of the high-quality materials used in its design.
Merax likes to point out their 6 points about Merax gaming chair. I don’t know if you notice but all 6 of them are in some way connected with the use of high-quality materials that the chair is built out of:
What Makes Merax One Of The Most Comfortable Gaming Chairs? (Padding, Padding, Padding)
If you just look at the first thing: “Comfortable headrest”. Every gaming chair has some kind of headrest but not all of them are comfortable. What makes a headrest comfortable is the adequate padding and the covering.
Merax, for example, features a deep padded cushioning all over the chair.
It’s especially deep where you have your high back or neck, at the lumbar position of the back and where you, well, seat your ass down. All three things make Merax one of the most comfortable gaming chair.
The Only Budget Gaming Chair With Ergonomic Brilliance
An ergonomic chair is one (important) step forward from just a comfortable. In short, ergonomic gaming chair such should neatly secure your spine with quite a specific layout of foam paddings and cushioning.
Being ergonomic is the key feature of every good gaming chair. I know, I know, they should look amazing and have thousands of extra features, but honestly, if they are not ergonomic, sitting on them for long hours can drain you of energy because ‘you’re just sitting wrong’ and you can lose your focus in long games.
What really gives Merax chair an edge as far as padding is concerned is the padding that covers your back from the left and right. Here is how Merax earns a badge of being an ergonomic gaming chair:
- High back padding.
- Lumbar support.
- Big-ass cushion for your ass.
- Padding on the left and right side of the spine.
All the paddings and support cushions are made out of high-density thick foam, not some soft and fluffy stuff.
On a side note: Many gaming chairs claim they are ergonomic. Well, they are not. You can always look at how the game is built with a spine in mind and see for yourself if a gaming chair is really as ergonomic as they claim or not.
The surprising thing about Merax being a truly ergonomic chair is that you can hardly find a chair below $200 that has that many ergonomic features. In general, ergonomic features are expensive and you don’t expect them on cheaper chairs.
Merax Is Covered In PU Leather
All that padding has to be covered with something. As you can see in this Merax gaming chair review, we do focus on how well a gaming chair is built.
Do you like chemistry? PU stands for PolyUrethane, a chemical polymer out of which we make synthetic leather – the PU leather.
Admittedly, Merax does not come covered with top-notch genuine leather (which is expensive as ****). Nonetheless, when we review gaming chair covering materials, we only have to have two finds in mind:
- How skin-friendly is the cover? Many of us sweat quite a bit on our gaming chairs and that added connection with skin via the ‘sweat-bridge’ has to be friendly and non-irritating.
- What is the durability of the material? Does it wear and tear after only a few months of use or will it last for several years?
Well, PU leather is by default wear-resistant and cannot easily tear. Of course, both of those things depend on what is underneath the PU leather.
What about skin-friendliness? Unfortunately, it’s not the strong point of PU leather to be very skin-friendly. We highly recommend staying away from bare ass gaming. 🙂
PU leather can be slightly irritating to the skin if you sit on it naked for 10+ hours. However, even if you’re gaming the whole day in your pajamas or a plain T-shirt, you don’t have to be concerned that the PU leather of Merax gaming chair will have any effect on your skin.
360 Degree Swivel And 90 Degree Back-Tilt.
The two requirements every good chair for gaming should have are the swivel (360 degrees) and 90 degrees back tilt for when you need a little nap.
Personally, I’m not a big fan of the back tilt function. When you need a little rest between gaming, it’s just easier and much more comfortable to jump in bed.
It’s nice that Merax can accommodate such watching but this is not an extra feature that has a lot of value in my choice of gaming chairs.
Merax comes with a solid lock function for a tilt mechanism; that’s really important. Some cheaply made chairs can just snap from 120-degree to the 180-degree angle when the tilt mechanism fails and that can really cause a spike in one’s adrenaline.
Adjustable Armrests And Height (Really Important)
There are no gaming chairs custom made for your body height and constitution. If you want a chair that is specially designed for you, the closest you can come is by having “everything adjustable”. Gladly, the Merax gaming chair offers quite a lot of adjustments:
- Seat height adjustments. The whole range of motion covers 3.8 inches in total. With the lowest setting, even 5 foot 4 guys can use this chair, and the highest seat can accommodate tall guys over 6 foot 2.
- Armrest height adjustments (extra features). The fact that Merax armrests are so broad (3.6 inches across) also makes Merax one of the most comfortable gaming chairs around. They can also be moved up and down to match your height.
250 lbs Maximum Weight Limit
Do you know those chairs that have a prescribed weight limit of 300+ lbs and when a guy 300 lbs guy sits on it, it nearly destroys the gaming chair?
Well, this is not one of those chairs. The Merax weight limit is a bit conservative – if you’re over 250 lbs, you should probably be looking for a bigger chair. Nonetheless, if you are below 250 lbs, you’ll have no problems sitting on it comfortably (and have all the heavy padding at your command).
The heavy duty gas lift is included in the package and if you’re 200 lbs or so, the lifting mechanism will work flawlessly. It can struggle a bit between 200 and 250 lbs, however.
What Are The Dimensions Of The Merax Chair?
Of course, knowing how big is Merax should help you decide if you’re, well, big enough to sit on it.
So how big it is?
The 55-pound chair has:
- Seat size of 21.6 x 20.1 inch. Perfect for standard-sizes and a bit bigger asses.
- Back size of 25.2 x 33.1 inch. That’s quite broad because of the dense left and right back support size.
If you fear that Merax chair might be too big, don’t worry that much about it.
Summary: Here Is Why Merax Is The Best-Selling Budget Gaming Chair
When you look at the Merax chair’s price, it is not hard to wonder if this is just an ordinary gaming chair with basic features and not a lot of ergonomic qualities.
However, if you look at all the features pointed out in the Merax gaming chair review, you can be quite in awe at how much extra features such as thick dense foam and triple ergonomic cushions (lumbar, high back and left and right back cushioning) the Merax offers.
It’s not hard to see why the Merax is selling like hot cakes.
| Pros: | Cons: |
|---|---|
|
|
| Build Materials: |  |
| Ergonomics: |  |
| Comfortability: |  |
| Extra Features: |  |
| Price: |  |
| Overall Rating: |  |
| Buy on Amazon |
Some other reviews of Merax gaming chair:
- GamingScan – They are a blog that scans everything that concerns gaming, such as, you know, games and keyboards and stuff. In their review, they point out the Merax really has a lot of bang for a chair that costs less than $200. Merax review score: 8.2/10.
- TheWired Shopper – Helping you shop online is what they do. They created the list of Top 10 Gaming Chairs in 2019 and included the Merax as Economy Top Seller chair.
- ChairThrone – Gamer’s chair is his throne (or her’s, of course, we’re very gender fluid in this gaming community). They also point out how that it’s quite amazing that such a great gaming chair costs only about $150. Kuddos for Merax, I guess.
