Gaming chairs or work from home chairs? Ars tests two under $500

Enlarge / The Secretlab Omega (left) made a better first impression, but Anda Fnatic (right) won me over in the end. (credit: Secretlab / Anda)

One of the most important accessories of every home office frequently gets overlooked: the chair. With this year's COVID-19-related social distancing and mandatory remote work, many of us are spending a lot more time behind a desk at home than before-and without the right chair, that extra time can translate into discomfort or outright back pain.

I've never had much luck with "cheap" office chairs-a $350 mid-back office chair frequently turns into a throne of pain without sufficient extended breaks to get up and move around. Trendy Aeron chairs provide somewhat better ergonomic support for extended periods of seated work-but their $1,100 and up price tag is a little hard to swallow for many of us. This leaves the home office worker's secret weapon-the gaming chair.

It has been my experience that you get more-and more comfortable-chair for your money when you shop for gaming chairs. They're designed for maximum comfort and ergonomic support for long seating periods, and they're generally designed to support larger and heavier people than office chairs are as well. And they need to do it within a reasonable budget.

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