Secretlab Titan Evo 2022 gaming chair review

The Secretlab Titan is the benchmark by which we judge all other gaming chairs. To earn that role it ticked all the boxes you could ask of gaming furniture: it's comfy, supportive, and importantly looks great too. None of that has changed with the new Secretlab Titan Evo 2022, either, though it does pack a few great new features to keep ahead of the pack.

Rather than tread old ground, let's get right into the new stuff. Secretlabs is posing the new Titan Evo 2022 to a wider audience this time, with three new available sizes of the Titan Evo 2022 available. These are small, regular, and extra large. The benefit of this being you'll no longer need to look to a different model of chair to find the right fit—the Titan Evo 2022 should cover most bases.

On a similar note, Secretlab has added a minor curve to the seat base that it says is to keep you in a healthy sitting posture. It's kind of hard to say whether such a gentle curvature is really doing much to keep me locked securely in place throughout the day, though the seat is plenty comfortable all the same with plenty of foam padding.

That's far from the last upgrade to the Titan Evo, however, and the chair I received for review is plastered head-to-toe in something new and shiny: Neo Hybrid Leatherette. This is a blend of resin laminate and polyurethane-microfibre, which Secretlab says is far hardier than your average PU leather or even the Prime 2.0 material it previously used.

I'll have to get back to you on actual durability when I've had longer with the chair, perhaps when the Titan Evo 2024 comes out I can tell you if it truly stands the test of time. Still, I can note how surprisingly airy and cool the leatherette fabric feels over the course of a day, and it certainly looks absolutely stunning.

In fact, the chair is upholstered immaculately. While there's still something to be said for the SoftWeave Plus fabric we've rated best for durability and comfort all these years, I have to say I'm quite taken with the look of the leatherette, and especially the bright red stitching.

Fabric choice aside, though, any chair worth its salt excels in one thing and one thing only: comfort. That's something the Titan Evo 2022 is adept at delivering. Initially I had felt the Secretlab a little too firm for my taste, which meant I was shifting my weight around a fair bit during the day. Within a week or so of using it, though, I came to find a comfortable seating position that felt natural. Since then, I've been able to largely forget about the chair altogether. 

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That may sound like an insult, but it's quite the opposite. I've used chairs in the past that have pain points—areas or seating positions that make you wish for anything else over the course of an eight hour day—yet with the Titan Evo 2022 I've had no such thing.

A big part of that is the adjustable lumbar support, and it's a pretty neat system in the Titan Evo. It works by extending and retracting an internal support both in and out and up and down, through the use of the two dials on the side. So not only are you not relying on an awkward pillow to prop up your back, you can actually tweak the Titan Evo's lumbar support while you're still sat on it. This makes it exceptionally easy to get just right.

Paired with the head support and you've a comfortable and supportive combination. 

The head cushion might actually be my favourite upgrade with the Titan Evo 2022. That's because it's magnetic.

It's a strikingly simple idea, and that's why it's so useful. To attach the head cushion, you just whack it onto the top of the chair and it sticks there through the mysterious power of magnets. It's a clever solution to a problem I didn't know I had, but nonetheless far preferable to fiddly straps.

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Actually, the arm rests and covers for the hinges on the side of the Titan Evo are also magnetic. That means it's all easily replaceable and makes for easy installation.

And on the topic of armrests, Secretlab delivers full 4D movement with the Titan Evo. That's a succinct way of saying its armrests move up, down, forwards, backwards, side-to-side, and rotate. What you really need to know is that the armrests are highly user-customisable and should fit most desks, as I've found them to so far, and the action on the movement feels exceptionally high quality.

As do the more mechanical parts on the chair. The hydraulics maintain a smooth action all the way down, and the recline acts as it should with little fuss. There's also a tension adjustment for the lean function, which allows you to tweak the recline that much further as you depress back into the chair.

So there's a lot to like about the Titan Evo 2022. That said, the truest test of its competency is the one I laid out at the beginning of this review. To succeed it needed to top the benchmark set by its predecessors, the Secretlab Titan and Omega. These are chairs that have ranked as number one and two in our best gaming chair guide for years.

It's safe to say that it's done so with flying colours.

As an amalgamation of both Titan and Omega gaming chairs, the Secretlab Titan Evo 2022 feels the better of both in every regard. What each chair has done so well, the Titan Evo 2022 manages to equal or better. It is slightly pricier than its predecessors at $449 ($499 for the XL model), but I feel that the upgrades it delivers are genuinely worth the higher price tag.