TechRadar Verdict
Secretlab's Titan takes everything great about the Omega and applies it to a chair built for larger gamers, and manages to do so without bumping up the price too significantly. The cost is still the the biggest drawback, however.
Pros
- +
Sturdy construction and premium materials
- +
Well-suited for larger gamers
- +
Plenty of adjustable comfort
Cons
- -
The price
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Secreatlab designed the Secretlab Titan using its already-luxurious Omega chair as a foundation, building up on with a number of adjustments. It all adds up to a more comfortable experience that’s genuinely hard to fault.
Smaller gamers might want to look elsewhere, however. This gaming chair is the brand's bigger offering, designed for the biggest of gamers, and among the changes are dimension tweaks, improved load-bearing capabilities, and integrated adjustable lumbar support. So, it's really best for taller, broader, or weightier individuals (or some combination of all three).
Secretlab ship’s the Titan to many international locales and offers lots of local currency choices, and the standard US price is $490 while its £399 in the UK and AU$699 in Australia. That puts it right in the mid-range, which might be a deterrent to budget-minded gamers. If you have a little more budget, however, it's certainly worth the price.
Secretlab Titan Gaming Chair: Assembly
The chair arrives dismantled and flat-packed in a box, swaddled in more than enough foam insulation and plastic covering to keep it safe on its journey. It’s a heavy unit and you may benefit from having someone to help put the beast together, although considering the target market of larger individuals it shouldn’t present too much of a challenge if you choose to go it solo (we followed the latter route for this review and managed just fine).
Actually assembling the chair is surprisingly simple and won’t take more than 15 minutes given the relatively few steps. The instructions provided are abundantly clear and Secretlab even provided a number of instructional online videos if you’re struggling with any step in particular.
You’ll also notice a number of large and prominent warnings across almost every piece of instructional material (including the plastic covering) to avoid touching the ‘backrest recline lever’ during setup. Without the backrest attached, the bracket that normally supports it would spring forward quite violently if this lever is pulled – the warnings are there to make this abundantly clear and, as a precaution, you may want to keep children well out of the way while you’re building the unit.
In putting our test chair together, the only time I came close to struggling was when inserting the philips-head screws that secure the plastic covers on both sides of the backrest. I found I needed to use my phone’s flashlight in order to line-up the holes, and while this was a little tedious it was far from being overwhelming.
Secretlab Titan Gaming Chair: Design
Secretlab borrows rather heavily from the aesthetic qualities of its Omega chair for this newer unit, which seems fair given that the Titan is essentially just a larger persons’ version of the Omega, with almost identical color schemes, logo placement and overall design.
The unit we reviewed came in the ‘stealth’ color option – which appears to be the base offering – and lived up to this name admirably. The vast majority of the chair is adorned in good ol’-fashioned black, with a few concessions for gold-emblazoned branding and some red-trim stitching, but otherwise the chair almost has enough camouflage to be used in an office setting… well, if it weren’t so damn luxurious-looking.
Frankly, this kind of somewhat-subtle palette is a welcome change from the typically gaudy neon’s and nitro’s that tend to accompany most gaming paraphernalia and peripherals. Of course, there are other color schemes on offer on Secretlab’s site and these cover some of that louder territory, such as black with a bright orange trim, or deep blue with some lighter blue and white trims.
The seat and backrest are coated in a polyurethane leather (more affectionately known as pleather), which gives it a luxury-car look without the hassle of maintaining real leather. We did however notice that the lower portion of the backrest can get a little warm and potentially sweat-inducing after extended use, likely caused by a combination of the pleather, underlying foam and large area of contact with the body.
The structure and form of the Titan seems predominantly utilitarian, with all of the shapes, curves, and edges performing some ergonomic function or another, but this is in no way a detractor. The utility is blended into the design seamlessly and results in a chair that neither attempts art nor pains the eye.
Secretlab Titan Gaming Chair: Materials
Both the seat and backrest are made from ‘cold-cured’ foam, a process which uses singularly-molded pieces rather than being cut from a larger block, thus producing a firmer outer ‘skin’ and leaving the inside soft and fluffy. The analogy given by the company is rather cute - “Think of a fresh loaf of bread with a thick, brown crust, versus bread that has been sliced into many pieces with its raw edges exposed”.
What this translates to is a reasonably firm surface to sit on and lean against, with enough give to be comfortable but a rigid structure that keeps you securely in your desired position and posture. It isn’t the kind of chair you can throw yourself in and expect to bounce on or sink into, but realistically you don’t really want that when you’re going to be sitting in a fixed for extended periods of time – we found the support the Titan gives outweighed the lack of squishy luxury.
The entirety of the backrest and seat are coated in the Prime PU leather which, unlike real leather, can be cleaned by simply wiping it down with a damp cloth and which also doesn’t require any oiling, buffing or any other kind of treatment. The surface is in fact “resistant to liquids” (and the phrase “waterproof” is also used, although we’d suggest erring on the side of caution here), so if you do spill anything on it, all it should take to clean is a simple wipe down.
The armrests are each made of a generous slab of polyurethane (PU), offering a degree of sponginess that’s friendly to your arms, but still providing enough resistance to keep them in place while holding a controller or bashing away at a keyboard.
Secretlab’s obsession with PU is evident on the wheels too, which are coated in a softer polyurethane to help prevent the kind of floor-damage that can be associated with cheaper nylon wheels. This allows for a better grip on harder surfaces, but still helped the Titan to glide smoothly on the carpeted floors we tested it on.
Secretlab Titan Gaming Chair: Ergonomics
Perhaps the biggest selling point of the Titan is its adaptability and suitability for bigger gamers, and this area doesn’t disappoint. At around 6-foot 3-inches (190cm) and hovering around 90kg, this reviewer found that the overall dimensions of the chair suited him to a tee.
Although there are oodles of adjustable settings, there are still some fixed dimensions that will determine whether or not this chair is appropriate for you at all. The backrest stands 86cm above the seat, and the butt-surface is 54cm deep and equally as wide (when including the contoured edges).
According to Secretlab’s information, the Titan can comfortably accommodate people between 175cm and 195cm in height, and thanks to some thicker-diameter casters on the base, can handle a recommended load of up to 130kg. This was certainly the case in testing, and realistically we feel that the chair could manage people even taller and heavier than this, but the range is provided by the company to indicate optimal and (perhaps more significantly) safe usage conditions.
Secretlab Titan Gaming Chair: Customisations
Now for the adjustments, and there’s plenty of them. Almost every conceivable component on the Titan can be shifted along almost every conceivable axis — and there are even almost inconceivable options that you wouldn’t expect. The usual suspects you find in a premium desk chair are all here — the height of the base, the angle of backrest recline and the amount of tilt (with the ability to lock in place) can all be changed – but some convenient additions really set the Titan’s adjustability apart from the competition, such as being able to adjust the tension of the tilt so you can lazily lean back or have the chair offer more resistance.
Special mention goes to the armrests, which can be altered in four different dimensions (and no, the fourth one isn’t ‘time’ — sorry physics nerds). They can slide forward and back, elevate up and down, rotate so that their front edges point inwards or outwards, and the mounting arms that hold them up can move closer or further away from the base of the chair to allow for wider or shallower stances.
This latter alteration is achieved by unscrewing three sturdy bolts (per arm) and re-securing the arm at the desired point on a sliding rail, in fact, you can take the armrests entirely off with this method if that’s what you’re after. Although there isn’t a massive range of expansion available in this particular ‘dimension’, any further extension would likely compromise the stability of the armrests and the fact that it’s included at all is a big boon over other gaming chairs in the market.
One of the primary differences between the Omega and the Titan models is the latter’s inclusion of adjustable lumbar support. Instead of using an external cushion for improved lower back support, there’s an integrated bulge in the backrest with a dedicated knob that alters how far it protrudes. Like a lot of the Titan’s design, this forsakes its sponginess for a firmer feel, which will be a feature or a flaw, depending on your preference.
The accessibility of each of the controls varies, with some settings (such as the width of the armrests) requiring you to whip out an hex key, but the settings that are most likely to need frequent or quick tweaks are usually the ones that are placed the most conveniently within reach. As with the chair’s assembly, Secretlab has provided copious amounts of information on how to adjust each setting of the chair, and even without these, they are all fairly intuitive and can be learned without studying any manuals.
Secretlab’s icing on the cake comes in the form of a free velour head-pillow. A simple elastic strap encircles and grips the head of the chair, letting this component be easily attached or removed. The pillow actually boosted the comfort quite a bit for us, and although it won’t appeal to everyone, it’s a nice premium inclusion.
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