The Uber-cool $40,000 Emperor Chair/Workstation

If you have ever worked in a cube-based environment, then you know all too well the boring, pseudo-fabric walls that hold you to what seems to be solitary confinement imposed by torturous employers. NovelQuest now has your escape rope from the pit!

NovelQuest(NQ), a company founded in 2005 and based out of Quebec City, Canada focuses primarily on manufacturing highly innovative and exclusive products for special events, marketing companies, museums, science centers, and high net worth individuals (and putting some emphasis on the high net worth individuals).

NQ is showing off one of its latest and greatest creations, the Emperor. This device, which appears to have been named after the emperor scorpion due to its shape and the way it moves, is NQs way of revolutionizing the modern day workstation. This ‘chair’ (if you could call it that) has everything that every cube-dweller would ever want – too bad it has a price tag of $40,000, which means you will not be seeing these things in call center environments anytime soon.

Here is a quick overview of the features available on the “Emperor”:

Monitors
Three synchronized 19-inch LCD displays totaling a resolution of 3840 x 1024 pixels and refresh rate of 2ms.

Control Center
7” LCD Touch Screen which is OS and Power independent from the Emperor's integrated PC. The control center allows the user to control chair position and integrated systems such as lighting control, air flow, sound, PC startup/shutdown, battery backup system and more.

Communication Devices
Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000
GN Netcom 9120-Flex Wireless Headset with Noise-canceling

Lighting
Adjustable perimeter LED lighting.
Four adjustable working LED lights.
Full spectrum lighting (to avoid the jaundice)

Seat
Recaro Style Top-line all leather black seat.
Fully adjustable
Climate package available
Height&Tilt adjustment

Air
HEPA Air Purification System

Battery Back-up
Built in power backup for up to 30 minutes of run-time in case of sudden power failure.
Built in safe shut down feature.

The guts of the system, the actual PC part, is available in PC or MAC configurations. However, the specifications might appear to be a little lacking to some people considering the price-tag of the unit as a whole. But keep in mind that this uber workstation is targeting business-oriented people and not gamers, and something tells us if you have the money, they would build you a custom unit with whatever specs you want (since they are obviously not mass producing these babies).

You can view the complete specs for both PC and MAC editions of the Emperor in this adobe acrobat document located here or via the NovelQuest home page here.

As you can see, the graphics adapter in the PC version is obviously geared towards technical use and not high-end gaming. When compared to the MAC edition, which comes with the Nvidia 8600GT card, we see a bit of a balance issue. However, as previously mentioned, these aren’t for gaming, and with enough cash in fist, NQ would probably customize your order for you.

Overall, this is a pretty cool unit. However, there is just one question remaining from us at Tom's Hardware: “Where is the cup holder?”