Thermaltake's Latest Gaming Chair Sports Active Cooling

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Thermaltake announced a new addition to its Comfort series of gaming chairs, the X Comfort Air. Its key feature is an active air-cooling system designed to help keep gamers cool and comfortable.

The X Comfort Air shares its shape and ergonomics with Thermaltake’s X and GT Comfort chairs. Thermaltake splits its chairs by tightness of fit; the Comfort line has a more relaxed and generous fit compared to the more snug Fit line. Chairs within each line are further split by material, and the X chairs use more premium materials than the GT chairs.

All of Thermaltake’s gaming chairs share the same basic ergonomic features and adjustments: chair height, back angle, rocking tilt, tilt lock, and four-way armrests. They also all share some basic points of construction, including an aluminum frame, padding made from 75 kg/m3 foam, a class-4 gas piston, and an aluminum five-spoke base with three-inch casters.

The defining point of the X Comfort AIR, however, is its active air-cooling feature. The system consists of four high-pressure fans that are embedded in the base of the chair. The power cord attaches to a control box that’s located behind the chair back. Like a cooled seat in a car, the chair’s base is covered with perforated faux-leather that permits airflow from the three-speed fans. Unlike most cooled car seats, though, no air flows from the chair back.

Thermaltake’s announcement is murky on how the company tested the effectiveness of the system. It shows infrared images of the seat after it’s been sat in, with the cooling system running on different speeds. What’s not clear is whether or not the cooling system was running while the subject was in the seat or if it was switched on afterwards. Thermaltake claimed that the system can cool the seat by between 0.6 and 1.5 degrees Celsius. The noise level of the fans is stated as 32 DB(A), but Thermaltake didn’t specify the correlating fan speed for this.

The gaming chair market has exploded in the past few years. The list of companies in this space include Corsair, DXRacer, Cougar, noblechairs, Aerocool, Gamdias, and many more. Even Office Furniture Marketing (OFM) has one now. It’s also not a market where much differentiation happens. Most offerings are just variations on the “racing seat” aesthetic with different colors and surface materials. As such, the air-cooling system of the X Comfort AIR, even if we don’t know how effective it is, sets it apart from the rest. (No one would complain if Thermaltake added an active massage system, too.

The Thermaltake X Comfort AIR comes in red and black versions that are available now on Thermaltake's site for $500.