DXRacer is a well-established gaming chair brand, but not one that has wowed us in the past. The Racing Series, for example, is functional, but does little to stand out from the pack, and doesn’t impress with its build quality. However, DXRacer’s newest line, the Craft Custom Gaming Chair, is a big step up in comfort and design. Its upholstery is smooth and supple, its padding is thick, and it features adjustable internal lumbar support like Editors’ Choice pick Secretlab Titan EVO 2022. That improved quality comes with a significant increase in price, though, and at $479 it’s hardly a budget gaming chair. It’s a good gaming chair, but one wedged between the less-expensive, also-excellent Cooler Master Caliber X1C, and the pricier, but even better-made, Titan EVO 2022. Also, the Craft Custom Gaming Chair isn’t really custom, despite its name.
Easy Chair Assembly
The Craft is easy to assemble, thanks to a few, welcome design courtesies. To start, the armrests are already bolted to the seat when you remove it from the box, which eliminates an irritating assembly step. The chair’s back has plastic plates on its side, with the right side featuring a bracket for the seat’s metal mount. That makes lining up the screws and attaching the back to the seat a frustration-free experience. The rest of the process is standard: You bolt the bottom plate onto the seat’s bottom, insert the wheels and gas cylinder into the base, then put the chair’s top half on the gas cylinder.
Different (but not Custom) Designs
While DXRacer calls the Craft its “custom” gaming chair, the custom aspect is just seven individual, but highly different, prefab styles; you can’t actually customize your own chair with your own colors or logo. DXRacer sent us the America Edition, which looks like Captain America’s costume with loads of blue, white stars, and some red and white stripes along the edges. There’s also Koi Fish, an east Asian-inspired chair in black and gold with Chinese characters; Rabbit in Dino, a yellow chair with a sassy-looking rabbit; Hello Human Cat, a pink chair that evokes, but is not actually related to, Sanrio’s properties; Spaceman, a gray-and-yellow chair featuring an astronaut; Thinker, a gray chair with Greek sculpture-inspired art; and Classic, a plain black chair.
That’s more variety than most gaming chairs, but Secretlab still offers the most choices with dozens of licensed Titan EVO 2022 designs based on The Batman, Cyberpunk 2077, Game of Thrones, League of Legends, World of Warcraft, and other properties.
All the Adjustments
DXRacer recommends the Craft for people who are under 5’7″ in height and 200 pounds in weight. I’m fairly well above that (five foot eleven inches, 250 pounds), but I still found the chair supportive and spacious. The seat’s sides didn’t press against my legs like the Andaseat Jungle 2 do, and the Craft didn’t feel remotely unbalanced or in danger of tipping over when I rocked back. The base is metal rather than plastic, which adds to the sturdiness.
The Craft features the usual gaming chair adjustments, along with one trick previously reserved for Secretlab. You can set the height, recline the back up to 135 degrees, and freely rock the chair back or lock it upright (or at any tilted position). The armrests are 4D, meaning you can set their height, horizontal angle, and their position left, right, forward, and backward. Finally, a knob on the right side of the chair’s back lets you tweak the lumbar support’s firmness, a feature first seen in Secretlab’s Titan chairs. This is in lieu of a separate lumbar support cushion, though a headrest cushion is still included. The knob only tweaks firmness, while the Titan EVO 2022 has a second knob that can set the lumbar support’s height.
A Quality, Comfortable Sit
The Craft is upholstered in PU leather over foam, which is typical of gaming chairs. These aren’t fancy, proprietary variants of the materials you’d find in Andaseat or Secretlab’s chairs; just faux leather and foam. The faux leather is soft and supple, but doesn’t seem quite as sturdy as the Secretlab Titan EVO 2022’s upholstery.
The foam padding is quite solid in the seat and along the back where the chair makes contact with your body. That said, it isn’t as complete as the EVO 2022 or Cooler Master Caliber X1C’s through-and-through padding; the sides of the seat are suspended faux leather with little to no padding. This isn’t a huge issue, since the necessary support is still there, but it’s another case of the Craft’s sturdiness lagging a bit behind those other two chairs.
I found the Craft comfortable and supportive, holding me ergonomically at all angles while maintaining its balance. Its faux leather feels nice, and the adjustable lumbar support provided a variety of firmness for my lower back without jabbing into it like some pillows do. It approaches the Secretlab Titan EVO 2022 in build quality, though it doesn’t quite reach it due to its lighter padding and flimsier-feeling upholstery. Still, it’s a good sit.
Premium Chair for a Premium Price
DXRacer has been taking the right design lessons from Secretlab. The company’s previous chairs disappointed us, but the Craft is comfortable, well-made, easy to assemble, and comes in several striking designs. It isn’t customizable despite DXRacer describing it as a “custom” gaming chair, but it’s still a good sit. That quality comes with a price, though, and at $479, the Craft approaches the even-more-solid Secretlab Titan EVO 2022, and costs much more than the $399 Cooler Master Caliber X1C. Consider a Craft if one of the designs calls to you, but otherwise the fabric-upholstered Caliber X1C feels just as good for less money, while the $519 Titan EVO 2022 is a step up in quality.
