It may not be the most exciting part of a gaming setup but a quality chair is one of the parts you’ll use most, so deciding on the right option is an important choice. Today’s list of gaming chairs features some established household names but there are plenty of challengers hot on their heels too.
Following in the footsteps of the Kaiser 3, the unsurprisingly named AndaSeat Kaiser 4 is the brand’s latest attempt to land a best gaming chair contender. Promising comfort combined with a few bells and whistles, I’ve been using this premium-priced $569 gaming chair for the last few weeks to see if it’s worth investing in.
With so many other options at, and considerably below this price point it has a steep hill to climb, so can the AndaSeat Kaiser 4 deliver or should you sit elsewhere?
Assembly
Putting together the AndaSeat Kaiser 4 was more frustrating than it should have been and what I imagine is realistically a 10-minute experience took me nearly an hour. Everything arrived nicely packaged with clear, easy-to-follow instructions, but a manufacturing defect meant installing one of the main backrest bolts correctly was nearly impossible.
Like the Secretlab Titan Evo, the Kaiser 4 uses a fixed bracket on one side of the backrest to slot into the base cushion and line everything up. It’s a clever setup that works well - if the holes are aligned, which on my unit they weren’t. This meant wrestling with the large and quite heavy backrest to try and convince all four bolts to happily secure. In the end, I had to brute-force the misaligned bolt as tight as I could and while it held together fine and you wouldn’t know by sitting on it, this meant the magnetic side cover didn’t neatly attach and looked clunky as a result.
With it finally together you’re left with a pretty regulation-looking chair because, for the most part, the AndaSeat Kaiser 4 follows all the expected tropes of a modern gaming chair. The familiar-looking design features a wide bucket seat, a large winged back, and a chunky base unit that together form a pleasant enough overall package.
The Kaiser 4 is technically available in 2 sizes, the large and the extra large that I’ve been testing, however only this XL variant seems to be offered on the AndaSeat website with no mention of the large size outside of technical spec documents. Odd, but in line with the brand’s other seats we’ve tested, like the AndaSeat Kaiser 3.
Design & Features
You may not be spoiled for choice when it comes to size but there’s plenty to consider in terms of color. There are 10 colorways available for the AndaSeat Kaiser 4 which are split between two upholstery options; Premium PVC Leather and Linen Fabric. The latter is limited to just grey or black while the PVC Leather my chair is covered in pushes the boat out with a few outlandish choices like Robin Egg Blue and Blaze Orange. The material and stitching are both pleasantly soft and there seems to be an impressive amount of flexibility to the fabric which should hopefully keep cracking at bay in the long run, something PU Leather chairs often struggle with.
My unit is the Cloudy White PVC Leather variant, though it’s worth being aware your color choice only impacts the front panel of the seat itself. Regardless of which fabric and color combination you go for, you’re stuck with a completely black back, base, detailing, and head cushion. It’s a little disappointing to see AndaSeat cut creative corners like this with the Kaiser 4 because it really does detract from the overall look of some color choices. On both the PVC Leather and Linen Fabric versions of the Kaiser 4, the entire back panel of the chair is a rubbery-feeling faux carbon fiber material that, while less of a clash on my PVC version, I imagine would be a bad textural change on the fabric chair. It’s just an odd choice on a premium offering that I’m struggling to explain bar looking to reduce costs or manufacturing complexity.
The most outrageous part of the AndaSeat Kaiser 4 is the 5D armrests which are comical at their best and downright horrendous at their worst. My review unit had a defective mechanism on the left-hand side which meant the armrest wouldn’t raise from the lowest position and yet this wasn’t the worst of its problems. In addition to the standard range of movement, the Kaiser 4 armrests fold in half with the front lifting to a fixed, steep 40 degree angle. Why? Never have I looked at an armrest and wished it would lift my arm into an awkward position and bang into the front edge of my desk. This bizarre overcomplication aside, the armrests themselves are poorly made with cheap, mushy feeling buttons and a huge amount of noisy wobble in all directions. These are the kind of armrests I’d expect on a cheap, off-brand chair, not a near $600 premium option.
Performance
Build quality and design oddities aside, the AndaSeat Kaiser 4 is actually quite a comfortable chair to sit in. I’ve used it as my daily driver for both work and gaming over the last couple of weeks and as a place to park up, I have little to complain about. The high-density foam cushion finds a nice balance between being soft enough to feel welcoming and firm enough to provide decent ergonomic support and I found it remained pleasant to sit on for extended sessions.
The backrest follows a recent trend in gaming chair design of attempting to throw as many moving parts as possible at you in the quest for that golden ergonomic-comfort ratio. In the case of the Kaiser 4, it’s largely successful, though it goes to some extremes that feel like AndaSeat is showing it can do it for the sake of it, rather than it actually being useful. An internal frame in the backrest can be adjusted up, down, in, and out via knobs on either side which offers plenty of customization though at times I did struggle to feel much difference.
Much more impactful is the entire back cushion’s ability to kick out at up to a (slightly ridiculous) 24-degree angle. You’re limited to four angle presets on the way to that aggressive 24-degree maximum, though I’d imagine most people will stick nearer the 3 or 10-degree levels like I did throughout testing. At these less extreme positions, I was able to dial in a position I was happy with, even as someone who’s never really been a fan of intrusive lumbar supports or cushions.
The AndaSeat Kaiser 4’s black steel and aluminium frame does its job without a fuss and features all the usual tricks you’d expect from a modern gaming chair. The backrest reclines to an almost flat 135 degrees and while I’m not sure what situation that’s actually useful for, when lying back I never felt like the chair was going to fall away from underneath me. Unfortunately the same isn’t true of the rocking function. You’re offered 15 degrees of tilt, either in a fixed position or rocking freely back and forth, but despite a five-degree slope to the seat cushion itself, I felt like the Kaiser 4 was trying to tip me forward and out of the seat at the lowest setting. This isn’t a problem when setting a fixed position but did prevent me from using the rocking motion I would have preferred.
Should you buy the AndaSeat Kaiser 4?
As far as gaming chairs go, the AndaSeat Kaiser 4 is fine, but ultimately it’s unexciting and doesn’t offer enough to justify its top-end price tag. At a basic level, it’s reasonably comfortable, but big-ticket marketing features like the 5D armrests are poorly executed and end up detracting from the overall experience rather than adding to it. It leaves the Kaiser 4 feeling more like a challenger offering rather than a premium one.
The problem for AndaSeat and the Kaiser 4 is just how many other options are available, the list of best gaming chairs is a long one so trying to find a firm footing is a tough task. $569 also puts it up against some serious competition like the Razer Iskur V2, for example, which has adjustable lumbar support and sure-fire build quality. That kind of money should buy you basically any of our top-rated chairs so if you’re keen to go premium, you really are better off sitting elsewhere.
How I tested the AndaSeat Kaiser 4
After building it solo, I used the AndaSeat Kaiser 4 as my primary chair for both working and gaming for a couple of weeks before writing this review. While not always my preferred permanent choice, throughout testing I tried the range of adjustability settings for at least an hour. As someone who works from home, I put loads of time into weighing up the value of this seat for remote workers and your everyday gamer. I also compared my time with it closely to my experience of trying out other gaming chairs from brands like Boulies and Secretlab.
For more on how we test gaming chairs, take a look at the full GamesRadar+ hardware policy.
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