Techni Sport TS-5000 Green Gaming Chair Review

TechniSport Gaming Chair Review, Round 2.  FIGHT. 

Editor’s Note: Some of our regular readers might be asking what the hell I’m thinking doing a review for a chair we just posted a review for about a month ago.  While I know it seems silly, the review posted was god-fucking-awful bad and we owed not only you guys, as readers, a better review.  But also since TechiSport provided a chair for the purposes of our review, they deserved a review that was actually constructive.  I purchased their newest chair out of pocket to prove that we at KnowTechie believe in journalistic integrity and value our ethics over monetary gain. 

So here we go again with a new review: Techni Sport Gaming Chair Review, Round 2.  FIGHT. 

I’m a fat bastard, so I’ve been through a whole bunch of chairs in my lifetime.  Previously I went through a bunch of $60-$100 “gaming” chairs from Staples or Walmart which almost always ended badly.  In fact, hilariously, I once had a chair company tell me that their chair wasn’t intended to be sat in for more than two hours at a time.  A chair, that wasn’t fucking made to be sat in.  Is this real life?  It was, so I ponied up the cash and rather famously bought a DXRacer gaming and office chair so that I would stop having to buy a new chair every few months.  Long story short: I’m directly comparing this chair to my DXRacer OH/CE120. 

All of these chairs – and I make this “all of these” statement because Techni Sport isn’t the only company who makes DXRacer style racing gaming chairs – are assembled mostly the same way, but I didn’t find Techni Sport’s instructions anymore or less confusing than anyone else’s. 

The first thing I noticed about the TechniSport chair when taking the components out of the box was how generic the base itself was.  It’s made of a lightweight metal and it’s hollow, which immediately had me concerned as this is a $310 chair that touts being constructed of heavy duty steel.  I also couldn’t help but be alarmed at how cheap this weld is:

Some of the cheaply made chairs I’ve mentioned earlier had this same type of weld and after a few months of heavy desk usage, the gas lift quite literally punched this ring through the hole that welded them together.  Quite honestly: If I used this chair as my everyday chair, it would probably break and the chair would no longer sit on the base.  The bracket system here where the base of the chair meets the hydraulic lift is weak and looks like they used just enough to make the pieces hold. 

The next concern I had were the casters themselves.  They’re bladed and look like the rims on a car or a roller blade, but that takes away from the stability of the caster as the plastic simply isn’t as thick. 

We’ll talk more about the casters in application just a little bit later on, but I’m trying to note where I found issues as I constructed the chair in order of progression.  The next step required installing the frame base onto the bottom cushion of the chair – which is normally fairly simple to do, but because these chairs are mass produced I had a difficult time finding the actual anchor in order to screw in the back screws to hold the base in place. 

I had to use a box knife to cut the leather and the padding/material away in order to find the point where the screw anchor is actually located.  This is a shame because it’s very well laid out on the front side of the base, but required a bit of effort – a similar effort had to be made when assembling my DXRacer too, but not quite to this degree. 

These things are mass produced, so it’s hard to anyone to a fault on it, but this is definitely the worst chair I’ve put together in regards to having to explore the cloth area for the access points.  The metal points were clear and well marked, though it did take some finagling to get things lined up properly. 

See the carbon fiber and the ringlets under the seat itself?  That’s pretty damn sweet.  I actually really like the attention to detail Techni Sport used in regard to the actual chair itself, as the carbon fiber part is smooth and looks nice.  The color is bright and pops well, and the stitching is almost identical in quality to the stitching on my DXRacer chair.  In fact, I have very little to complain about with the chair itself for what it is.  The chair is padded with a nice foam with a steel frame underneath and it’s got the support straps that keep it together unlike the cheap plywood I’ve seen in other chairs. 

It’s legit.  The cloth is held in place with well-hidden zip ties and the foam is almost the same in my DXRacer chair.  In fact, the only real complaint I had with the chair itself was this one tiny place near the air hole spots where the neck pillow rests.  There’s a small spot there that looks like a scratch in the leather, but it also could be dried glue – but for $310 you’d think someone would be there in QA to make sure everything looked great before leaving the assembly line.  It’s a minor nitpick, but I digress.  You can’t really tell unless I point it out to you, and the chair does look pretty good. 

However, here’s where we start getting into some issues.  For one, the quality of the chair itself is great – arguably right on par with their competitors.  The stitching looks great, the leather is soft and feels nice, and I really love the carbon fiber accents. 

Unfortunately, all that is immediately wrecked by the extremely cheap looking neck pillow and lumbar pillow straps.  The neck pillow has a long elastic strap and fits around the outside of the chair when it would have been far better suited with a small strap that buckled in behind the holes already present in the chair so that the chair didn’t have a big ugly strap going around it. 

Quite honestly: The pillows were clearly an afterthought and not at all considered in the design aesthetic at all.  The lumbar cushion has elastic bands that clasp together with plastic, so why doesn’t the neck pillow offer that same function?  Furthermore, just like all of the competition, the lumbar pillow and the neck pillow together are overkill because your spine doesn’t sit that way naturally.  The shoulders jut out at the top of the chair meaning if you’re sitting straight up you’re probably sitting slightly forward and your neck is a good few inches in front of that pillow where it’s not at all resting.  If you don’t have the lumbar pillow on, you can sit closer to the chair itself at the price of having your shoulders forced slightly forward. 

All of these chairs have that issue, and it’s the same way in the bottom of the seat as well.  Unless you’re built like a stick, you’re going to overlap onto these places where the material sticks out.  This means the chair stabs me in the thigh with the frame – and while it’s not uncomfortable, it’s not nearly as comfortable as sitting on my DXRacer which is built more like an office chair than a chair stolen out of a euro-trash street racer car sitting around on the set of one of the Fast and Furious movies. 

If Techni Sport had a model that looked nice but was built like a more functional office chair, we’d be talking about it instead of the racing seat, but unfortunately, that’s not an option so here we are. 

The armrests are absolutely terrible – like straight up garbage.  Not only are they curved and grooved to “hold” your arm or whatever, but due to this divot, they have some sort of a shitty lip on them which feels incredibly obnoxious against my skin.  They’re not comfortable at all, and on top of being fairly hideous, they’re too far apart and they lack the ability to slide forward and backward, which makes them pretty much useless.  In fact, if I knew it wouldn’t destroy the structural integrity of the chair itself, I would take them off.  They’re that bad, and I hope that

In fact, if I knew it wouldn’t destroy the structural integrity of the chair itself, I would take them off.  They’re that bad, and I hope that Techni Sport’s future models feature something more like the rounded ones on my DXRacer which are actually accommodating to your arm’s natural resting place.  Did I mention these are clearly made for a male figure as well?  On my DXRacer the armrests are eight inches from the back, while they’re eleven inches on the TechniSport – and they’re 23 inches apart from the inside on the TechniSport while they’re only 21.5 inches on the DXRacer.  This means when someone like my 150lb wife sits in the TechniSport chair, she has to reach out to rest her arms on the armrests.  She’s got big shoulders for a girl, and her shoulders are roughly 14 inches while mine

Did I mention these are clearly made for a male figure as well?  On my DXRacer the armrests are eight inches from the back, while they’re eleven inches on the Techni Sport – and they’re 23 inches apart from the inside on the Techni Sport while they’re only 21.5 inches on the DXRacer.  This means when someone like my 150lb wife sits in the Techni Sport chair, she has to reach out to rest her arms on the armrests.  She’s got big shoulders for a girl, and her shoulders are roughly 14 inches while mine are more like 18.  When holding a controller and leaned about two clicks back in the Techni Sport, her arms literally don’t even touch the armrests unless they’re angled all the way out and then she can just barely put her elbows on them without using much effort.  It doesn’t matter where she sits in the DXRacer, her arms are always comfortably resting which means their product is definitely more “unisex”. 

Oh, and before I forget, the armrest on the left side of this chair is broken.  Out of the box, the left armrest release does not move.  It’s jammed in place, possibly glued there, and when fiddling with the chair I was able to raise the arm up which sounded like the sound of some plastic teeth grinding as if something was being stripped.  Sitting in the chair to write this review, I just shifted my weight over onto the left armrest and it naturally returned to the bottom of its position, with a loud grind noise and me almost falling out of the chair. 

Speaking of falling out of the chair, the biggest issue this chair isn’t comfort or design aesthetics, it’s that the thing isn’t very stable.  There’s a ridiculous amount of bounce and wiggle in this chair.  When lifting the chair to the maximum height with your back completely flat against the back of the chair, everything is fine.  However, if you slide forward just a little bit, the chair attempts to topple and throw you forward.  If you’re not sitting with all of your maximum weight directly over the center of the chair, the crappy caster wheels catch and the chair tries to dump you out.  There’s about a four-inch difference of space between everything being good and being thrown out on your face.  As you can see from the image above, the casters are cheap and I’d honestly recommend replacing them. 

The product page for this chair says that the weight limit is 300lbs.  I’m a solid 285, so if that’s the case then I could use this chair without much concern – but when assembling the chair I was met with:

So then, I guess I’m too fat for this chair after all.  Which is the liar?  The chair’s documentation or the website?  I had this same exact problem when I complained about DXRacer’s “weight” requirements as well, which means none of these companies seem to really know what their products really are or aren’t capable of. 

As you can see, the broken arm rest is a bit of a pain in the ass, but otherwise, the chair is decently okay – just gotta be careful how you’re sitting on it and when you’re moving around.  I’m glad these chairs come with a two year limited warranty, cause now I’m going to have to ask them to send me an arm rest that isn’t broken – an issue that we would normally handle privately in a review but since I bought this one out of pocket I’m talking about publicly as a customer. 

The biggest things I can recommend Techni Sport do in the future with these chairs are as follows: Use a backpack style strap on the pillows, this will allow for less movement and more precise targeting of where you want your pillows to rest.  I’ve had to readjust the lumbar pillow three different times in the course of writing this review.  Both pillows are soft and feel exactly the same as what DXRacer and everyone else uses, but I also hope Techni Sport uses the smaller clasp strap for the neck pillow to help hide the straps because as it stands they make the chair look incredibly cheap.  The base of the chair is highly unreliable and I’m not sure if it’s because of the arcing metal star base or the cheap caster wheels – maybe I’ll order some actual rollerblade style wheels to replace them with and see if that helps.  Flatten the armrests and consider how far apart they are considering there are women who might be interested in buying these chairs as well. 

The base of the chair is highly unreliable and I’m not sure if it’s because of the arcing metal star base or the cheap caster wheels – maybe I’ll order some actual rollerblade style wheels to replace them with and see if that helps.  Flatten the armrests and consider how far apart they are considering there are women who might be interested in buying these chairs as well. 

Bottom Line: Is the chair worth $309?  That depends.  If you don’t move around in your chair a lot, it’s pretty good.  My favorite thing that Techni Sport does is donates 3% of your purchase to “environmental causes” and while I wish that was more clearly defined, I’m still glad someone out there is at least trying. 

I think for the first line of chairs Techni Sport makes a decent product, but the quality needs to come up for the extremities of the chair since the main cushioning is excellent.  I’m looking forward to seeing what Techni Sport has to offer in the future and hopefully, we can revisit them again when new products are released. 

Jonathan White :I'm the greatest writer since R-Kelly.  Girls, you can't be first, but you can be next.  I'm not saying I'm number one.. uhh.. I'm sorry, I lied.  I'm number one, two, three, four and five.