Which Secretlab Gaming Chair Material is Best?

Secretlab has multiple different materials to choose from for its gaming chairs. The best Secretlab gaming chair material will vary by person.

Secretlab currently has three different materials to choose from, their NEO™ Hybrid Leatherette, SoftWeave™ Plus Fabric, and NAPA Leather. There's no true "best" option when it comes to Secretlab's materials, as each can be the best based on your needs and circumstances. Depending on your climate, how much you use the chair, as well as how often things spill on your chair will determine the best Secretlab gaming chair material for you.

Among the current offerings from their latest drop is the TITAN Evo 2022 series, which tends to be the best overall Secretlab gaming chair right now. Older versions of the NEO™ Hybrid Leatherette and SoftWeave™ Plus Fabric are available for the older TITAN 2020 series as well as the OMEGA 2020 series.

Best Gaming Chair Material for Durability

The Secretlab NEO™ Hybrid Leatherette features a soft and supple feel just like genuine leather, without the pores to create their most durable gaming chair material.

The Secretlab NEO™ Hybrid Leatherette is the best gaming chair material for anyone who spends a lot of time sitting at their machine. If you really put the mileage in on your gaming chairs, including both work and play, the leatherette covering is a great option. It feels like genuine leather, without paying an exorbitant amount for genuine leather.

When it comes to durability, nothing really holds a candle to the NEO™ Hybrid Leatherette, as Secretlab claims it offers 12x the durability of PU leather. Whether you're getting through a long work day from the home office or simply staying up all night grinding levels in Destiny 2, you can expect to get a lot of use out of this gaming chair. With the durability of this Secretlab chair, you can quite literally work all day and still find the leatherette covering comfortable for a night of gaming.

Because this leatherette material doesn't contain natural pores like NAPA leather, it will hold up better against stains and wear. The morning coffee you spilled on your chair will quickly wipe away with a damp microfiber cloth. While it's recommended to clean up any spill as quickly as possible, the leatherette is a better barrier against liquid spills. Traditional leather with pores can wick liquid spills into the chair, rather than repelling them like leatherette.

This is still a "leather" option, so it may not be the most suitable for those who tend to find themselves sticking to leather chairs or getting sweaty because of the material. If you live in a hot or humid climate, you may not find this sitting experience as enjoyable as a fabric chair designed for breathability.

Best Gaming Chair Material for Breathability

Secretlab's SoftWeave™ Plus Fabric gives you the breathability you need in hotter climates while still maintaining a comfort level like no other.

If you do live in a hot or humid climate, you'll find the sitting experience of Secretlab's SoftWeave™ Plus Fabric to be almost luxurious. The knitted texture and soft fabric feel come together to bring a good combination of both durability and breathability keeping you cool and dry. Those tiny openings in the knit give enough space for your skin to breathe while you sit back and enjoy your gaming experience.

SoftWeave™ Plus Fabric is a step up from Secretlab's previous generation, SoftWeave™ Fabric, which was one of the three materials to choose from in their TITAN and OMEGA 2020 series. Secretlab claims it's 3.5x more durable than the previous generation, which can lead to a much more sustainable and comfortable sitting experience. Both the current and previous fabric generations hold up well against pets, especially those with longer nails.

The look of their fabric gaming chairs give a more homely vibe thanks to the knitted colorways, making you want to sink into them and experience the comfort. Thanks to Secretlab's chairs leaning range of 165°, it is quite nice to lean your chair back and have a little rest in between matches or on your lunch break.

Now, with a more breathable gaming chair comes greater responsibility. The more porous a material is, the easier it'll hold onto stains. In the event you spill something on a SoftWeave™ Plus Fabric gaming chair, you're going to need to blot, not rub, the spill immediately, as letting it sit or rubbing it in can cause the stain to set relatively fast. Keep a dry cloth handy for any accidents or liquid spills.

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Best Gaming Chair Material for Comfort

Secretlab's NAPA Leather gaming chair brings together the soft and supple feel of leather with more breathability thanks to natural pores.

Thankfully, there's an option where you can have the soft, smooth feel of the leatherette and get the coolness that comes from the fabric, and that's the NAPA Leather option. This gaming chair material holds up for the long run and has natural pores in it, which gives it a more breathable sitting experience.

NAPA leather, being a top-of-the-line leather, means it has extremely high durability, but still not as high as the NEO™ Hybrid Leatherette option. This is mostly thanks to the fact that this leather option has natural pores. These tiny little holes do mean it's slightly more susceptible to both tearing and stains compared to the hybrid leatherette.

The other thing you'll need to keep in mind is that this "best of both worlds" option will come with a higher price tag compared to either the NEO™ Hybrid Leatherette or the SoftWeave™ Plus Fabric option, as it is genuine leather. This does also change the look of the chair slightly compared to the leatherette option, giving it a more reflective surface. But if you're going for a more traditional or natural look, real leather is the way to go.

There are older versions of the Secretlab materials out there available for the TITAN and OMEGA 2020 series. These materials are still fantastic options, but they're limited in quantity, and they are the older versions of the current TITAN Evo 2022 series. Because these materials are on older models, you can often find them at a discounted price compared to the current TITAN Evo 2022 series.

The SoftWeave™ Fabric was the first iteration where increased durability met a breathable fabric from Secretlab. This fabric has many of the same features as SoftWeave™ Plus Fabric in terms of keeping its form and still making it easy to hold up against pets, just not to the same extent. The older fabric also looks more like a typical office chair, compared to the knit, cozy patterns of the newer options.

PRIME™ 2.0 PU leather was the previous generation of "leather" options from Secretlab. Unlike the newer NEO™ Hybrid Leatherette, this was an actual leather material offered alongside NAPA leather. It's still a more durable option compared to either of the fabric options out there, but still not as much as the leatherette options.

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To choose the best Secretlab gaming chair for you, you'll need to take into consideration a list of items, including:

The TITAN Evo 2022 series of gaming chairs tends to have an option for everyone, regardless of what you answer to those questions. Making it the best overall Secretlab gaming chair to choose from.

Secretlab SoftWeave™ Plus Fabric is made with a stitch pattern out of interlacing loops of yarn fibers. Whereas Secretlab NEO™ Hybrid Leatherette still has a PU leather base, but is combined with a resin top layer to mimic the higher quality NAPA leather feel. This top layer of resin also closes off any pores and creates an extra layer of protection against spills and tears.

Miri is a creative writer with a passion for gaming and animation. Starting with the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, she is a lifelong console gamer and overall Xbox fangirl (especially with Game Pass existing!).She still loves Nintendo too though, and will sometimes throw a bone to PC games (if they have cute cats and/or apocalyptic societies). When she isn't writing or gaming, Megan loves to see art through webtoons, comics, anime, and other animated projects!

A lover of all things PC related, Matt has been building and testing computer parts since he could afford them. He also spends his free time building and collecting keyboards.