Are sim racing seats comfortable? Our guide for the ultimate racing experience

If you are serious about your racing games, you may have wondered whether sim racing seats are comfortable when you are planning on buying one.

Fortunately, we’re here to help by explaining some of the key characteristics of a racing seat before we give our overall judgment on whether we think it can provide a comfortable ride.

Let’s start with their purpose …

Purpose of a racing seat

Racing seats in real racing cars are not designed for comfort. Instead, they’re designed to be safe, light, and strong to maximize performance and safety.

Plus, they are usually tailored to the driver and their body shape, which is usually not the case with sim racing seats, which are mainly built to add realism to your racing setup.

That being said, sim racing seats are not used in real life so they can afford to add some extra items to ensure you stay comfortable even during lengthy gaming sessions.

Padding and support in a sim racing seat

Most sim racing seats come with good padding to increase comfort as this is arguably one of the most important factors to consider when buying a gaming chair.

For example, this Next Level Racing GT featured on our list of the best racing seats for GT7 has a ton of extra padding, as well as extra lumbar supports that will improve your comfort during the race.

Photo credit: Next Level Racing

In addition, some chairs, like this Playseat Challenge, are highly adjustable so they can be reclined into a more relaxed position for further comfort and making sitting in a racing chair a pleasant experience.

These are things that can’t be applied to their real-world counterparts as they usually add too much weight.

An F1 seat, for example, comes with almost no upholstery and is fixed in one position for an entire race.

Materials for a sim racing seat

Another element to consider when figuring out whether a sim racing seat is comfortable is the materials that are used to build the chair and to line it.

This Playseat Evolution, for example, seems to be an extremely robust device, but its chair is covered with soft, high-quality Alcantara, which should offer a luxurious and comfortable driving experience, especially on warmer days.

Image Credit: Playseat

Alternatively, some chairs, like this Extreme Simracing Cockpit 3.0 featured on our list of the best racing seats, are made with real or synthetic leather, which can be soft to sit on, and are usually filled with good padding.

While real racing seats can be covered with a fabric, this is usually kept very thin to keep weight to a minimum.

McLaren, for example, was the first Formula 1 team to equip its chairs with natural fibers, but the layer is extremely thin, it sits on stiff carbon fiber and doesn’t even cover the entire chair.

Image source: McLaren

Are sim racing seats comfortable?

The decision as to whether sim racing seats are comfortable is ultimately very subjective and varies between different manufacturers.

In general, however, sim racing chairs should be comfortable as this is an extremely important aspect in making gaming comfortable.

Sim seats are also not subject to the same restrictions as real racing chairs. You can therefore incorporate some extras like upholstery, leather, and alcantara to improve comfort while ensuring that they remain reasonably accurate to their counterparts.

Read more: The best racing seats for Forza Horizon 5 now available