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- Supportive and comfortable
- Seat depth and tilt adjustment
- Good quality construction
- May be too firm for some
Here’s my hot take: hybrid chairs like the Secretlab Atlas should be the norm. I think the principle just makes sense. After all, how many people do you know with the space for two separate desks for gaming and working? Roll both into one, as Secretlab has done here, and you get a supportive, feature-rich seat that aesthetically sits in a sweet spot between the offensive mesh and chrome of an office chair and the oppressive heft of a gaming chair.
That’s the theory, anyway. In the Atlas, Secretlab has done its level best to combine the positives of both kinds of chair while limiting the downsides. And based on my two-going-on-three weeks with it, I’d say Secretlab has succeeded on almost every count. It’s both comfortable and supportive, looks good and doesn’t dominate my small home office.
Secretlab Atlas review: What do you get for the money?
The Secretlab Atlas starts at £399 for a leatherette-clad model with cold-cure foam in a Regular size. The model I reviewed costs £429: that gets you a SoftWeave fabric variant with the same foam, also in a Regular. The Large model sets you back an additional £30, no matter the model.
I chose the standard cold-cure foam because a) I prefer the firmness and b) I felt the price was more approachable for most people, but for £599 (£629 in a Large) you can have Secretlab’s newer NanoFoam Composite. This will be a softer sit, thanks to a slim layer of microfoam that’s placed on top of the cold-cure foam.
If you pick a £599 variant in leatherette, you’ll get a slightly different kind of material: the NanoGen Hybrid Leatherette is purportedly more durable and more supple than the standard Neo Hybrid, with a finer grain and softer texture.
No matter which version you choose, you’ll get a magnetic head pillow, which attaches firmly to the top of the backrest.
The chair itself weighs 22kg and measures 127cm from wheels to tip (at its fullest extension) and 71cm wide from the edge of one armrest to the other. In terms of adjustability, you can recline 120 degrees, raise/lower the seat by 7.5cm and – unusually – shift the seat bucket itself back and forth by 6cm. The armrests have three degrees of freedom (height, swivel and depth).
Is it easy to assemble?
The first hurdle with any new chair is assembly. It took me 21mins to empty the contents of the box, fumble with the instructions and put the thing together – that’s swift. It helps that the chair is just about light enough to manhandle alone, and that Secretlab provides a rather nice tool kit to make the job easy.
It might sound obvious, but I’m glad Secretlab designed its chair to slot together. I’ve encountered too many instances where the various components simply rest on each other, which I feel is both hard work for the user when assembling AND more liable to break or work loose.
Is it well made?
In fact, more generally, I’m still marvelling at the build quality of the Atlas. If this is the quality of the cheaper model, I don’t think anyone needs to spend the extra £200 or so on the premium variants. The fabric is very pleasant to the touch, with a nice fine stitch and what I’d call a “breathable” quality to it. I’d recommend it over a 100% leatherette variant any day.
I’m similarly smitten with the arm rests, which are foam-topped rather than solid plastic (not a guarantee at lower price points). Plastic is pretty ubiquitous elsewhere, but I’d say it never looks or feels tacky. By way of comparison, the Secretlab Titan Evo – the brand’s flagship gaming chair, which received top marks in my full review from 2024 – is built with aluminium and it weighs a whopping 35kg. I’d prefer to be able to move my chair without a forklift.
There’s nothing high-tech or complex about testing a chair – our method is to simply use it… a lot. Every day for at least two weeks is ample time to form a solid opinion, particularly if you’ve sat on a lot of other gaming and office chairs (which I have).
Of course, I stress-tested every aspect of the chair thoroughly (lots of reclining and spinning and rising and sinking), noting any confusing/unwieldy mechanisms. I also timed myself assembling the chair solo – although in many cases, brands recommend enlisting the help of a second pair of hands.
To draw fair and objective comparisons to other chairs, we always tabulate every feature and key spec and score the various ergonomic aspects of each chair.
Is it easy to use/adjust?
The adjustment levers on the Secretlab Atlas take a moment to learn, but they operate smoothly and are pretty intuitive, if unusual.
The left lever controls seat depth adjustment: twist it forwards (anti-clockwise) and hold to unmoor the seat bucket, which you then adjust while seated by… thrusting. It also controls the backrest recline: flip the paddle up to lock the backrest in place, and flip it down to unlock and reposition as you wish. You’ve got four “locking angles” to choose from (100°, 107°, 113°, and 120°), rather than total free rein, but that’s ample in my mind.
The right lever is purely for height adjustment and you twist this forwards (clockwise) to lower or raise the seat. However, it also has a small dial in the centre, which when twisted increases and decreases the resistance of the recline. There are four settings here: you’ll immediately know which one you’re in by the bright red markers built into the lever, facing you.
The left lever has a similar indicator, this one green (“unlocked”) and red (“locked”) depending on the status of that backrest angle lock. Both are nice touches, as most chairs make this sort of thing more a matter of guesswork.
My only mild complaint is that the backrest angle lock sometimes gets stuck when unlocked, meaning you have to push against the backrest a bit to nudge it loose.
Is it comfortable?
I should preface this section by saying that your mileage may vary. Gaming chairs are generally firmer than the mesh or soft foam that makes up most office chairs, and Secretlab chairs are firm even by gaming chair standards.
Stick with me. The Secretlab Atlas is initially a shock. I swapped from a Razer Iskur gaming chair, and I was still taken aback. But two-and-a-bit weeks later, I far prefer the Atlas to anything I use at home or in the Expert Reviews offices. The cold-cure foam has just enough give to cushion me without sinking or sagging, and the seat bucket on the Regular model I have here perfectly cradles my legs.
I’d also go as far as to say that I don’t miss adjustable lumbar support. I will admit that’s largely because the gaming chairs I’ve tested over the years rarely implement it well (aside from the Iskur), but I’m also bought into Secretlab’s claim that they’ve modelled the arch of the backrest on “people of all shapes and sizes”. I’m using the Atlas as I type this and I can feel the support of the wide lumbar arch on the entirety of my lower back, rather than a small patch (or indeed, not at all).
If you’re just going to set the lumbar support to one position and forget about it, then you won’t miss the adjustability, either. And let’s not forget – the adjustable seat depth gives you a small amount of room (60mm) to adjust the distance between your back and the backrest.
Should you buy the Secretlab Atlas?
I’ve talked myself into giving the Secretlab Atlas full marks. Yes, it is a bit more expensive than some comparable office chairs (such as the excellent Sihoo M57), but it’s also much better looking and better made, and it’s certainly not short on features. I’d just advise against plumping for the premium variants – the model on trial here is plenty good and better value.
There’s not much on the market at the moment that compares exactly to the Atlas, so for now it stands alone: slimmer and lighter than a gaming chair, and as ergonomically friendly as a good-value office chair. I’ll admit, it’s firm, but that’s another trait inherited from the gaming side, and I promise your posture will thank you.
It won’t oust the Slouch Task One or Secretlab Titan Evo as our favourite office chair or gaming chair, but the Secretlab Atlas definitely carves a kingdom for itself somewhere in the middle.
