You might know the saying “for every butt there is a seat” well I get the feeling DXRacer recognizes this with their wide selection of seating options. I have taken a look at a few of their chairs in the past and after visiting their US office I can say for sure that they have a wide selection of seats. They have seven different chair series as well as a ton of colors in each series. When it was time to upgrade my wife’s office chair I decided to go with DXRacer’s latest line, the K Series.  The high weight capacity wasn’t needed for her but the large size is great for when she sits in her chair Indian style. On top of that, the high weight capacity means when we have people over for small LANs we won’t have to worry about big buys like me breaking the chair.

Product Name: DXRacer K Series Office Chair

Review Sample Provided by: DXRacer

Written by: Wes

Pictures by: Wes

Specifications

Model

OH/KC91/NB

Color

Black and Blue

Cover

knitted polyester

Armrest

4 way adjustable

Base

Chromed Aluminum

Mechanism

Deluxe

Adjustor

Twin

Weight limit

400

Accessories

Headrest cushion and lumbar cushion

Warranty

lifetime on frame 2 years on parts

 


Packaging

To call the box that the K Series comes in large might be an understatement. It is as tall as a TKL keyboard is long and when you view it from the top it dwarfs the keyboard. The box weighs a total of 70 pounds as well so your delivery guy/girl isn’t going to be a fan of you when this comes in. Once you maneuver the box inside and get it opened up you will find the chair back and arm rests right up top. The armrests come attached to the chair base but you can expect to have to work to get the chair back out from in between them. With the main pieces of the chair out, you will see that the chair was sitting in a foam tray with plenty of padding. There is a box of accessories along with the other important pieces of the chair. The base is also slipped in between the chair back and the chair bottom, keeping it protected as well.  

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Assembly

Before getting started putting the KC91/NB together I pulled everything out of the packaging and took an inventory to make sure that I had everything. There is nothing worse than putting a bunch of time into building something, all the excitement of getting to use it, only to figure out that you are missing one small part. While doing that you will need to get the manual out as well. For the K Series DXRacer really stepped things up, the manual is huge and full color.

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Now that we are ready to go, the first thing I do is dig out the base, wheels, and the plastic grips. The KC91/NB comes with a black metal base just like our M Series, some of the other K Series models have a similar base but with a polished finish. So I start by flipping the base upside down and installing all five of the wheels. They take a little effort, especially putting them into the metal base but anyone should be able to do it without too much trouble. Next we install the small plastic footrests onto the base, they just snap in with no effort.

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While we still have the base out grab the hydraulic piston and the cover. The piston just drops into the hole in the center of the base and then the cover slides over it. Once we get that all setup we can take it off the table and set it aside on the floor nearby so when we prep the rest of the chair it goes together.

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Okay next we grab the bottom of the chair and flip it upside down. Here we need to remove the four bolts that were pre-installed. You can use the large allen wrench that they include in with the chair here, no need to get any extra tools out. One they are out, keep the lock washer and normal washer on them in the same order and we sit the tilt assembly on those same holes with the adjuster knob facing the front of the chair. Bolt it down using the four bolts and we are almost ready to really start to see things come together.

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While we are still down here slide the two adjuster arms on, they just press in. You just have to make sure they face the correct directions, but the guides inside will only let you put them two ways, it will be obvious which way to put them on.

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Next we take the bottom of the chair and put it on top of the base that we previously put together. You just have to line up the hole on the bottom of the chair with the hydraulic piston. It press fits so you won’t need to do anything else. Simple!

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Last but not least we have to put the back on the chair. Of all of the DXRacers I have put together this is typically what I find the hardest. The biggest tip I can give you is DO NOT TOUCH THE BACK ADJUSTMENT HANDLE. If you pull it you will have to try to install the chair back facing all the way forward and pulling it back isn’t really an option until you have the back installed for leverage. That said what can make things difficult is lining up the holes because the fabric will sometimes partially cover the holes. If you make sure you can see the holes, start on the right side then do the left side and you will be done in no time. The last thing we have to do once the back is installed is just pop on the plastic cover.

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All in all building the K Series takes about 20 minutes or a half hour in Wes time when you do it by yourself and take photos the whole time.

 


Photos and Features

So now that we have everything together we can take a better look at the chair and see what sets the King Series apart from DXRacers other lines and also what makes the KC91/NB a little different than most of the other King Series chairs as well. To start off, lets break down where the King Series chairs fall in the DXRacer product line. They recently changed their website around a little breaking up the classifications a little more. In the past we have taken a look at the F Series console gaming chair and the M Series executive office chair and then at our last LAN we gave away two of the F Series PC gaming chairs. The Console gaming chairs are designed for use in your living room or your gaming room. The other two types of chairs are both for office use but the PC gaming chairs have a more aggressive design that to be frank grips your bottom more like a race cars seat where the executive office chairs like the M Series have a more traditional seat area. The K Series is large like the M and U Series’, but has the aggressive design of the smaller PC gaming chairs. Additionally it has a higher load rating of up to 400 pounds for big guys like me.

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So what sets a racing style seat like this apart from your standard office chair? Well beyond the styling a lot of these chairs including the K Series have a seat adjustment that is completely logical but missing from almost all office chairs. Just behind the right arm rest there is a lever, when pulled you can adjust the seatback angle of your chair, just like in your car. It actually seems a little crazy to me that we haven’t seen this more in the past because when I’m in the car if the back of my driver seat is even slightly off I will notice and fight with it until I get it perfect. We have other adjustments available as well like a standard gas height adjusting cylinder to set the chair height although honestly the lowest setting is a little on the high side. The adjuster for that is on the right side. On the left side is a lock that will lock your chairs angle. So you can lock it in vertically or if you want to lean back more you can even lock it in place leaning back or anywhere in between. If you leave it unlocked you can adjust the knob on the bottom of the chair to set the spring tension on how much effort it takes to lean back.  

So I mentioned before that the KC91/NB that we are covering here today is a little different than the majority of the King Series chairs. Well on of the two reasons for this is in its armrests. The other King Series chairs have four way adjustable armrests where the KC91/NB’s armrests are solid. This is because this is a slightly more affordable model, cutting out that adjustability helps with that. In fact you get the same armrests that I saw with the F Series console chair. That does mean we have that weird mold quirk on the underside of the armrest as well, unscrewing the top pad and flipping it around will fix it if you run into it.

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The other thing that sets the KC91/NB apart is with its material. You see most of the K Series models are covered in a PVC based material. With this model, they went with a more standard fabric. This is actually why we went with this specific model, with our cats my wife has had problems with her past leather chairs getting claw marks in them. With fabric if the cats claw at all it doesn’t leave the holes that you get on leather and fake leather. The black in this case has a little texture to it and the blue is a little smoother. The blue however has small rubber dots all over it.

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Unlike the M Series the K Series kept the same seatbelt holes that the smaller chairs also have. This is actually just a holdover from where these chairs originally came from. In the past people would take actual car racing seats and turn them into office chairs. The real raising chairs have the two holes in the back for you to be able to have a five point racing harness. DXRacer still puts them to use though, the headrest attaches here.

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To spice things up the chair does have a few details on the fabric. For starters they have embroidered the DXRacer logo on the back of the headrest area. The same logo is also on the front of the chair bottom. Then down in the chair bottom they slipped in a King tag to show that this is a K Series chair.

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So just like the other DXRacer chairs you do get two pillows along with the chair. One is the lumbar pillow and the second is a small headrest pillow. Unlike the M-Series for this model they send a smaller headrest, this seems a little crazy to me with this being their flagship chair. What you get is the same small pillow that comes with the F-Series chairs. I would happily give up the lumbar pillow that never gets used to get the larger head pillow. They do sell the larger pillow on their accessories page though. So the head pillow can wrap around the outside of the top of the chair if you need it to be up high and if you need it lower you can use the included clip to strap it into the 5-point harness holes. The lumbar pillow is a little more complicated, it has two long straps, you have to run the strap down between the top and bottom pieces of the chair and through the 5-point harness holes. Once strapped down the lumbar pillow does slide up and down for you to set your preferred height.

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So DXRacer says this chair is rated for 400 pounds where the M-Series is rated at 330. So what is different? On the underside of the chair if you look closely you can see the change. Both chairs have the same support beams but for the K-Series each of the supports are made of a U shaped material where the M-Series just had flat metal supports. The U shape adds additional strength. The base of the chair is unchanged because the all metal base is strong as is. For wheels DXRacer dropped the locking wheels this time around but still went with a large wheel design that should roll perfectly on any surface. Without the locks I shouldn’t have to worry about getting locked in place under my desk like I had happen with the M Series.

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Performance

So after spending about a month using the King Series KC91/NB, lets talk a little about how it performed. For starters, much like shopping for beds chairs are completely subjective. A chair that is supportive but soft for a fat guy will be hard for someone who weighs a lot less for example. So going into this you have to keep in mind that I am a larger guy, thankfully though my wife isn’t so the second half of my testing was with her in the chair as well, considering the chair was for her in the first place this isn’t a big surprise.

So first off even just sitting in the KC91/NB the first time you can really tell that this falls into the PC Gaming hair category more than the office chair category that the M-Series does. The chairs are similar in size but the bottom of the King Series chairs grabs you a little more with its side bolstering. This is similar to the F-Series chairs with the only difference being this time around it is designed for my big butt where with the F-Series I was putting 10 pounds into a 5 pound bag. DXRacer advertises this chair to have their softest padding and I could see that but with that it does also have a nice supporting feel, I don’t feel like I’m going to flatten the chair out from use. The side bolstering was comfortable in nearly every situation except when I took the weekend off and played The Crew basically all day and all night, I did reach a point where the side support was a little much, but frankly I shouldn’t have been sitting for that long in the first place. The bottom padding held up well as well, even in the weekend long bender, given my weight this is a worse case situation for the padding, typically most chairs padding would be flat and uncomfortable in a short period of time.

Being able to lean the back of the chair makes getting comfortable in every situation much easier. In addition to that being able to lock the chair when it is leaning back slightly is also great. There are a lot of times where I want to lean back a little without going all the way back and without having to balance myself, this worked perfectly for me. For my wife she actually set the chair with a slight lean right from the start, she had been using the F-Series Console Gaming chair and this was the best way to replicate the same leaned back/sunken in feeling. I did notice that the stock height of the chair does seem a little high, this is most likely related to the large wheels but keep it in mind if you have a hard time fitting under your desk with your current chair. It sits right at where I need it to be for me personally, but it would be nice to have a little bit of a buffer.

As expected I didn’t enjoy the lumbar pillow at all, I’ve tried to use these multiple times and it just does work for me. I thought maybe it was because of my size, but my wife also doesn’t like using it as well. I did put the head pillow to good use but I would prefer that they use the same larger pillow that the M-Series has. This pillow is small and you have to adjust to whatever you are doing where the other pillow design was just there and worked.

I mentioned before that the KC91/NB doesn’t have adjustable armrests like most of the other K-Series chairs. This is part of the reason they were able to keep the cost down on this specific model. For my wife there was no issue at all, she was already used to the same armrest design from the Console Gaming chair. She did comment on the armrests being a little firm, it would be cool if they had more padding to make using them more comfortable. For me the armrests did get in the way slightly. For one they fit a little closer to me where the adjustable armrests on the other K-Series chairs actually have an adjustment to widen the seating area slightly. This became an issue when I would go to sit down, nearly every time the armrests would catch on my pants pockets, multiple times I thought I had ripped my pants. I did get used to it, making sure to sit down a little differently, but more than anything I want to make sure everyone knows about any potential issues, no matter how small.

Last but not least I want to point out that the new lockless wheels are awesome. Typically I prefer to use a roller blade type wheel both because they cause less damage to your flooring but also to roll around easier. The wheels that DXRacer uses are similar to your standard wheel but noticeably larger. For the M-Series they used a similar wheel but with locks. Not having locks means I won’t get locked in up under my desk anymore. As for how the wheels roll, day to day I couldn’t tell the difference between these and a set of roller blade wheels. They roll on our carpet great where a small standard wheel won’t roll at all.

 


Overall and Final Verdict

So the King Series and specifically the KC91/NB that I took a look at today are a nice progression from what DXRacer has done in the past. One of the best features about the M-Series that I previously covered was it being a gaming themed chair designed to handle larger frames. Well the K-Series of chairs upped the weight limit even more and added a little more of an aggressive design compared to the M and U Series’. This is more in line with the other chairs that have made DXRacer so popular like the F-Series. The KC91/NB is extremely comfortable, even when using the chair day in and day out like I typically do. The downside to working from home is that I spend my day working in one chair and then my night gaming in the same chair. This puts a major strain on even the best chairs. To add to the comfort, the KC91/NB’s adjustable seatback is a major plus when compared to standard office chairs, they just don’t offer features like that.

DXRacer dropping the lock on their wheels was also great to see, and a sign that they are listening to customer and reviewer feedback. In fact of the four cons I put on the M-Series review, three out of the four were not an issue this time around. This left me complaining about relatively smaller issues like the small head pillow that was included this time around. Hopefully they consider swapping to the same large pillow that comes with the M-Series, until then I might just have to pick one up off their website. I’m really happy that they added a few more fabric chair options as well although I do wish there was an option with the nicer fully adjustable armrests of some of the other K-Series models. Beyond that I had to put down availability as a con, DXRacer has been blowing up and that kind of growth takes time to adjust too. They are selling their seats the second they come in. They do let you pre-order all of the chairs that they have coming in soon though so it is easy to see what will be available soon.

So are the new K-Series chairs for you? Well if you are smaller I think one of the smaller models like the F-Series would be a better way to go. You will get the same features for about $100 less. I was going to put the price of the K-Series chairs down as a con but after giving it a little thought I’m not going too. Without a doubt this is a big investment, but I have been on the market looking at chairs with higher weight capacities and there just aren’t a lot of options. What you do end up finding is priced just under the K-Series, but you are getting basic boring office chairs. DXRacer is offering up something unique at a price that is in line with the market.

fv4recommended

Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #36061 30 Dec 2014 16:42
So with this week being new years I am posting our mid week review up a little early because I will have a look back on 2014 on the first. Today I take a look at the King Series office chair from DXRacer, their latest and greatest.
cytog64's Avatar
cytog64 replied the topic: #38258 07 Dec 2016 15:41
After getting to test out this brand at LAN OC and try a few competitors at Dreamhack I went ahead and purchased an Iron Series office/gaming chair. I went with Green as it matches my Razer Blade.

garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #38259 08 Dec 2016 08:22
Looking forward to hearing how it works for you. Did you get the bean bag as well?
cytog64's Avatar
cytog64 replied the topic: #38260 08 Dec 2016 16:04
yes, hoping the sultan sumo arrives today...i need to get to work on PS4 - FF15 and this is my preferred console setup

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