Playseats Evolution Gaming Seat

With its completely renewed design and double-stitched vinyl cover, the Evolution Gaming Seat from Playseats puts you smack dab in the middle of your favorite racing game. The seat works with almost all racing peripherals on the market and every game console, including the Xbox 360, GameCube, PlayStation2, PCs, and more. More importantly, the chair is notably comfortable while delivering the most realistic racing simulation around.
Enjoy the ultimate race gaming experience with Playseats. |
Details include a reinforced steel tubular construction that adds stability and eliminates excess wobble, a non-flammable seat material, and an easy-to-assemble design. Just install a game steering wheel, such as the latest Logitech model, on the middle pole and attach a couple of pedals along the bottom (all sold separately). The setup is also easily adaptable, with multiple adjustment knobs letting you move the wheel and pedals closer or farther, depending on your height. Appropriate for ages 8 and older, the Evolution seat is the perfect accessory for gamers who want to boost their lap times in style.
Once assembled, it measures 52.1 x 19.7 x 38.6 inches (L x H x W). It’s recommended for ages 8 years and older.
User Ratings and Reviews
3 Stars Good for the money, but not great
I was very excited about receiving my Playseats Evolution. It was pretty easy to assemble, and after fiddling around with it for a short while, I found a position for everything that was just about perfect.
But.
Since the steering column is only attached at one point to the base, it flexes a lot. Really amplifies the force feedback, which could be good, but just winds up being a little bit annoying. And, because that single attachment runs right between your feet, you can choose between either heel-toe braking OR left-foot braking. You cannot do both. And therein lies the rub. The designers foresaw this limitation and provided two different places to mount the pedals. But it’s a work-around, and not a fix.
And there’s no quick set method to employ the work-around. To move the pedals means first removing your pedal set from the rest, then moving the rest, and re-attaching the pedal set. It’s almost 10 minutes of work to go back and forth between games that support the Logitech G25′s clutch pedal.
If they were to simply change the steering column to make a loop around your legs, this wouldn’t be a problem at all.
Finally, the seat material makes me sweat. A lot.
But it’s a pretty good training seat, directly accepts the G25, lets me approximate the setup in my Spec Miata, and is light enough to move out of the way.
3 Stars poor packing handling at facory (paint)
ordered it based on reviews of others here..glad i did..but..
getting it out of the box i thought they send me a used one, repacked or so.
Closer inspection showed just very poor paint quality and the one person who handles the packing it up in the box seriously does not care wether it looks ‘new’ or not!
I guess i got all my parts that were painted came from the bottom of the pile. Very poor quality paint.
On the other note that the intention of this product is to create a stable sim race platform i can truly say it meets my expectations and i can not see me ‘race’ my GT4 and GT5 any other way anymore!
Absolutely stable and fairly comfi.
250 lbs guy and i believe it will take all adrenaline abuse i (unwillingly, he he) throw at this playchair.
Good thing they provide 3 adjustment positions for the paddle mount otherwise the vertical tubing would be seriously in the way of ones leg, so that was solved easy.
Friends who came over and tried it mentioned they had to have one too..
Kinda fun to watch their wives facial expressions after they mentioned that.
3 stars (only) due to lousy paint quality and the seat could be a little thicker for my heavy a..
5 Stars Husband’s toy
My husband is really enjoying his driving games now. Stays in place. He is 68.
5 Stars Never more (..will you use a foldable table)
The Playseats Evolution is the perfect companion for a racing wheel. If you’re fan of racing games (and don’t merely play them for fun, like any other game) and if you own a wheel, don’t hesitate in buying this. Once you try one of these, you won’t go back to clamping your wheel on a desk, or using a foldable table, or any other thing like that.
First of all, the seat is very comfortable. You’ll find yourself racing for hours without your back aching or finding yourself in weird positions. Also, the seat folds, for storage, although it still uses some considerable space (that being said, it is highly recommendable that you have a dedicated gaming room, or at least you have decent space on your room).
The build quality is exceptional. At first glance, you might think that it will not be the most stable gaming seat available, giving that you have to put it together piece by piece. However, you’ll find that the entire thing is quite sturdy and stable. Moreover, when you’re in the middle of a race, you won’t notice any wobble at all. Also, it is notable that every piece fits perfectly. I didn’t have any trouble assembling the seat, not even one screw presented any trouble at all. Once completely assembled, you’ll see that the seat sits perfectly still on it’s base, the pedal platform is really sturdy, and the arm where you mount the wheel presents minimum wobble.
The design is fantastic. The seat, based on actual bucket seats, immediately invites you to sit on it and hit the gas. The metal parts have a nice color finish, and they fit perfectly into the overall design. The seat is covered with white or black high-quality vinyl, with touches of black on the “shoulders” and “head” of the seat. Overall, as stated before, the seat is very comfortable, very well cushioned, and has a great design.
Playseats gave a really appealing design to the Evolution, but that doesn’t mean that it compromised it’s functionality. The distance of the pedal plate to the seat is adjustable, and it will fit tall people without any problem (I’m 5’11″, like to play with the pedals as far away from me as possible, and the thing could expand way more than that). Now, the angle of the pedal plate is not adjustable; however, the angle given is very comfortable and I have no complains about it. Now, the wheel mount is adjustable both in separation from the seat, height and angle of the wheel (the wheel angle is adjustable by some mechanism that I don’t fully understand yet, but it gives you some 3 or 4 possible angles to fit your needs). One thing here: To avoid having to adjust the separation of the pedals and wheel everytime someone new tries your seat, I’d recommend the slider kit (Also sold here on Amazon).
It is important to say that the wheel mount, as well as the pedal plate, have pre-drilled holes that fit the Logitech G25 wheel (There is also a gear-shift mount sold separately), so it is ideal if you have it. However, if you own an Xbox 360 wheel, I highly recommend that you buy the mounting brackets (also sold here on Amazon) to fit the 360 wheel. This is necessary because the platform where the wheel is mounted is very thin, and the clamp on the wheel won’t be enough. There are several people (myself included) that have built home-made solutions to avoid spending 30 bucks on those brackets (Like drilling a wood board to the platform and then clamping the wheel), but I’ve found that the clamping mechanism of the Xbox 360 wheel is not _that_ reliable (if you are one of those that “feel” the game, you’ll find yourself holding the wheel completely separated from the platform from time to time), so I recommend that you buy the brackets along with the seat, if that’s your case.
My only complain on this thing is that they should sell it with the slider kit and xbox 360 mounting brackets included (even if it costed a bit more), because you’ll find that they’re quite useful. However, I understand that some people don’t need them at all (and instead maybe need the gear shift mount), so it’s logical that they sell all those extras separately.
All in all, the Playseats Evolution is a fantastic big-boy’s toy. The quatliy, design and functionality that it delivers make it a great investment. Seriously, this seat is some of the best spending I’ve done in a while. Once you receive yours, you won’t regret at all. Heck, I even thought first that this thing would have a huge girlfriend disapproval factor, but actually she likes it a lot.
5 Stars This chair is awesome! Worth the money!
This chair is awesome! Took about 20 minutes to setup. Not a bad process. The manual could of been clearer on the instructions.
Once setup I mounted my XBOX steering wheel to it and turned on GRID for the XBOX 360. It takes about 30-60 minutes to really get good with the wheel, but once you do its hard to get out of the chair! Its the only game I have played since getting the chair. I dont want to play anything else. Its like having an arcade in your living room! If your on edge to buy this thing and have a XBOX 360, GRID and some money…I would definitely pick it up! You wont regret it. I like that it folds up for easy storage too so my Girlfriend doesnt have to look at it!
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