X-Dream Rocker Wireless Gaming Chair Review

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It’s no secret that gaming plays a big part in my everyday life, with my biggest love coming in the form of my PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles. There’s nothing like grabbing a few mates, whacking in a game disk and tearing it up on multiplayer till the early hours of the morning. When readers email me asking to see more gaming related reviews, i jump at the chance to do what i love while giving you an insight to all the good,bad and downright ugly products on the market today. One product that is an absolute must for any serious gamer is a gaming chair, and right now the market is literally bursting at the seams with so many different styles/types/price ranges, meaning making that purchase can be a tuff one if you don’t know where to start. As someone who’s played online games for the best part of 11yrs the two most important factors to me are aesthetics and comfort. Once chair on the market that looks like a serious contender in both these categories is the X-Dream Rocker Gaming Chair. Detailed in it’s product description as being more than a gaming chair – it’s a quality piece of furniture,  will give gamers out there the perfect excuse to provide their ‘other half’ with if they moan about the £250 pricetag attached by telling them ‘it’s not a gaming accessory it’s an investment for the future’ (yeah right).

Taken directly from BoysStuff.co.uk here is a short product description for the X-Dream Rocker:

If you are looking for the ultimate gaming chair experience the the X-Dream Rocker Gaming Chair is the solution.  This gaming chair is effectively an updated Series II version of the X-Rocker Pro with Stand branded exclusively for BoysStuff.co.uk.

It is more than a gaming or cinema chair – it is a quality piece of furniture. The X Dream Rocker Gaming Chair is a modern robust “fit for purpose” design with a quality breathable brush fabric finish – no need to suffer the sweaty stickiness of a leather seat during a long gaming session!

It’s THE immersive seating experience for gaming, movies and music. And it’s exclusive to BoysStuff! Designed by us, for the perfect, extreme (but massively comfortable) gaming experience.

When removed from it’s outer protective shell (or shipping box) the X-Dream Rocker certainly packs a punch with it’s vital statistics coming in at 105cm x 90cm x 68cm tall with an overall weight of 29KGs!!!!  Certainly not for the faint hearted, the X-Dream Rocker is living up to it’s name of being a piece of furniture – now all the avid gamer needs to do is find some space in amongst all the monitors, TV’s and spaghetti junction wiring to plonk this beast of a chair….

Not just primarily aimed at gamers, the X-Dream Rocker is also the ‘must-have’ accessory for movie buffs and music fans everywhere – hey it’s not all about the gamers according to the product description!!

To aid in the comfort department, The X-Dream Rocker utilizes many tricks to eradicate that aching feeling the day after the night before – no longer will you resemble that zombie off the Thriller movie after your long chill out session. Featuring an ergonomic ‘bucket’ shape seating area, the X-Dream Rocker comes equipped with an ultra padded back/base and reclining abilities, allowing you to lean back and relax. With perfectly positioned armrests along with padded headrest area, numbness will be a thing of the past. What about those hot summer nights? (i hear you shout) Won’t sweating/dirt become a problem with my pride and joy gaming chair? Fear not, the X-Dream Rocker’s secret ingredient to tackle these very real problems is a super soft breathable material that encompasses the chair’s whole center panel (running from top/bottom) – sweaty-botty syndrome, pack your bags and say goodbye

  

Looking over the X-Dream Rocker features, one that will likely appeal to gamers/home cinema/music lovers is the 3-channel wireless audio alongside the integrated surround sound system.  In addition are the interactive facilities that make this chair compatible with Apple’s famous i gadget range (iPad, iPhone, iPod) in conjunction with most branded/un-branded MP3 players on the market today, and the list doesn’t end there – add PS3, PS2, Xbox 360, Xbox, Wii to the list as well as all major consoles and handhelds. Not stopping there, the X-Dream Rocker is also compatible with TV, DVD, satellite, CD.

Connection wise, the X-Dream Rocker is promoted and described within it’s product specifications as being ‘Wireless’ – unfortunately this is not 100% accurate. While the X-Dream Rocker does have the ability to ‘beam’ audio (from up to 25 feet away) either from your console, TV, Stereo or DVD completely wire-free, you do still have to connect it to another electricity source by way of the included AC mains adapter. While this doesn’t exactly coincide with the word ‘wireless’, you do benefit slightly from eliminating all of the audio cabling when it comes to setting up your X-Dream Rocker’s audio output in ‘wireless’ mode. Every gamer/music/movie buff will tell you, one less wire connected is one less to untangle should you want to ‘shift’ your gamestation/home theater/music bench around. The Wireless audio ‘beaming’ itself is done via the included transmitter that is about the same size as a mobile phone – for the purpose of this review and to show the exact size dimensions, i used my son’s Blackberry phone (yes i did have to surgically remove this from his ear lobe before taking the size reference images).

In terms of audio, the X-Dream Rocker does not disappoint on paper, boasting an ultra-powered sub-woofer and featuring a 3 vibe drive installed in to the rear of the chair. According to the product description:

3 vibration units in the back of the chair thump, vibrate and crash in time to the action on the screen! It’s the ultimate ‘feel-the-action’ enhanced feedback device, above and beyond anything else out there! You can adjust the vibration, from a small buzz, to almost bone shatteringly high!

In addition to the drive/subwoofer installation, the X-Dream Rocker also offers surround sound audio in the form of two full range speakers that are located in the would be ‘head-rest’ area -  In any ideal surround sound situation positioning, your primary pair of surround speakers should be placed to the left and right of your listening position — either in line with it, or just behind it.

All settings/controls for your X-Dream Rocker are conveniently positioned on the right side panel of the chair, allowing for easy reach. On the left side of the panel are the Vibration, Bass and power buttons. The center dial is reserved for Volume control, while the right side of the panel is where you’ll find the Wireless Audio band selector switch and all of your input jacks (Audio Input/Output, MP3, Headphone).

One feature that is becoming more of the norm with gaming chairs is the ability to connect them to other gaming chairs – meaning you can have one heck of a gaming room filled with multiples of your favourite gaming chairs – if you ‘better-half’ catches on you can always reinforce the fact the the X-Dream Rocker is a piece of furniture as opposed to a gaming chair for your late night gaming sessions with yer’ mates.

Storage wise, the X-Dream Rocker is anything but discreet, nevertheless the ‘bucket’ style seating area does fold down for storage – however the installed ‘stand’ does not help decrease the overall  footprint when in the folded positioning, so maybe this is something to consider if you are not wanting to make your X-Dream Rocker a permanent feature in your home environment.

Testing:
With each product review we carry out, i always bang on about how we do ‘real life’ tests only – no gimmicks, no technical jargon, and certainly no demolition of items, just plain simple testing of how the item would be used in real life situations – we then report back and tell you in a few paragraphs exactly how it performed and how we rated it – simples!! The two main testing factors we concentrated on were comfort and performance (i.e Audio and initial setup).

Setup:
The X-Dream Rocker does come in a rather large box filled with all the necessary parts encased within huge foam protectors. The stand and armrests are easily installed using the included allen keys and screws/washers – the whole process (with 2 people – and you will definitely need an extra set of hands due to the weight of the chair) took around 15mins to complete.

Connection was fairly simple also, in any setup situation first step was to hook the chair up to an electricity source. In a wireless situation all you need to do is connect the included transmitter to your weapon of choice. In wired situations you would connect the chair directly using the included audio cabling. All fairly simple and straight forward.

Comfort:
For this part of the testing (and to get an accurate account of just how comfortable the X-Dream Rocker is) we utilize extensive and very strict test methods that are carried out over the course of 1week – basically we throw in some game disks, connect a few portable devices and watch a few films all whilst chilling out in our new office ‘toy’.

This is almost certainly where the X-Dream rocker excels spectacularly. The double layered foam inserts where it matters certainly aid/provide the end user with a very comfortable nights chill out  session. The ‘bucket’ style seating area ensures correct seating posture is followed, offering up a very relaxing seating experience. The reclining feature didn’t work as well as intended and should be classed as a slight tilt as opposed to a full recline. Nevertheless, this ‘slight-tilt’ did the job intended and made long seating session very pleasurable. If i was to offer up some criticism in the comfort department it would be the armrests – while these are a good feature to have they can become slightly un-comfortable after prolonged use. An additional option to help combat this small flaw would be removable arm-rest pads to be made available as an separate ‘addon/accessory’.

Audio:
Again, like the comfort category, the X-Dream Rocker does what it says on the packet. Throughout our testing period, we used a number of devices to ascertain the best audio output quality – from our un-branded MP3 player, to our iPad/iPod, DS console, TV and our XBox360. Out of all the items we connected the best audio output by far was in film and gaming situations.  This is where things like footsteps and bomb blasts need a decent output source to make them as realistic as possible – and the X-Dream Rocker doesn’t disappoint. MW3 was where the X-Dream Rocker felt right at home, enemy footsteps were amplified thanks to the surround sound speaker positioning, while gun blasts and airstrikes felt as realistic as they come through the aid of the sub-woofer vibrations.

Musically, the X-Dream Rocker much preferred the trance/dance/hard house/bass pumping tunes to anything else. Standing at a distance away from the chair and audio isn’t that great, but immerse yourself in to the action and take a seat and that’s where the beauty of this chair lies – beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder (or in this case’ audio excellence is certainly in the ears of the beholder’).

Our Personal Summary:
This is one of those scenarios whereby i absolutely love the item being reviewed, but cannot get a few niggly pointers out of my head – while quality over-rules this, i do as a reviewer have to add a few criticisms in to the boiling pot. Therefore if i absolutely have to nit-pic my only gripe(s) would be the non-padded armrests along with the non-wireless ‘wireless’ setup. If it were not for these very small minute details, the X-Dream Rocker would have gotten full marks with no questions asked from all at News-And-Reviews – but for an honest review, we did have to shave a point or two off our overall rating (which we are kicking ourselves for doing so).

Product Summary:
The X-Dream Rocker is a gamers dream, it does exactly what it says on the packet – whilst looking extremely stylish in doing so. Bursting at the seams with features ‘o’ plenty, the X-Dream Rocker  can adapt itself to any given situation, whether it’s music, film, or gaming, the sound system does the job intended. While the high pricetag may put a few off, this is one of those products where you  certainly get what you pay for. Quality doesn’t come cheap – and with christmas just round the corner, i’d get this written on your christmas list pronto……

Full product Specifications can be found on Page 2 of this review

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