AndaSeat Kaiser 4 Series Premium Gaming Chair

design and assembly
I’ve put together a few gaming chairs in my time and there aren’t too many flat pack challenges I’ve struggled with, yet I found assembling the AndaSeat Kaiser 4 a tough experience. Nothing was hard necessarily, just frustrating, and while I’d only expect to take around ten minutes if things went smoothly – I spent nearly an hour grappling with the build.
First impressions of the Kaiser 4 were good, everything arrived nicely packaged and the printed instructions were clear and easy-to-follow. Things went downhill quickly though as a manufacturing defect on my unit meant tightening one of the main backrest bolts properly was just about impossible. Like the Secretlab Titan Evo, AndaSeat offers a single fixed bracket on one side of the Kaiser 4 which slots into the base cushion in an attempt to make things as simple as possible. It’s a great idea and it works wonderfully on the Titan Evo but on the Kaiser 4 things didn’t properly line up.

The result was a pair of bolts that simply wouldn’t go and I was left wrestling with the large and quite heavy backrest trying to find an angle that worked. As is so often the case with flat packs, my compromise was brute force and I ended up tightening them as far as I could, ignoring the fact they were now almost certainly cross-threaded and hoping for the best.
Overall the AndaSeat Kaiser 4 is a pretty standard looking gaming chair that doesn’t stray too far from the script set out by other brands. It’s pleasant enough though with wide and welcoming main seat cushion, a large winged back with a couple of speed holes, and a chunky base unit that features some of the lowest friction casters I’ve tested. AndaSeat offers the Kaiser 4 in both large and extra-large versions, though strangely only the XL variant I’ve been testing seems to be available to order off the AndaSeat website.
While it’s realistically a single size choice, you’ll have plenty to consider when it comes to material and colour. An impressive 10 hue rainbow is split across two upholstery options; Premium PVC Leather and Linen Fabric, with the PVC range offering the more outlandish choices. I’ve been using the Cloudy White version and both the material and stitching are pleasantly soft and with plenty of give and flexibility.

Disappointingly though, whichever colour and material you choose will only apply across the front of the seat back and cushion. It’s as if AndaSeat used the paint bucket tool in Photoshop and forgot to click all the panels because regardless of your choice the entire back, base and those fetching speed holes will all be jet black. In some combos it works quite nicely but on my white chair it was pretty dominating and if you’re the kind of person to choose a white chair, will likely go against the rest of your setup aesthetic.
While the core shape of the Kaiser 4 is pretty standard there are a couple of ways AndaSeat has tried to introduce some uniqueness and unfortunately they’re largely unsuccessful and gimmicky. The most outrageous of these quirks are the 5D armrests which would be funny if they weren’t so poorly executed. My review unit had another manufacturing problem which meant one of the armrests wouldn’t stay in anything but its lowest position and yet this wasn’t the worst of its problems. For some reason in addition to the expected adjustment options, the AndaSeat Kaiser 4 armrests also fold in half with the front lifting to a fixed, steep 40 degree angle. Honestly, why? I’ve asked a number of people if they can come up with a use for this particularly uncomfortable position and so far nobody has succeeded.

Even ignoring this frankly bizarre design choice, the Kaiser 4 armrests are just plain poor. The buttons are cheap chromed plastic that feel mushy and the entire units have far too much wobble and play in all directions. Simply put, these are the kind of armrests I’d expect on a cheap, off-brand chair, not a supposed premium option you’ve paid the best part of $600 for.
performance
There is a light at the end of the tunnel though, and for a chair it’s quite an important light. Looking past the lack of quality control and some baffling design choices, the AndaSeat Kaiser 4 is actually quite a comfortable chair. I used it as my daily driver for both work and gaming for a couple of weeks and purely from a comfort stand point I enjoyed it for the most part. The high-density foam cushion is noticeably softer than on other options but still manages to strike a nice balance between being welcoming yet firm enough to provide decent ergonomic support.

Like those dreadful armrests, the Kaiser 4’s backrest is another area AndaSeat has tried to set itself apart from the ground and thankfully it’s much more successful this time around. The entire middle panel of the backrest can kick out in four preset positions up to a maximum of 24 degrees. That maximum is actually a slightly ridiculous angle and not one I ever expect anyone to use, but the 3 and 10 degree levels were both successful at providing a nice comfort-support bundle. That isn’t your only customisation option too, an internal frame inside the cushion itself moves up, down, in, and out via knobs on either side though even moving between the extremes of this setting I found the impact pretty minimal.
While other parts of the AndaSeat Kaiser 4 failed to live up to its premium name, the black steel and aluminium frame is one that does feel like it’s up to the task. It’s rock solid with a flawless finish and offers all the adjustability and tricks you’d expect from a top-line gaming chair. If you fancy a nap mid-game, the backrest reclines to an almost flat 135 degrees and when fully lying back I never felt as though the chair was going to fall away from underneath me. Plus, those low-friction castors are buttery smooth when I wanted to move and didn’t have me rolling around the place when I wanted to stay still.

Unfortunately it’s not all perfect because the rocking function lets the AndaSeat Kaiser 4 down. It’s another case of a small detail spoiling things because despite a five-degree backwards slope to the seat cushion itself, with the chair in rocking mode I felt like the Kaiser 4 was trying to tip me forward and out of the seat at the lowest setting. I’m a fan of rock mode, often I’ll be mid-sentence and fancy a lean back to gather my thoughts but with the Kaiser 4 I had to disregard it and keep it in a locked position.
summed up
Ultimately the AndaSeat Kaiser 4 gaming chair is fine and nothing more. Yes, it ticks the most important box of being a comfortable place to sit, but a mixture of poor ideas and poor execution leave it falling well short of the mark set by its $569 price tag. It simply isn’t premium enough across the board.
The main problem AndaSeat faces with the Kaiser 4 is not so much the Kaiser 4 itself, but simply how many other gaming chairs it’s up against. This is a market that offers little room for mistakes and when $569 buys you a chair from pretty much any of the established top brands you can’t afford to put a castor wrong.