Are you a husky fellow looking for a sturdy and well built desk chair but also want to scream “I’M A GAMER” to everyone that sees you on a Teams meeting?

Don’t worry bro, I have you covered. Today, for your reading pleasure, I bring you the E-Win Flash XL Gaming Office Chair.

This chair replaces my old GAMING chair which was honestly in pretty decent shape besides the left armrest rubber beginning to chip off and the gas cylinder always slowly lowering over an hour or so. Certainly I could have purchased a new cylinder and installed it and put a cover on my left armrest, but there were things about this chair I never really liked.

It was comfortable for the most part. But being a racing styled GAMING chair it had side supports that always dug in to the sides of my legs. As a big guy, it would be nice to have something a bit wider but also without those side supports (which do nothing for you sitting at a desk anyway).

I wasn’t really seriously in the market for a chair but, because of a set of circumstances that will affect the verdict of this review and that I will cover later, I ended up purchasing the Flash XL from E-Win.

After it eventually arrived it took me about thirty minutes to assemble with the easy to use instructions. And anyone that didn’t receive the instructions would have figured it out eventually as there really is only one way to assemble it. While handling the pieces you immediately realize that this is a seriously heavy duty chair. It has to be at least 20 pounds heavier that my old chair and I thought it was heavy. It did come with extra parts as well just in case some were broken or lost during transit and that is much appreciated.

So its together. Let’s rest ourselves in the Flash XL’s embrace and see what we like. Initially I was not impressed. But this was quickly remedied by removing the included lumbar cushion. You can always tell when a company makes a chair for a big person but don’t have a larger person actually sit in it. It’s not as simple as just making dimensions bigger. For example, many of these chairs include lumbar cushions but they are always too big and too thick for a bigger guy to use. They never fit well into the area where our lumbar is situated. But the saving grace there is, we typically don’t need one.

The Flash XL sits very tall off the ground as it’s maximum height. Like feet dangling off the ground tall. You can’t say that often for many larger men. So the good news here is that if you are tall, this chair will work great for you. If you are around my height of six feet you’ll likely have to lower the chair by almost half it’s height to comfortably rest said feet on the floor. The chair is also very solid. You feel it immediately when you sit down. It doesn’t squat so far down as cheaper chairs do. This is likely due to the class IV gas cylinder the Flash XL rocks. These babies are good to around 550 pounds. So yeah, its firm. The foam is also relatively firm as well but not uncomfortable.

Covering the foam padding all over the chair is a special leatherette that claims to be spill resistant. I have not tested that aspect but I can say that it glues you in your spot. It’s not slippery like a real leather or a typical vinyl covering. I didn’t like this at first but it’s grown on me over time.

Let’s work our way up the back. You have two holes for where a harness would go through on a normal racing seat and above that there is the E-Win logo. My Flash XL also came with a headrest cushion which sits over that logo though you can move this around a bit since the strap the cushion is connected has some elasticity to it.

Overall the chair is relatively plain in black with white accents but that is all that is offered in this particular configuration as I chose the only model with no side supports on the seat.

At the bottom we have five wheels supporting the main heavy duty legs. They must have really good bearings because moving this chair around is a breeze and they roll very smooth. The class IV cylinder in the center rises up and connects to the heavy duty main chair support. This chair support also includes a rocking mechanism besides the normal control to lower and raise the cylinder. The rocking mechanism is nice and can be adjusted firmer or weaker depending on what you desire. It was adjusted perfectly from the factory for me.

Speaking of adjustments, the back does lean quite a ways though it’s not so fancy as to go flat. And that’s fine. I don’t need to sleep overnight in this chair. But it is nice sometimes to stretch back and just take a breather after a long session of gaming or work. The armrests also adjust in several ways. They go up pretty high and go down pretty far as well. They also slide out and in as well as forward and back. They even twist like my old chair’s arm rests did. Let’s talk about the arm rest tops quickly. They are made of a pretty firm rubber and for some I’d expect may be too firm. It would be nice if they had some memory foam or something on top from the factory. I’ll certainly be putting some on.

Overall the chair is quite good. And it better be as it’s MSRP is $799 CAD. That’s a lot of money to spend on a chair. The good news is E-Win often has their chair’s discounted on their website and as of writing this they are selling the Flash XL for $699 before a 20% off code.

Buyer beware though. All those savings will be lost at customs. You see when you purchase the chair, E-Win includes free shipping. This is great considering the price of the chair. In my case though it took more than a week to ship and I never received an invoice other than the PayPal receipt for the transaction. After contacting them twice and being ignored I finally received notification from UPS that my chair was being shipped and would arrive in about three days. By the way, if you pay with PayPal like I did, after they send you to PayPal to select your payment type usually they send you back to the customer’s website to confirm the sale. I often do this to check what the final costs are as they usually add the shipping fees and taxes after that step. Not here. E-Win finalizes the sale. No chance to back out.

That’s where things got worse. It was held up at the border for a day and then UPS contacted me for a customs invoice for the value of the chair as they could not get a hold of E-Win. I sent them my PayPal invoice and the chair was processed, after over $200 in customs duty and processing fees from UPS. So the chair at this point now cost basically the MSRP on E-Win’s website. Now I expected the duty fees. I did not expect to be charged the Custom’s Broker fees. And I did not expect them to add up to $200. That is an insane amount of money.

The chair finally arrived and you could tell customs had had the box opened to inspect it as they should since what documentation that was provided with the chair was utterly ridiculous. The warehouse that shipped the chair out had claimed the value of the chair to be less that $100. No wonder customs threw a fit and wanted all that documentation. Often overseas companies will try and run around Customs by claiming something is cheaper than it is thereby skipping duty fees. No doubt customers in Canada like this. But it is absolutely illegal risking the brand’s ability to sell things in Canada and fines towards the importer (i.e. ME).

I so wish I could recommend this chair. It is actually really good. But I can’t. Not in good conscience. I never heard anything from them after the several times I contacted them through their own website contact form. Not until I got through to someone that had advertised their chair on a video of theirs. Marketing got in contact with me but they basically said it’s not their fault all this happened. The thing is, if I wanted to cancel the purchase there was no way to do so. They never once answered a message I sent to them on their own website and there is no way to call them. Heck, I didn’t even get an order number or invoice. But this checkout process and after sales support is terrible at it’s best. The chair is great. Everything else about E-Win is a tragedy.

• Gaming
• review