Fractal Design Refine review

Ever since it launched back in 2021, the Secretlab Titan Evo has been the best gaming chair and for good reason. With soft materials, a great look, and a good price point for that quality, it’s hard to justify getting anything else at that cost. The Fractal Design Refine, with its ‘refined’ look and comfortable pads has its work cut out for it, if it wants to knock the king off that top spot.

Starting with the very first thing you will do when you get a new chair, putting the thing together, this is a very easy build. The Refine not only comes with a mini user guide but a huge poster going over the main steps. You only need a few screws and an Allen Key, all of which are provided for you, and mine even had a few spare screws, which can be a blessing if you happen to lose one while moving parts around.

Coming with the wheelbase, backrest, seat itself, and a handful of extra parts, things simply slot together, where you can then put the screws in. The seat itself has a few screws already attached in the box, which require a little bit of effort to get out, but the process itself is otherwise pretty painless.

Due to this chair being quite heavy, you will benefit from having a second person to help out but I managed to put it all together in less than fifteen minutes by myself. Due to how easy the armrests are to move (we’ll get to that later) I did misread part of the instructions wrong and pop an armrest on backwards, but the hardest part of fixing this was checking my bruised ego in an office full of people.

The Fractal Design Refine is a great looking chair, with a whole host of black and white toned colours to choose from. Mine came in the standard ‘Fabric Light’ which is an opaque off-white colour, where ‘Mesh Light’ is more of a breathable transparent shade.

You then have ‘Fabric Dark’ and ‘Mesh Dark’ which are similar to the white options, and the line is finished with Alcantara, which is much more expensive at $899 and made out of the Alcantara, suede-like fabric.

With the Refine, Fractal Design has created a gaming chair that is much closer to an office chair in aesthetic. It doesn’t have stripes, logos, or textures typically associated with the gamer aesthetic and the more muted colour palette of its lineup is indicative of this. It is quite a tall chair with a very slim back and a short seat. You don’t fall into it like with bigger gaming chairs, and the lumbar support helps keep that posture right.

Importantly, the lumbar support can be adjusted very quickly and intuitively. There’s a plate on the back of the chair you can manually move up and down to adjust where your back rests on it, and a knob can be turned which pushes it further into or away from the chair. This means, crucially, you can adjust it while sitting down to find the perfect spot to support your posture.

As is expected from a good gaming chair, you can adjust the height, tilt tension, and seat depth with a number of small handles on either side. For the most part, these function well and are easy to pull, though the seat depth handle feels a tad inconsistent.

The others have defined moments where I can tell the chair has registered the pull but one is a bit mushy. They are directly on the side of the seat cushion, which means you don’t have to reach under your chair, as is the case with many gaming chairs.

Once sat down and set up, this chair is very comfortable and super sturdy. The materials aren’t super soft but not so hard as to not welcome the weight of your body as you plop it down.

Everything has this rigidness that feels quite comforting and makes me feel less guilty about my posture after a long gaming session. The recline on the Refine is comfortable too, giving just enough space in between each position you can lock it in to lean back a little.

As well as this, there’s some smart bits of design, like the headrest that can be popped off with a button and hooked in with metal prongs on the back. This not only allows you to change where it sits on the chair but avoids you accidentally knocking it out of place.

This rigidity is one of the better parts of the chair, for me, but is also responsible for my biggest problem. The seat itself has curved edges shaping up at the sides, so, if you have particularly big thighs (like myself) or like to pop a leg under yourself as you sit, the cushion will jut into you.

The recommended height and weight for the chair will, of course, warn you of that a little—but using weight to gauge how your legs may react to the cushion is an inaccurate science.

The armrests are comfortable, though being simply made out of plastic and being quite large, they move back and forward with very little effort. With a click of the button on the outer side of it, you can push them up and down and they snap into place, which is very intuitive but there’s no such defined lock for pushing it back and forward.

I have often found myself knocking the arm rest out of its best position by casually moving my arms back and this left me never quite relying on them. This is a shame as the 4D aspect of the armrests work well and they can move relatively comfortably to most positions you might need them in.

Though these flaws definitely betray some of that otherwise premium feel, I do appreciate some of the nicest parts of this chair. The price point puts it at basically the same range as the Secretlab Titan Evo and it makes for a decent competitor with a nice feel and great look.

There’s an elegance to a lot of Fractal Design’s choices here that really comes through in the Refine’s presentation and feel, but given some of the drawbacks, it’s hard to choose this when you have so many excellent alternatives out there.