Our butts and backs tested the Omni Plus beanbag

With improved model photos!

Unless you’re one of those lunatics with a standing desk, you likely play a lot of video games sitting down. And whether you’re a writer with a looming review deadline, a recently single game enthusiast, or a bored teenager, you know the magic of a long gaming marathon. But what an effect that can have on your tush! My apartment has a table and four wooden chairs — that’s it! Your hindquarters get sore after a while!

My roommates and I have been searching for a solution to this first-world problem for ages, so we were very happy when the folks at Sumo Lounge came to us with a solution. They were going to ship us one of their Omni Plus chairs, and we were going to give you all the verdict through some kind of article.

This is that article.

The first thing we noticed about the Omni Plus was the wait time. The chair ships in a single box, with the suede cover in one bag and the foam filling in another. Yes, this isn’t a “beanbag” per say, more of a “foambag,” but it’s a weird boneless lump of fabric either way. Since all the foam is compressed for shipping purposes, you have to carefully cut it out of the bag and deposit the goods in the large sack. After that, unless you want foam everywhere, you have to wait for the decompression to do its thing. You can manually start ripping the foam apart, but that stuff gets in your lungs and all over your clothes quick. We decided to let nature take its course.

Once the chair was fully operational, we realized one major thing: it’s kinda heavy. This kind of furniture has never been exactly light, but lugging this thing upstairs was something nobody wanted to do. Maybe this wouldn’t be an issue if we didn’t have a flight of stairs separating the living room/kitchen from where the Wii U lives.

The chair works perfectly well as a standard beanbag, but you’ll really get your money’s worth when you get creative. We folded the chair into a 90-degree angle and put it up against the wall, which resulted in some excellent back support. And one of my roommates has been using it as a bed for around two weeks. “Sometimes it’s fine, but sometimes if I lay on it wrong it feels like somebody’s been elbowing me all night. It’s really 50/50,” he said in an interview conducted with Destructoid like five seconds ago. He doesn’t know if this is any better than the air mattress. When he sleeps on a nice cushy part, it’s better. When he’s basically sleeping on the floor, it’s worse.

There’s also the price to be concerned with. The chair we got costs $200, and I honestly don’t believe it’s worth the price. But I’ve only had the thing for a few weeks! As a college student, I’ve sat in many a beanbag, and none of them feel as sturdy as this one. I’ve never worried about it popping or tearing. Maybe beanbag chairs are more expensive than I assumed, or maybe college students have been just buying cheap furniture — a tradition I personally carry on with pride.

The Omni Plus is a well-made home accessory that protects my crappy, awful bones from the stress of playing too many video games. It’s relatively expensive, but if you need a squishy chair to sit in, this is a pretty solid one of those.