DXRacer offers several chairs in its Martian range, fit with multiple color options and even different upholstery (EPU leatherette or woven fabric). However, the Martian Pro only comes in one color with faux leather — the “Red Triangle” colorway. It’s a black chair with red accents, which, as you might have guessed, show up on various triangle patterns on the chair as well as on a central red strip that runs along the lumbar area.
It’s undeniably a gaming chair — if the color didn't tip you off, DXRacer’s heavy handed branding will. There are DXRacer logos on the front and back of the head rest, on the neck cushion, and on both sides of the shoulder rests, not to mention additional illuminated logos next to the controls, and Martian branding on the front of the chair.
It makes sense that DXRacer is only able to offer this one design. Unlike the standard Martian, the EPU leatherette upholstery is perforated on the back and base of the chair, presumably to prevent tears from the built-in back massage, and to provide ventilation for the heating and cooling system in the base. Even after running both dozens of times, the upholstery doesn’t feel worn out, which is a positive sign. However, I do suspect it will wear out faster than a standard Martian chair that doesn't have the massage, heater, and ventilation systems.
I rarely found myself needing the heat, even in the dead of winter with temperatures around me reaching below 0 degrees. The massage function, on the other hand, was something I used almost daily in my testing. It’s static, with the eight zones pressing on different parts of your back in a pre-set list of patterns, but it was still nice to lean back and get the feeling of sitting down on a busted massage recliner in a mall in the early aughts.
The chair itself is built from a steel frame, and although DXRacer says it can support up to 300 pounds, it recommends both the XL and L models for those under 275 pounds. The chair is sturdy, with resilience against slipping for both the height and recline adjustments. The armrests are a bit loose, as is common among this style of chair, but they don’t rotate on their own. The armrests are locked in place with just a bit of play.
With a load of electronics and a steel frame, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Martian Pro is heavy. The L option comes in just shy of 70 pounds (69.4 pounds), while the XL version is slightly heavier at 71.4 pounds. It’s a beefy chair. Part of the weight comes from the 5,000mAh battery that’s strapped onto the back of the chair, which allows you to use the electronic functions away from an outlet.
DXRacer claims the chair lasts up to 360 hours on a full charge. The included barrel charger has a light that shows you the status of the charge; green means the battery is full, and red means it’s still charging. Unfortunately, there’s no other way to check the charge, nor is there a quick release for using the chair while it’s charging. This led to several instances in which I went to sit down in the chair and use the controls, only to find that the battery was dead.
Thankfully, DXRacer makes some efforts to conserve battery life. There’s an automatic standby mode that the chair enters when you aren’t using the various functions that pull from the battery, along with a 10-minute timer on everything else. If you stand up and walk away and forget to turn off the heater, it’ll cut itself off after 10 minutes so you don’t chew through the battery, for example.
The Martian Pro has the adjustments you’d expect out of a $900 gaming chair. There’s a good range of height adjustment at just over 3 inches, and I didn’t notice any slipping with the hydraulic base. You can lean the chair back at up to a 135-degree angle, which gets the back nearly parallel to the floor when combined with the reclining base. There are four adjustment points on the arm rests — up/down, left/right, forward/back, and internal/external rotation — and they lock into place. Even the rotation is locked, unlike the Razer Iskur V2 , where enough pressure will rotate the armrests.
Height and armrest adjustments are manual, but all other aspects of the Martian Pro are handled electronically. The “4D Lumbar Support” consists of two supports that you can adjust with the directional buttons on the right side of the chair. It allows you to dial in the balance between upper and lower lumbar support in a way that’s more granular than the mechanical knobs you find on similar chairs.
Reclining is handled electronically, as well, which was frustrating. It takes a solid 10 seconds to go from upright to fully reclined, but more importantly, you can’t recline the chair if it doesn’t have a charge. You have more control over the exact angle of the recline rather than slotting into half a dozen pre-determined angles. But I would trade that for the ease of quickly reclining the chair without worrying about how charged the battery is.
One aspect I love about the Martian Pro is the base. With most chairs (and especially this style of racing chair), there are wings on the sides of the base that slant upward, and that’s the case for the Martian Pro. However, these wings have a very shallow slant. It’s enough to let you know where the edges of the chair are, but not so much that you feel like you’re crammed in the center.
Moreover, I’m someone who often sits in the chair with one or both legs crossed, and the wide base and shallow edge slants make sitting this way more comfortable. More aggressive slants, like the one you find on the Secretlab Titan Evo NanoGen , push your legs up and make sitting cross-legged much less comfortable.
Unfortunately, the base also has an issue; that’s where the controls for the ventilation and seat warmer are. I accidentally turned them on three times (that I know of) in about a month of using the chair. DXRacer makes an effort to limit accidental activations: The buttons have a concave slope, and they use micro-switches, so you have to press them at a specific angle. In addition, you have to hold the button down for at least two seconds to turn on the warmer or vent. Still, the placement isn’t the best, and I’d like to see them moved to the side of the chair where the other controls are.
For those controls, you get the aforementioned directional buttons for adjusting lumbar support on the right, along with the massage button. You can hold down the message button for two seconds to turn it on or off, as well as press it to cycle through different massage presets. On the left, you just get the recline switch.
For someone who’s 5’10” and 180 pounds and is prone to crossing their legs while working, the Martian Pro was comfortable. I especially like the wide base and the magnetic headrest, the latter of which I was able to position perfectly on my neck. Larger folks might have issues, however. Despite having two models at different sizes, both versions of the Martian Pro top out at 275 pounds. That should accommodate many people, but I was hoping the XL version would scale higher along the lines of the Secret Lab Titan XL.
The Martian Pro is a comfortable and well-built chair, but you don’t buy the Martian Pro just because it’s comfortable. At $900, it’s definitely priced on the higher end, especially for gaming chairs. Going for a standard Martian, which includes electronic lumbar support but lacks heat, cooling, and the massage function, will save you $200. And if you’re on a strict budget, something like the Razer Iskur V2 X nails the basics without any of the extras for under $300.
For what the Martian Pro offers, it’s not egregiously overpriced. $900 feels fair for what DXRacer is offering here, especially with the built-in massage function. I have some nitpicks, from the lack of charging status on the chair to the placement of the heat and cooling buttons — but they aren’t dealbreakers.
This is a niche chair; if you’re among the few interested in the Martian Pro with the budget to spare, you’ll come out a happy customer. For those on the fence, the extra bells and whistles are nice to have, but you can save a lot of money while still getting a quality chair with other options on the market.
Jake Roach is the Senior CPU Analyst at Tom\u2019s Hardware, writing reviews, news, and features about the latest consumer and workstation processors. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-13/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Jake Roach Social Links Navigation Senior Analyst, CPUs Jake Roach is the Senior CPU Analyst at Tom’s Hardware, writing reviews, news, and features about the latest consumer and workstation processors.
Key considerations
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/peripherals/gaming-chairs/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/peripherals/gaming-chairs/dxracer-martian-pro-red-triangle-review#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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