CES 2025: Sitting in Razer’s Heated and Cooled Gaming Chair Was Like a Mini-Vacation
CES 2025 is coming to a close and I couldn’t be more excited. Not because I don’t enjoy the show floor or meeting face-to-face with people I usually only see online, but because I spent a week in a hotel room with a broken heater. That’s why when I got to try out Razer’s concept heated and cooled gaming chair today, I was almost ready to pull off a heist.
The chair, dubbed Project Arielle, has not yet been confirmed for sale, but instead simply showcases an idea that Razer is considering. But I fully support this idea. Taking its cue from the existing Fujin Pro chair, the Arielle design includes a heater and bladeless fan, turning its mesh back into a temperature control system.
The way it works is that the fan sucks air from the bottom of the device, which is then filtered through the vents on the sides of the back of the chair and expelled through the neck. Your ass and arms don’t have any climate control, at least for now, but it was still literally a breath of fresh air.
I was a little skeptical, not sure if Arielle would really be that different from sitting a few feet from a fan. But the breath of cool air on the back of my neck was certainly refreshing after walking through the crowded exhibition hall.
For my money, however, I preferred the heating, which enhances the strengths of the mesh back, keeping my back warm without causing sweat. It’s a little less innovative than the cooling mode, but while heated gaming chairs do exist now, they rarely have the same finish as the Arielle and often use materials that can become stuffy after a while.
According to Razer , the chair heater can warm you up to about 86 degrees Fahrenheit, and its fan can reduce the “felt temperature” by nine degrees. Why “felt temperature” and not actual temperature? Well, if the fan is blowing directly into your neck, you may be a little colder than the thermometer indicates.
In terms of controls, there’s a small panel on the seat that allows you to switch from heating to cooling, as well as changing the fan speed, but detailed temperature adjustments aren’t possible at the moment. There’s also an orange backlight to indicate when the device is heating up and blue when it’s cooling down, but those are the only colors it can display at the moment.
Either way, I’m going to bury myself under the blankets, waiting for the day this thing comes out for real. Last year’s Razer concept, Project Esther , ended up coming to market as the Razer Freyja, so that’s out of the question.