Chairs come in a variety of materials including fabric, leather, and mesh. The best material ultimately depends on your taste, but there are a few factors to consider.

Leather, even the PU leather that most affordable "pleather" chairs use, tends to look the nicest, but it also wears down the fastest. It scratches and tears easily, especially if you have a pet. Fabric is usually more hardy, but is the easiest to stain and can collect the most odors. Mesh chairs are the lightest, most springy, and the least likely for pets to want to sit on. The mesh material serves as the chair's entire support structure, unlike the foam padding in fabric and leather chairs, and may not provide all the support you need.

Ideally, you should see and feel furniture before you buy it. That isn't an option with most big-name gaming and office chairs, which is why our reviews are so helpful. However, you might be able to sit in a generic office chair before you take it home. Your local big-box office supply store, like OfficeMax or Staples, should have a bunch of desk chairs of various builds and prices available for testing. Just be aware that these house brands tend to be much more basic than the chairs we've reviewed, often using inferior materials like less supple PU leather or less generous padding.

If you want to spend even less, countless dirt-cheap office chairs are available online, with hundreds listed on sites like Amazon and Wayfair. There's nothing wrong with considering any of these models, but it's a bigger gamble than buying a chair at an office store where you can at least try it out. You might end up with a comfortable, sturdy desk chair or get stuck with a hunk of junk that hurts your back.

Target and Walmart also have plenty of cheap options online, and you might be able to try the chairs out at the stores themselves. Discount stores that sell far more types of products than office stores will have fewer chairs on display to try, and you might only find two or three models out of dozens that could be listed online.