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Lifestyle: Sumo Omni Beanbag Review

Gamers like to be comfortable when they are sitting back enjoying the latest Xbox 360 title to hit the streets. For this reason alone a company that goes by the name Sumo decided that it would push it’s latest line of beanbag chairs to gamers. Time and time again I have complained to my significant other about the couch being too small or the Lazy-Boy being too old for long gaming sessions. No more, because recently I got a chance to test drive the Sumo Omni Beanbag and when I finally got around to gaming while testing it (the other times sleep prevailed), I found that gaming is actually more enjoyable when I was comfortably numb. The Omni is not your average beanbag chair; it is so much more because it basically molds to whatever shapes the owner can come up with. Sumo is marketing the Omni towards the young, tech-savy crowd and it fits perfectly; it would not surprise me to see this beanbag in a gamer’s entertainment lair, a young professional’s house, or a college student’s dorm room.

I was pleasantly surprised after opening up the massive 5-foot by 3-foot box (I have a friend that lives in a smaller box) that the Omni chair arrived in because there was basically no complicated setup involved. Sumo listened to the cries of people everywhere who have ordered something off the internet, they put the entire beanbag together before it ever shipped from the warehouse. The bag itself is built out of a very resilient, rip-proof nylon material that is tough enough to handle the biggest gamers but still remains very smooth to the touch. Inside the Omni are thousands of polystyrene foam beads that cause it to mold to whatever shape needed (think space mattress like material) at the time. The Omni is 4.5′ x 5.5′ big and it only weighs 18 lbs making it roomy but light enough to move easily.

Not only will the chair change shape depending on how the user wants to sit/lay in it but it also molds itself to their body once the person has plopped down into it. The small micro-beads work their way around the body of whoever is sitting in the Omni and thus causes an almost unparalleled amount of comfort. It is so simple to shape the Omni that I found myself trying different positions multiple times in one sitting; everything from sitting straight up, to sitting in a bar-stool like chair, to lying down on a bed-like position. The Sumo website boasts more than eight easy positions for the Omni to be molded into, but a creative owner could think up hundreds more; personally I found that the style in the image below best fit my gaming needs. The chair could of course be used for much more than gaming but for the purpose of this review that is what I focused on.

Over time I found myself coming up with more and more creative ways to use the Sumo Omni Beanbag, some I can talk about in this family-safe review and some I cannot. Thanks to the molding feature of the inner beads the chair kept my head upright and my back straight the entire gaming session, while still somehow managing to stay comfortable. Any gamer that has ever played a single session for more than a few hours knows exactly how sore and out-of-king your back/neck can get. Four hours in I found myself getting a little stiff so in a matter of minutes I stood up, repositioned the Omni to a lying position and sat back down – in pure comfort.

At a price of $129 shipped to your door some of you reading this may think that is way too high for a beanbag. Well I was surprised to find out that the price is actually quite low for a chair with these materials and quality. The Omni can do things that no other beanbag or standard chair can do and the whole time it never tries to be one or the other. Explaining the chair to my wife over the phone the day it arrived was like trying to give a blind person directions, impossible. The “why do you need a beanbag to play a game” is hard to explain until you play for a couple hours while in the Omni. All her skepticism changed once she got home and spent a few minutes sitting in it, then she laid in it, then straddled it like a motorcycle. Each position was more comfortable than the next and multiple ones allowed both of us to sit on the Omni together.

The Omni is plenty of beanbag in itself, but if you’re one of those people that likes to prop your feet up while gaming you can. For an extra $75 order the Sumo Otto and fulfill all those feet fantasies. It is made out of the same high-quality materials that the Omni is and it meshes perfectly with the other product. The Otto also doubles as a seat-side table to place those tasty beverages on while gaming, or that strategy guide that you cannot play without. This means that for around $200 you can come home with the perfect gaming setup to keep your body comfortable during any length of play session. The two products come in a multitude of different colors that are sure to match any living environment.

After sitting in the Sumo Omni Beanbag for countless hours I came away feeling like a kid again. Not only do I play video games for a living but also now I get to sit in this amazing beanbag while doing it. I never spent much time in a beanbag before, or noticing what I sat in while gaming, now that a company has told me the best way to do it I am not sure how I ever played without it molding to my body. The only small complaint I could come up with when testing the Omni was the annoying noise the nylon made with any minuscule movement. It would be nice to see a cloth-cover option but this is just nitpicking. Overall I was very happy with the gaming beanbag and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a comfortable gaming chair or something to relax in while watching a movie. One other niche group that Sumo should market the Omni to the porn industry, I know this for reasons not acceptable to talk about in this review.

Stay tuned to PlanetXbox360 for more “gaming” product reviews in our brand new Lifestyle set of features.

Final Score: 9.5 / 10.0

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