Some of my favorite chairs around our house are our SUMO beanbags. Our SUMO Gigantor is still a great place to flop down on and take a nap or read a book, or just hang out with the dogs (who enjoy it’s gigantic mass as much as we do).
Over the past few years I’ve developed a friendship with Andrew, the guy behind SUMO, and have had the pleasure of hearing some of his ideas for new, better chairs. He never stops trying to make the SUMO better, or offer different options for different situations.
SUMO just recently released the SUMO Sway (single and couple), and after having planted my butt in it for a while, I daresay this is my favorite SUMO chair yet.
It’s not the largest SUMO chair (that honor still falls to the Gigantor), but it has a similar feel and definitely ranks up there in comfort. But here’s why, for me, this is the top SUMO on my list right now: It looks like actual furniture.
As much as I love previous SUMO beanbags, the Gigantor is, and forever will be, a giant blob in the middle of my living room. There are just no two ways about it. It is a bed of comfort, but it is also an amorphous lump with little visual appeal in the context of a room where you’re trying to have sort of design whatsoever.
The Sway features a definitive chair-shape due to the way it is put together, that remains whether you’re sitting in it or not. It still captures the feeling of being enveloped in awesome, but does so while taking a step away from “college dormroom seating” towards… I don’t know, “somewhat respectable twenty-something that doesn’t live on ramen” seating.
You lose a bit of your versatility… the Sway is a chair any way you slice it. It won’t be the afternoon-nap pod that the Gigantor can be. However at the same time… it’s always a chair. What I mean is, that’s how we sit in these things most of the time anyway, and with the Sway you no longer and to mold and roll the thing to get back support. It just has it, all the time.
As such, it ends up being a much more gamer-friendly chair than any other SUMO available. Its shape gives you a high seat (as opposed to traditional beanbags where you’re very close to the floor). Sitting alone it’s even almost high enough to function as a computer desk chair, however I feel like once you sat and sunk in, you’d be just a little too low to comfortaby reach a keyboard on a standard desk.
Since my Gigantor is microsuede, I opted to try out the cordoruy fabric (in red). I was a little worried that a giant corduroy beanbag would immediately scream “Disco ’70s!” when I pulled it out of the box, but thankfully it still maintains a contemporary look (this would probably not hold true if the corduroy chairs were offered in ‘dookie brown’).
The Sway is the new go-to SUMO in my house. I’ll move the Gigantor to our gaming room for lounging, but the Sway is taking up residence in the living room. It’s great seating for when we have company, doesn’t take up quite as much space, and actually looks like a chair, which is perfect now that I’m sort of kind of doing that whole “grown up” thing.