wANKER

So I too used to be one of these toxic people that would spend hours on here every single day arguing it out with people and defending points that weren't mine to defend. 
Some advice for you all: get on with your own lives.
Holding opinions is one thing, but coming to forums to argue them for or against other people and narcissistic pricks is just a total and utter waste of time which achieves nothing. 
 
But whilst I'm here, a $600 monoblock isn't an egregious waste of money, a $250 backpack which falls apart is 🙂 All subjective. Trust me bro. 

I think the biggest shame of all this is that I genuinely think these guys have something legit and really could successfully cater to a niche market that would happily pay the money for what they're offering. If I ever go for a copper loop, I certainly will. Even their tubing looks like an interesting option.
Instead now they've been buried by LMG's coverage of them, and now what I think is largely disingenuous support for them (people leaving Google reviews on their business page referencing LMG drama etc....) which has kind of undermined the whole thing. 

I think the biggest shame of all this is that I genuinely think these guys have something legit and really could successfully cater to a niche market that would happily pay the money for what they're offering. If I ever go for a copper loop, I certainly will. Even their tubing looks like an interesting option.
Instead now they've been buried by LMG's coverage of them, and now what I think is largely disingenuous support for them (people leaving Google reviews on their business page referencing LMG drama etc....) which has kind of undermined the whole thing. 

I think the biggest shame of all this is that I genuinely think these guys have something legit and really could successfully cater to a niche market that would happily pay the money for what they're offering. If I ever go for a copper loop, I certainly will. Even their tubing looks like an interesting option.
Instead now they've been buried by LMG's coverage of them, and now what I think is largely disingenuous support for them (people leaving Google reviews on their business page referencing LMG drama etc....) which has kind of undermined the whole thing. 

I think the biggest shame of all this is that I genuinely think these guys have something legit and really could successfully cater to a niche market that would happily pay the money for what they're offering. If I ever go for a copper loop, I certainly will. Even their tubing looks like an interesting option.
Instead now they've been buried by LMG's coverage of them, and now what I think is largely disingenuous support for them (people leaving Google reviews on their business page referencing LMG drama etc....) which has kind of undermined the whole thing. 

So I too used to be one of these toxic people that would spend hours on here every single day arguing it out with people and defending points that weren't mine to defend. 
Some advice for you all: get on with your own lives.
Holding opinions is one thing, but coming to forums to argue them for or against other people and narcissistic pricks is just a total and utter waste of time which achieves nothing. 
 
But whilst I'm here, a $600 monoblock isn't an egregious waste of money, a $250 backpack which falls apart is 🙂 All subjective. Trust me bro. 

So I too used to be one of these toxic people that would spend hours on here every single day arguing it out with people and defending points that weren't mine to defend. 
Some advice for you all: get on with your own lives.
Holding opinions is one thing, but coming to forums to argue them for or against other people and narcissistic pricks is just a total and utter waste of time which achieves nothing. 
 
But whilst I'm here, a $600 monoblock isn't an egregious waste of money, a $250 backpack which falls apart is 🙂 All subjective. Trust me bro. 

So I too used to be one of these toxic people that would spend hours on here every single day arguing it out with people and defending points that weren't mine to defend. 
Some advice for you all: get on with your own lives.
Holding opinions is one thing, but coming to forums to argue them for or against other people and narcissistic pricks is just a total and utter waste of time which achieves nothing. 
 
But whilst I'm here, a $600 monoblock isn't an egregious waste of money, a $250 backpack which falls apart is 🙂 All subjective. Trust me bro. 

So I too used to be one of these toxic people that would spend hours on here every single day arguing it out with people and defending points that weren't mine to defend. 
Some advice for you all: get on with your own lives.
Holding opinions is one thing, but coming to forums to argue them for or against other people and narcissistic pricks is just a total and utter waste of time which achieves nothing. 
 
But whilst I'm here, a $600 monoblock isn't an egregious waste of money, a $250 backpack which falls apart is 🙂 All subjective. Trust me bro. 

So I too used to be one of these toxic people that would spend hours on here every single day arguing it out with people and defending points that weren't mine to defend. 
Some advice for you all: get on with your own lives.
Holding opinions is one thing, but coming to forums to argue them for or against other people and narcissistic pricks is just a total and utter waste of time which achieves nothing. 
 
But whilst I'm here, a $600 monoblock isn't an egregious waste of money, a $250 backpack which falls apart is 🙂 All subjective. Trust me bro. 

So I too used to be one of these toxic people that would spend hours on here every single day arguing it out with people and defending points that weren't mine to defend. 
Some advice for you all: get on with your own lives.
Holding opinions is one thing, but coming to forums to argue them for or against other people and narcissistic pricks is just a total and utter waste of time which achieves nothing. 
 
But whilst I'm here, a $600 monoblock isn't an egregious waste of money, a $250 backpack which falls apart is 🙂 All subjective. Trust me bro. 

So I too used to be one of these toxic people that would spend hours on here every single day arguing it out with people and defending points that weren't mine to defend. 
Some advice for you all: get on with your own lives.
Holding opinions is one thing, but coming to forums to argue them for or against other people and narcissistic pricks is just a total and utter waste of time which achieves nothing. 
 
But whilst I'm here, a $600 monoblock isn't an egregious waste of money, a $250 backpack which falls apart is 🙂 All subjective. Trust me bro. 

So I too used to be one of these toxic people that would spend hours on here every single day arguing it out with people and defending points that weren't mine to defend. 
Some advice for you all: get on with your own lives.
Holding opinions is one thing, but coming to forums to argue them for or against other people and narcissistic pricks is just a total and utter waste of time which achieves nothing. 
 
But whilst I'm here, a $600 monoblock isn't an egregious waste of money, a $250 backpack which falls apart is 🙂 All subjective. Trust me bro. 

I think people who are focused on whether Steve gave Linus a chance to respond are treating this like some sort of fan-boy parasocial media relationship fantasy.
 
You're not friends with these people.

Their personalities and intrigues don't matter.
 
Your fan fictions about whether you like them don't matter.
 
It matters to LMG's employees if they're being pushed to make videos too fast and low quality.  
 
It matters to LGM's future if people can trust that their videos will be accurate or not.  And it matters if companies can trust LMG not to just trash their businesses because Linus isn't getting enough sleep.

so we are talking more like r/sysadmin ?

Whilst more activity on that kind of stuff would certainly draw me back to being active on here, I think it's such a small corner of the community it wouldn't see much activity, and I don't think many professional would detour towards Linus Tech Tips as their forum of choice (no offence Linus)
 
 
None of those really apply to what OP is asking for.
OP is talking more about IT Infrastructure, to which 90% of the content on this forum doesn't apply. This forum is targeted more towards the hobbyist rather than professionals, which makes sense given the community. You couldn't come to this forum to discuss CVEs, virtualisation stacks etc. which is more what OP is aiming towards i think. 

You can tell he's tasted money and liked it when 3 videos in a row are nothing but sponsored plugs. 

You can tell he's tasted money and liked it when 3 videos in a row are nothing but sponsored plugs. 

You can tell he's tasted money and liked it when 3 videos in a row are nothing but sponsored plugs. 

HP's website and HP support assistant are the sole thing pushing us away from their devices.
The reliability and serviceability of them has been decent the last few years, but everything else about HP is just trash. They also seem to do battery recalls like they're going out of fashion. 
If you need to source drivers from their website directly, rather than say bulk downloading for provisioning, their website is barely functional and download speeds are just shocking. 
There's one thing about HP Support Assistant which makes me rage to this day: on the initial start up the option to not share data (I can't remember off the top of my head what it's for) is hidden for like 5 seconds, you have to wait and then it appears in the lower right. In an attempt to make you think you had no choice but to agree to it.. What the fuck? 
It also seems to want reboots randomly and prompts to install driver updates which then fail or suddenly says it doesn't require. 
Having been purchasing hundreds of their devices over the last 5 years or so, I'd say the quality has definitely gone down hill lately. Whether that's due to the market, I don't know. But our number of DOA units increased dramatically, and stupid things like film covers not being removed from the internal webcams at the factory. 
 
Also the thumbnail and title is just fucking RETARDED.
The meaning of the video should be clear from the title and thumbnail, not the other way around. 
 
 

HP's website and HP support assistant are the sole thing pushing us away from their devices.
The reliability and serviceability of them has been decent the last few years, but everything else about HP is just trash. They also seem to do battery recalls like they're going out of fashion. 
If you need to source drivers from their website directly, rather than say bulk downloading for provisioning, their website is barely functional and download speeds are just shocking. 
There's one thing about HP Support Assistant which makes me rage to this day: on the initial start up the option to not share data (I can't remember off the top of my head what it's for) is hidden for like 5 seconds, you have to wait and then it appears in the lower right. In an attempt to make you think you had no choice but to agree to it.. What the fuck? 
It also seems to want reboots randomly and prompts to install driver updates which then fail or suddenly says it doesn't require. 
Having been purchasing hundreds of their devices over the last 5 years or so, I'd say the quality has definitely gone down hill lately. Whether that's due to the market, I don't know. But our number of DOA units increased dramatically, and stupid things like film covers not being removed from the internal webcams at the factory. 
 
Also the thumbnail and title is just fucking RETARDED.
The meaning of the video should be clear from the title and thumbnail, not the other way around. 
 
 

Hi wANKER and everyone following this thread,
 
I’m Yuni from Secretlab’s Community Management team. Firstly, thanks @LinusTech for bringing this to our attention. I’d like to extend my apologies to the OP for the experience. I have read through the post in detail and our team will be looking into this to ensure that the lacking areas are looked into and improved on.
 
With regards to your request, our support team is actively working on the return request at the moment. They will provide you with an update on the collection as soon as they have confirmation from the courier. We will also reach out to you directly via a separate email thread to further address your concerns. 

I wanted to also jump in to address some of the concerns that were raised here. We are aware that certain earlier production batches of the TITAN Evo 2022 potentially received uneven application of adhesive and lubricant in the L-ADAPT lumbar system area and with that, produces a sound when pressure is applied. It does not affect usage or durability of the chair in any way, but it is still crucial to us to fix it.
 
I’d like to first reassure that the overall reported issue rate is low but regardless, this is something we have actively worked on fixing upon realization. As we are working to fix this for the people who have reached out, we are also going through checks on existing stocks of replacement parts to ensure we send out a fixed replacement component to alleviate the sound. 
 
Following this, I also understand that there are questions about aligning the backrest during assembly and like the OP mentioned, will require some adjustments and slight force prior to securing it in place. We designed and have introduced guide rails at the side of the backrests to improve the overall assembly experience but they are guides and will still require some minor adjustments for it to be aligned properly. 
 
Ultimately, it is of importance to us that any concerns raised are accurately and promptly addressed and I appreciate the support and feedback you have provided us with. Pertaining to the support experience, I will address them further via email so do keep a lookout in your inbox. 
 
Our support team is always on-hand and ready to assist if any of our customers need help with their chairs, so do drop them a message at https://secretlab.co/contact and they’ll be with you as quickly as possible.

From the look of things, Secret Lab could absolutely handle some of these things better, but some of the complaints are not super reasonable (support ticket wait times DO tend to be a bit longer this time of year and heavy items almost never offer free return shipping unless the item is grossly overpriced in the first place) and looking across all 6 of these threads there are some recurring characters, which seems to suggest a small minority of users are very unhappy, while the majority of the recent posts to the subreddit are from satisfied users...
 
Definitely something we'll be keeping an eye on it and we'll get in touch with them to find out their side of the story.
 
 
edit: fixed a typo

Majority? Do you have charts showing the percentage of total sales that had problems or frustrations with customer service? Probably not, if we're honest with ourselves. I certainly wouldn't rule out a significant number of faulty units, but please don't conflate a bunch of search results with a majority. You can search for faults or customer service problems for any large company and the results will make it sound like problems are rampant even whey affect just a handful of customers.
 
Like I said, there's no evidence YouTubers get cherry-picked units; more likely, it's that they may only have the review units for a couple of weeks. That's a pretty standard review unit policy for most companies, from what I've seen. Now, you can certainly say that's not enough time for issues to manifest in products like chairs, but that doesn't make it a sinister plot on Secretlab's part. As it stands, how would the company pick those samples? Grab a whole bunch from the line and have staff sit in them day-in, day-out for a month to see if any of them break, and send the ones that don't (but are mysteriously still in brand-new condition)?
 
And I'm sorry, but that's stretching the definition of "shill" to fit your frustrations, not the actual definition. A shill is someone who knowingly takes pay to paint an unrealistically flattering picture of a product. A YouTuber providing their honest feedback on a product they reasonably believe to be the same as for customers, and taking a review unit because they either can't afford to buy everything they review (common for smaller producers) or have no reason to believe the units would be cherry-picked (as is likely the case here). For goodness' sake, if big companies like Samsung can send units with glaring design flaws that reviewers spot within hours, like the original Galaxy Fold, what makes you think Secretlab is more clever than that?
 
Many if not most outlets will readily disclose if they've been given an unfinished or early sample. Sometimes it's also pretty obvious they got a review unit, too, like iPhone or Galaxy S reviews that show up right before units ship to customers (those are of the same quality as the units that customers receive, I'd add). And while I don't know how much research LTT did, I'm sure it's aware some people have had problems.
 
Look, we all understand: you're angry that Secretlab sold you a flawed unit. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a larger reliability problem, too. But it sounds like you're trying to justify that anger at all costs by making the issues bigger than they are: because yours was flawed, most others surely must be; because yours was flawed, all YouTubers who accept review unit loans are corrupt. Well... no. Sometimes you just pull the short straw and get a bad example, whether it's a one-off or part of a systemic (but still minority) problem. You can criticize Secretlab without insisting it's orchestrating a fiendish conspiracy, or that all customers must share your pain.

(should start by saying the chair was purchased mid-october, so the above statement regarding 'early units' is total bull)
 
So, I committed the cardinal sin and purchased a 'gaming chair' and decided to go with the SecretLab Titan Evo 2022, primarily influenced by ShortCircuit review
 
Packaging 
Honestly some of the nicest packaging I have come across on any item. Everything is packaged so that it can be easily removed from the box in order of the assembly process. Laying on top of the parts as soon as you open the box, is a large gloss colour print of photographed, step by step instructions. So don't think they could have done much better on the packaging front. 
 
Assembly
This is where the issues started to appear. As far as the assembly process, super easy and would take a single person probably 20 minutes to fully assembly their chair. 
However, I noticed that the screw holes for the hinges were not aligned on both sides of the chair. This meant that you had to put a lot of force onto one side of the chair to try and get it to line up properly. It still does not. I have browsed Reddit, Trustpilot etc. and there are tons of complaints of exactly the same issue. I've not seen any response from SecretLab on this particular quality issue (there's plenty more to come). 
 
Ergonomics 
As expected with any 'gaming chair', ergonomics are not great. Though they're even worse than what I initially expected. There also seems to be an issue with the base of the chair (once again, Reddit and other sites confirm I am not the only one). It does not sit quite level and is slanted to one side. This creates quite a serious issue as it means that there is more pressure on one buttock than the other, leading to lower back pain. Again, others have confirmed of the same issue. 
The lumbar support in this chair is basically pointless. If it's fully retracted, you're basically sitting against a sheet of hardboard. Fully extended, and it's basically the equivalent of cheap office chair. Not only this, but it also bows when you lean against it which basically removes the little support which was there. 
 
Quality
Oh boy. Here we go. 
There are lot of rattle which comes from the armrests - SuperLab's response effectively being 'well they're 4D armrests, what do you expect' - however one armrest for me is a LOT more looser than the other. 
The absolute most significant issue from these things is the noise. 
If you buy one of these things, you will get an email from SecretLab's around 1 days after it has been delivered, advising that there may be excessive noise issues and to contact support. The key thing here is that they're emailing around 1 day AFTER DELIVERY. Buy which time, most people have assembled the chair and thrown away the packaging. Bye bye return option. 
The noise from the lumbar support is unbearable. This thing creaks every time any amount of pressure is applied against it. To a point where it will literally creak when you're no longer sitting on it.... Almost as if the lumbar support is expanding. 
The base also creaks with any amount of lateral movement. 
There is absolutely no mention of potential issues on their website, they're continuing to sell defective chairs, and continuing to only inform people a set period of time AFTER delivery.