Razer’s new gaming chair cushion brings us closer to Ready Player One

The Razer Freyja haptic gaming cushion is an extra-sensory haptic gaming chair upgrade, but some countries will miss out on the fun.

Razer has just announced the Freyja haptic gaming cushion, an addition for your chair that buzzes your back and butt into a new level of gaming immersion. However, The Razer Freyja uses high-density foam pads that don’t pass fire safety regulations in the UK or Spain so won’t be available to buy in these regions.

This sort of issue with gaming chairs, and similar foam-filled gaming equipment, failing to pass certain fire regulations is nothing new, but Razer is one of the larger, more high-profile brands to release a new product that simply won’t be sold in the UK or Spain. For instance, the maker of one of the best gaming chairs you can buy, ThunderX3, talked to us only recently about the extra requirements for getting products released in the UK, so the Freyja not passing these regs is not a meaningful black mark against its safety.

The Razer Freyja, then, is a thin multi-pad cushion that you can slip onto your gaming chair of choice – the Razer Iskur 2 of course being Razer’s recommendation. It then uses six tiny motors to vibrate six of its pads (marked below) to provide your posterior with a pummelling. The pads will sync their intensity and placement of vibration with your game, or the other content with which you’re engaging, to bring you an extra step toward feeling like you’re really there.

The placement of the cushion – which used to be codenamed Project Esther – can easily be adjusted via the straps, while a control panel on the left side provides buttons for power, intensity up and down, and switching between 2.4GHz wireless and Bluetooth modes. The latter means you can connect your phone or handheld gaming PC to get some good vibrations away from your PC too. The mat uses a single power connection with a break point, so you shouldn’t damage the mat or wall socket if you move your chair and the cable gets tugged.

In our time with the chair, we were impressed with the range of intensity, feeling everything from buzzing to thumping, and the directionality of the experience. It’s also notably quiet – your neighbors won’t be getting suspicious about this vibration device.

You can, of course, use Razer Synapse to customize the Freyja, with a whole new Sensa HD section providing settings for frequency, intensity, and direction of the Freyja’s output. You can also change the type of reaction you get from the Freyja, with it providing a reactive response, vibrating in accordance with explosions or other in-game direction noise prompts, or you can set the pads to provide more of a textural, atmosphere-building response.

The Razer Freyja is launching today for a surprisingly high price of $299.99. Considering that basic massage chair mats can be bought for under $100 – and it’s not like Razer is adding much extra in the way of RGB lights or in-built speakers – that seems a lot for a feature that is more of a nice-to-have than any sort of gaming hardware essential.

Still, we’ll reserve judgment until we’ve tested the Freyja for a longer period of time in a full review. For now, you can find our about some of the latest Razer gear we definitely do like by reading our Razer BlackShark V2 Pro review, which is one of our favorite gaming headsets, along with our Razer Viper V3 Hyperspeed review, which is our top gaming mouse pick.