The Best Backpacking Chairs of 2020

Best Overall Backpacking Chair

Big Agnes Skyline UL

Weight: 29 ounces | Seat Height: 9.5 inches

The Big Agnes Skyline UL provides a high level of comfort and stability in a small package — and we love it. The seat is deep-pocketed, meaning that you'll feel comfortable sitting with your legs in a variety of positions, and you won't feel your bum slide forward. It also keeps your back in a straighter, less curled position than most models. Big Agnes has a unique bent leg design that creates a wider base and seat while keeping the packed profile small. These attributes, along with its reasonable price, make it one of the most well-rounded products we tested and a clear choice for our Editors' Choice Award.

This chair is still 13 ounces heavier than the lightest chair we reviewed, so for those that are ultra-conscious about weight, 29 ounces may still be too heavy. We also found that the space-saving hubless pole design takes a little more time to put together than the hubbed pole models, but take that with a grain of salt, we are talking on a scale of 10-15 additional seconds.

Read review: Big Agnes Skyline UL

Best Bang for the Buck

Sunyear Compact

Weight: 35 ounces | Seat Height: 9 inches

We always do our research into lesser-known brands that offer a surprisingly low price, and the Sunyear Compact chair did not disappoint. It offers above-average comfort, is just as easy to set up as other similar, more expensive models, and we were stunned that it was so easy to pack away even with the bulky fabric. This is a worthy winner of our esteemed Best Buy Award.

Our testers felt the robust fabric was overkill and that Sunyear could have saved a few ounces while retaining durability by choosing a lighter material. The hardwearing nylon can be rough on bare legs and contributes to the slightly heavier than average weight at 35 ounces. However, we think you might be able to stomach the extra ounces for the bargain-basement price!

Read review: Sunyear Compact

Best for Ultralight Adventures

Helinox Chair Zero

Weight: 18 ounces | Seat Height: 7 inches

There's a new lightweight winner in town! The Helinox Chair Zero is our favorite chair for ultralight missions. It misses being the lightest chair in this review by one ounce, yet it's significantly more comfortable and stable than its lighter counterpart. When sitting down into the Zero, users will feel the back support offered by the shape of the seat and the security of legs that keep the wobble to a minimum for such a light chair.

The seat pocket isn't as deep as some, so we did find our bums sliding forward and our legs feeling less supported. You'll find yourself sitting pretty low to the ground as well, so this may not be the chair for folks who have trouble getting up from a low crouch. But for those of you wondering who the heck would bring a chair backpacking in the first place, we think this product might change your mind.

Read review: Helinox Chair Zero

Top Pick for Vanlifers

Big Agnes Big Six

Weight: 51 ounces | Seat Height: 12 inches

Travelers and car campers will rejoice when discovering the Big Agnes Big Six chair. The spacious seat is wide and tall and even offers a high enough back for a headrest, a feature not found on any other chair this compact and lightweight. Its size is enormous for the small 5.5" x 5.5" x 21.5" bundle it makes when packed up, and the comfort it offers may even cause you to put in a catnap. While this is too heavy for most backpacking endeavors, the comfort and small packed size make it perfect for those of you that dwell in a van, truck, or small RV.

We found the hubless pole design on the Big Six to be great for reducing bulk and increasing stability, but it does mean the setup requires a bit more focus than poles that just spring into place mostly on their own. The Big Six doesn't neatly fall into the backpacking chair category for us because it's so heavy that most hikers aren't going to be willing to schlepp it into the mountains but, then again, it is small enough when packed up to strap to a bag, so maybe some will want to take it on.

Read review: Big Agnes Big Six

Best Foam Chair

Crazy Creek Hex 2.0 PowerLounger

Weight: 29 ounces | Seat Height: 0 inches

The Hex 2.0 PowerLounger from Crazy Creek is our favorite of the foam ground-dwelling chairs we tested. We are impressed by its comfort; the high back and extended bottom will keep you supported for longer sits, dry on wet grass, and clean in the mud. This chair is also incredibly versatile since it can double as a sleeping pad, or at least as a great addition to your inflatable pad when the surface is sharp or uneven.

On the flip side, this chair does put you right on the ground, which is less comfortable than some of the elevated, tent-style chairs we tested. It would not be our first pick for a sleeping pad, as its padding is quite thin, but it will certainly work in a pinch. Even though the Hex has a higher back and is, therefore, more comfortable than other similar chairs, it will still curl your shoulders in and won't be comfortable to sit in for overly long periods of time.

Read review: Crazy Creek Hex 2.0 PowerLounger

Why You Should Trust Us

Backpacking enthusiast and author of this review, Elizabeth Paashaus, has spent hundreds and hundreds of mornings and evenings seated on the ground, enough to appreciate the comfort afforded by a lightweight camp chair. She has backpacked thousands of miles through the Appalachian mountains, the high Sierra, and the deserts of Southern Utah both alone as well as with her husband and two girls. Elizabeth and her family can be found traveling the country, living in their converted school bus, seeking out adventure through climbing, hiking, and enjoying our public lands as their outdoor living room.

The work of this review started with market research, which yielded an initial selection of fifty contending chairs. Of these, we chose the 11 most promising. We bought these (yes, we bought them all) and tested them for several weeks during the spring and summer. We recruited friends, took them everywhere, and sat on everything from parking lots to beach sand. We paid attention to how comfortable we felt for long sits, how much work it was to set up and break down each chair, and how stable we felt on different surfaces. We think you'll find this review a useful tool in narrowing down your options in a market flooded with excellent chairs.

Related: How We Tested Backpacking Chairs

Analysis and Test Results

With so many backpacking chairs on the market, how do you pick the right one? In this article, we've identified the four most important qualities to look for. We rated each seat on how comfortable they are even after sitting in them for 30 minutes, how compact they are as well as how much they weigh, their stability when getting in and out, and how easy they are to set up and, maybe, more importantly, get back into their bags. We weighted the metrics based on what we felt to be most important in a backpacking chair with comfort being at the top of that list followed by size & weight, stability, and then ease of use. Read on to learn all about our top performers.

Related: Buying Advice for Backpacking Chairs

Value

Here at OutdoorGearLab, we define "value" as the meeting point between performance and price. Some products have superior comfort or versatility, but do their prices justify the performance? Others may be very affordable, but does their performance lag?

This review has a wide range of prices. Our Best Buy Award winners are products that offer the best value, and currently, that honor goes to the Sunyear Compact. This chair is one of those unknown brands that does a great job of performing above average in comfort, size, and weight, as well as stability and ease of use while keeping the price astonishingly low.

Though it didn't take home the Best Buy award, our Editors' Choice-winning Skyline UL is on the more affordable side of all the tent-style chairs we tested and offers an exceptionally well-rounded performance. This product illustrates that you don't need to spend major bucks to have a stellar backpacking chair.

For the biggest cost savings, look into the taco-style chairs, which are almost always less expensive than tent-style models but can still offer you a padded seat to comfort your derrière.

Comfort

Most of the products we test are performance-driven. They're lightweight, sleek, and designed to help you in your most adventurous pursuits. But this review is different. Chairs are for luxury, and they'd serve no purpose without comfort. To justify lugging a purely luxurious item around with you, it must improve your outdoor experience. For this metric, we evaluated the myriad of ways chairs can be more and less comfortable and used these characteristics to rate each product against each other.

We found two distinct sub-categories within our review; the "taco-style" or foam chairs that fold flat and have you seated on the ground and the "tent-style" chairs that have legs and sit up off the ground. The comfort between these two categories is wildly different. A taco-style chair is harder to get in and out of since it sits so low and can't stand up on its own. They offer less support and often require a few core muscles to stay upright. Tent-style chairs tend to excel in the comfort metric since they keep their form, allowing you to more or less plop down in them. Granted, you may not want to plop with abandon in the ultralight models like the feather-weight REI Flexlite Air! Being raised off the ground to varying heights also makes the tent-style chair easier to get in and out of.

When judging comfort we also inspected materials. How does the fabric feel on the skin? Is it breathable and ventilated? Not one of the taco-style chairs in our review has any breathability, and all use similar materials. Two tent-style chairs stand out for excellent ventilation: the TravelChair Joey and both Helinox models. We found ourselves favoring these products on hot summer days because of their breathable vents.

For taco-style chairs, we compared the amount of cushioning on the seat itself, noting the thick, cushy bottom of the ALPS Mountaineering Weekender and the thin yet smooth seat of the Crazy Creek PowerLounger.

We also considered what body position the chairs put us in. When spending just a few minutes in a chair, most are comfortable enough. But, for longer sessions, some chairs stood out for supporting the back. For tent-style chairs, we compared the depth of each chair, as some, like the Helinox Swivel and Sunyear tipped us forward more than others. We preferred a deeper seat that let us recline and relax, like the one found on the Skyline UL, our Editors' Choice and luxurious Big Six, our Top Pick for Vanliferes. In taco-style chairs, the comfort was decidedly lower, but between the models tested, we noted that the PowerLounger curled our shoulders in and dug into our underarms the least.

Our testers took a few measurements for this category, too. For tent-style chairs, we measured how far each seat elevated us off the ground. In general, the higher the seat, the easier it is to get in and out of, and the gentler it is on the knees and hips. We also compared how far back the seat reclined (or didn't), and the width of the seat. Because comfort is a huge part of this review, we allotted it 30% of the overall score of each chair.

Size & Weight

Unlike our camping chair review, this review is designed specifically for portable chairs that can be carried into the backcountry or on hikes. We analyzed weight and packability for this metric, knowing that a chair would have to be pretty compact to make it into an already heavy pack on your next trip into the backcountry. We considered both the relative weight of each chair compared to models of the same design (taco or tent style), as well as how it stacked up against every product we tested.

At OutdoorGearLab, we're in the business of making observations, not guesses, so we put each chair on a scale, brought out the measuring tape, and recorded what we found. Next, we strapped each chair to a fully loaded pack to assess packability and took them out on hikes to decide if the weight and bulk are worth it for the comfort provided. The current lightest chair in our review is the REI Flexlite Air at 16 ounces followed closely by the 17-ounce Top Pick for Ultralight Adventures, the Chair Zero. These tent-style chairs are lighter than any taco-style competitor we tested despite having legs. For those looking to shave ounces while keeping your bums out of the dirt, we'd recommend trying out these two chairs and seeing which fit suits you best.

The taco-style chairs come in next in the weight category. Despite being light, we generally find the taco-style chairs to be harder to pack than the tent-style chairs that break down easily and store nicely into stuff sacks. To gather information about each chair's packability, we rolled them, stuffed them in our backpacks, strapped them to the outside, and carried them by hand to determine which, if any, are the most compact and easily transportable. The PowerLounger stands out here; with a compression strap just for this purpose, it is very convenient to roll up and can be stowed beneath the lid or on the side of most backpacking packs.

Stability

We got a lot of feedback on the chairs in this review, and one thing quickly became clear: if a chair is stable, our testers didn't even think about it. If, on the other hand, a chair is unstable, it's the first complaint you'll hear about. The sign of a good product is one you can use easily and effortlessly, and chairs are no different.

While this category applies a little more directly to tent-style chairs, we'll touch on taco-style chairs, too. All the taco-style chairs we tested have the same general construction and stability. However, being able to quickly and easily adjust their angle of recline is key to both comfort and stability.

Looking at tent-style chairs, some really stand out. The huge base and larger diameter poles of the Big Six, while heavy, greatly increase its stability. The Skyline UL is also excellent; it has curved bars and wide feet that make for a secure sitting experience. Sometimes cutting down the weight can decrease durability, but it can also decrease stability. We noted than most testers, upon sitting in the Flexlite Air, quickly threw their arms out to try and maintain balance in this model with uber-light fabric, and flexible poles.

Taco-style chairs are a bit trickier to differentiate in this category. Because you sit directly on the ground, they generally offer the same stability as each other. In one sense, they are more stable than tent-style chairs since there is nowhere to fall, but we feel that because body tension is required to maintain an upright position, their stability ranks lower than most of the tent-style models.

Ease of Use

As a group of people who have wrestled with our share of outdoor equipment, we feel that the product you are willing to take with you is going to be one that doesn't make you want to pull your hair out. Sometimes we may be willing to learn how to operate a more complicated piece of gear when the benefits balance out the struggle, but often we want to be able to pick it up and just have it work. Setting up these backpacking chairs is, by no means, difficult, but some models really have the set up dialed.

To put the chairs to the test, we first set them up without reading or looking at any instructions, and we attempted to pack them back into their bags. We were surprised that every model we tested had little problem going back into its stuff sack. Some were a tighter fit than others but nothing compared to putting a tent back into its bag!

We love that the Helinox models include picture directions printed on the chairs, making your first set up as easy as your fifteenth. The chairs we tested from Big Agnes have color-coded poles and pole pockets for a quick visual cue during assembly. Notably, the Travel Chair Joey has no markings or directions whatsoever. We actually are still not 100% certain which end of the fabric goes up, so we set it up both ways and decide which feels more comfortable.

The taco-style chairs require almost no set up. If the clips aren't already fastened, just fasten them and park your booty. The angle of repose is adjusted with a sliding buckle, and we found the models that allow you to cinch by pulling down, rather than up, to be the easiest to use.

Conclusion

While we like to get out and get after it, we also consider ourselves experts at sitting back and taking in the view. We have spent weeks on end with all 11 of these chairs. We've taken them everywhere we went, from park-hopping in San Francisco to backpacking in the High Sierra and the canyons of Southern Utah. We soaked up the sun at the river and jammed out at outdoor concerts. We got to know each and every product in this review, from their small details to their larger impressions. We compared them all side-by-side, taking detailed notes as we went along. By evaluating comfort, size & weight, stability, and versatility, we feel confident that you now have the information you need to make an informed decision. Whether you're looking for the lightest option on the market or the most comfortable spot to park your booty, we've got you covered.