The 4 Best Oversized Camping Chairs (Bought & Tested!)

What counts as an oversized camping chair

Brands call these chairs huge, giant, jumbo and king-size, and not one of those words means anything you can measure. So I went by the seat itself: the width between the steel bars, times the depth from the back of the seat to the front.

Every width here is the real seat width, measured between the steel bars where a chair has them. The last row is a dining chair from my kitchen, so you have something familiar to measure against.

• Where the line sits: a flat seat, and at least 320 sq in of it.
• How many qualify: just 4 of all the camping chairs I own.
• The three biggest seats don’t make it. One is a two-person chair and the other two are bucket seats, which is a shape problem rather than a size one.
• The closest miss: the GCI Freestyle, which lands 2.3 sq in behind the YETI on a 15.0in seat depth.
• The benchmark: my IKEA dining chair is 16.1 × 16.2in. Every chair on this page beats it in both directions.

The marketed seat width includes the steel bars

Three of these four are sold as 24-inch seats. Measure across the chair and that’s about right, but a steel bar runs down each side of the seat and it takes up sitting room.

The REI Campwell isn’t an oversized chair. It’s in the table because the bars cost it space too, so this isn’t something only the big chairs do.

• What the marketed number is: the total width, bars included. The King Kong is sold as a 24-inch seat and gives you 19.5in of one.

• The one exception: the YETI has no side bars, so its 19.5in is 19.5in.
• What it costs: between 4.3 and 4.7in on the three bar-frame chairs.
• My rule of thumb: take about 4in off any marketed seat width on a chair with steel bars down the sides.

A big measurement doesn’t automatically mean oversized

The three biggest seats I’ve measured all belong to chairs I wouldn’t call oversized. Bucket and scoop seats curve up at the sides and sag in the middle, so the fabric wraps around you instead of sitting under you.

Seat depth is measured from the back of the seat to the front. The Pod Rocker and the Sunset are in here to show what a shaped seat does to a big-looking measurement.

• My cut-off: anything under 15in of depth ends around my mid-thigh, and on a seat that sinks it cuts off the circulation in my legs.

• All four here clear it, at 16.5 to 20.0in.
• The widths are all about the same. Across the four picks the real seat width runs 19.0 to 19.5in, so the depth is what separates a big chair from an ordinary one.
• What to do about it: check the seat depth before the seat width, and ignore any measurement taken across a curved seat.

A big chair isn’t automatically a strong chair

This is the one that surprised me. All four of these are big chairs, but the weight they’re rated to take is nowhere near the same, and that matters if you need the chair to hold a lot.

Capacity and warranty are both the brand’s own figures, not something I could test myself.

• The spread: 325 to 800lbs, across four chairs that are all about the same size.
• Only 3 chairs I own are rated at 500lbs or more, and all three of them are on this page.
• The Cooler Quad is the odd one out at 325lbs, which is the same range as my regular-sized camping chairs.
• The King Kong takes more than twice what the Cooler Quad does, and ALPS covers it for life against Coleman’s 1 year.
• What to do about it: check the capacity as a separate spec. A big chair tells you nothing about it.

The tradeoff: an oversized chair is a heavy chair

A bigger seat needs a bigger frame, and all four of these land in the heavy half of my collection. It shows up in the setup times as well, not just on the scales.

Weight includes the carry bag. Timings are after dozens of setups, so a first attempt will take longer.

• The range: 8.2 to 14.7lbs, against 2.8 to 4.0lbs for the packable chairs I own.
• Weight costs you time too. My Coleman Broadband and my Big N Tall set up exactly the same way, but the Broadband is 6.0lbs and takes 6 seconds while the Big N Tall is 10.0lbs and takes 11.

• Only two of my chairs come with backpack straps, and they’re the two heaviest ones here.
• Packed length is the real problem: all four are over 37in long, so do check the dimensions of your car before buying one.

What the extra room actually buys you

It isn’t about being able to fit in the chair. It’s about being able to move once you’re in it, which is the thing an ordinary camp chair doesn’t give you.

• You can change position. On the King Kong and the Big N Tall I can pull both feet up and sit cross-legged, which I can’t do in any chair with a seat under 19.0in deep.
• The seat holds your whole thigh. These run 16.5 to 20.0in deep against 11.0 to 15.0in on the shallower chairs I own, so nothing digs into your leg.
• The width is there when you need it. At 5’3 and 117lbs I have room to spare in all four, and a friend of mine at 250lbs used the YETI for days with no trouble at all.
• Three of the four take serious weight: 800lbs on the King Kong, 600lbs on the Big N Tall and 500lbs on the YETI.

So is an oversized camping chair worth it?

It comes down to how you sit and how far you have to carry the thing. After 5 months with all four, here are the cases where I’d say yes and the ones where I’d say no.

• Worth it if: you sit cross-legged or shift around a lot, because a 19in or deeper seat is the only kind that lets you.
• Worth it if: you need real weight capacity, since the King Kong and the Big N Tall are two of the only three chairs I own rated at 500lbs or more.
• Not for you if: you want to rest your head, because only the YETI’s 24.0in backrest gets anywhere near it and the shortest here is 20.0in.
• Not for you if: you’re carrying the chair any distance, because the lightest one here is 8.2lbs and the heaviest is 14.7lbs.
• Not for you if: you have a small car, because all four pack down over 37in long.