Secretlab's new InfinitePrecision pro-gamer armrests aren't what I thought they were going to be. Nor as precise as I expected

I should probably preface this piece by saying, for the record, that I am not a pro-gamer. I'm not even close. I'm certainly no twitch gamer, either, not by a long shot. No level of PC gaming hardware will be enough to change the fact that I absolutely suck at competitive first-person shooters. Even when I actually had a 23-year-old's reaction time, I was still almost the worst Quake IV player in the entire office.

Okay, I still slay at FIFA, sorry, FC26, but even so, I don't really want to play online let alone in a tournament.

So, maybe I'm not the right person to be checking out the new On-Stage Standard arm rests for the Titan Evo, even so, I was kinda expecting more. More accuracy and more, well, technology. After all, flipping open the box with the new twin chair arms staring up at me with their translucent sides, covering circuit boards, sitting beneath twin LCD panels, they immediately give off a real techie vibe.

These are the Secretlab InfinitePrecision Armrests in all their ultra precise glory. A set of chair arms designed to deliver the "most precise setup ever designed for pro players." And if that doesn't strike you as faintly ridiculous then you probably are the target audience for Secretlab's latest mission to make the lives of professional gamers that little bit more bearable.

The notion is that millimetres matter when it comes to a pro-gaming setup, and when professionals have maybe just five minutes ahead of a match to configure their entire setup it's important for them to be able to quickly and accurately get to their positional sweet spot well inside that timeframe.

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So, Secretlab has developed a suite of products to help facilitate this. The suite includes these InfinitePrecision Armrests and a MAGPAD Desk Mat designed to sit atop the Secretlab Magnus Pro sitting/standing desks. There is also a Titan Evo Worlds 2025 Edition of the best gaming chair, which has yet to be unveiled. But, presumably, it will have these fancy new armrests at the very least.

The desktop pad is lined up with ever smaller squares, like some technical graph-paper-based fractal patterning system. The idea being you can remember your ideal setup from home/the practice room and be able to replicate the precise positioning of your monitor, keyboard, and mouse upon any desktop, based on lining them up along the same axes.

That's maybe surprisingly manual, but the InfinitePrecision Armrests are designed to be more technical, delivering sub-millimetre precision in the height of your gaming chair's arms. Though, actually, despite the buttons, and screen readouts, and printed circuit boards built into each arm, it's all rather manual here, too.

At the heart of it, what we're really talking about are a pair of armrests that utilise hydraulics (of course that has a name, too: InfiniteLift) to offer the ability to set the height of the arms at any sub-millimetre level up to a maximum height of 79 mm from the base, rather than the traditional modestly stepped adjustments. The extra granularity is the key here, where otherwise you get maybe four or five stepped heights, you can now perfectly tailor the armrest to sit exactly where you want it.

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The obvious issue for this is that if you just went ahead and did that without any kind of precise mapping of what height you'd chosen you'd never be able to replicate it again should you (or some nefarious opponent) shift the chair arm from its previously perfected position. Thankfully Secretlab has stuck LCDs and precise measuring into each armrest so you can map out your ideal setup and replicate it in a tournament setting. So long as it's using the On-Stage Standard, of course. And your AAA batteries don't run out.

And so long as the desk you're using at home/in your team practice area is the same as the one on that tournament stage.

One of the issues I have is that the calibration process uses the underside of your desk to zero the height of the armrest, and it's then the unit measurement on the individual armrest readouts which you need to remember once you've manually adjusted them into your preferred position.

But that's also predicated on both being able to get your chair at the exact same height (there's no precise measurement on my Titan Evo Nanogen to tell me how high off the floor it is to any precision, sub-millimetre or no) and then have the desk being at the same height on stage and have an identical, sub-millimetre thickness to the desktop itself.

Any slight variation in any of those things will instantly throw out the precise setup you've created and are relying upon in a tense tournament situation. This is almost something Secretlab notes itself in the user guide for the armrests. It states the height of both armrests might not be an exact match "this can be due to uneven floors or table heights." Indeed, my own preferred setup at home reads 3.8 units on the left side and 4.0 units on the right side. Given that each 0.1 Secretlab InfinitePrecision unit corresponds to 0.6 mm, that's a difference of 1.2 mm between them.

If there are such slight tolerances to all this between a home On-Stage Standard setup and one a pro is attempting to replicate actually on-stage, then what's the benefit?

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Secretlab and the pro-gamers themselves will tell you it's sub-millimetre precision which allows them to perform at their best, and that any differences between their home setup and a tournament environment can throw them off their game to such an extent it will negatively affect their overall performance, costing them wins, and therefore tournament winnings.

Presumably, despite the inevitable variations between chairs and desks and floors meaning such infinitely precise setups are all but impossible to completely replicate, the On-Stage Standard gets so close that a millimetre difference here or there doesn't really matter. Though that does kinda fly in the face of the marketing materials…

Either that, or it's all a bit of a placebo.

Secretlab On-Stage Standard | Recreating the exact same setup anywhere, every time - YouTube

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I completely accept the idea of Lee 'Faker' Sang-Hyeok wanting to feel like they've replicated the same setup that enables them to perform so brilliantly in the practice room, giving them the confidence to bring that to the pressurised tournament setting. "When I feel the most comfortable, stronger gameplay naturally follows," says Faker.

But if they feel comfortable, does it really matter if their setup is ever-so-slightly different? The confidence gained from having a readout that tells them their armrests are identically positioned to home is arguably more important than whatever the reality is. "I need to remove uncertainties and be as precise as I can," Faker notes in the Secretlab documentary short about the new kit. And at their level of professional esports the winning is less about physicality and arguably more in the mind, so an LCD readout telling you, for certain, that your armrest is at the right height definitely takes away some of that uncertainty.

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Hey, if that works—and all the player testimony Secretlab offers suggests it does—then placebo or not, it's an effective feature. I'm just not at all convinced that bringing the same precision gear from the biggest stages to us at home is all that necessary.

Scratch that, I know it's not necessary, but gaming brands have been trading on what's good for the pros being good for the proles for aeons. Anyone remember all the Fatal1ty-branded tech of the long, long ago?

We don't know how much these InfinitePrecision Armrests are going to cost yet, despite having them strapped to my chair right now. But, given the PlushCell Memory Foam Armrest Tops are $89 a pair you can bet we're looking at $200-300+ for the hydraulic armrests themselves. Worth noting they don't come with the plush armrest tops, just standard PU leather, but it's an interesting barometer of what Secretlab will charge for accessories.

And remember when I said at the top I was expecting more? Yeah, just that. When Secretlab first told me about the product I had envisioned an armrest where you programmed in your ideal position—height, angle, depth, etc—and then at the press of a button it would always come back to that precise position. Kind of like when your motorised desk adjusts itself back to your chosen preset height. But the reality is not nearly so automated, nor so all-encompassing.

The InfinitePrecision Armrests are purely about the height. You still have the same unmeasured movement in the other dimensions of these 4D armrests. That includes a stepless side-to-side motion of up to 24 mm, stepless front-to-back motion of up to 50 mm, and five-step pivot of 60°. You might be able to more or less accurately replicate the height between different chairs, but the rest of your setup (including chair height) is still going to largely be a guessing game.

So, I'm left impressed by what Secretlab has created from a notional perspective, understanding what the professionals need to feel comfortable, whatever the reality is. But I remain resolutely unconvinced as to their worth away from that on-stage positioning.