Our Verdict
Pros
- Comfy padding for long race sessions
- Includes seat slider
- Reclinable to suit multiple driving positions
- Subtle design
- Suits a wide range of body sizes
Cons
- The backrest can move under heavy braking
- Bolts can loosen over time
- Hard to adjust bolts if they come loose
- Cheap plastic finishes
What is the GT Omega XL RS racing seat?
GT Omega is widely known as one of the best sim rig manufacturers. They offer a wide variety of products from beginner wheel stands to more professional aluminium profile rigs. These products also include gaming chairs, desks and sim racing seats.
The XL RS Simulation racing seat sits at the top of GT Omega’s range of sim racing seats. The XL RS mounts directly to your sim racing rig, allowing you to sim race without the worry that your chair and racing wheel aren’t connected.
Sim racing seats often consist of non-adjustable bucket seats designed to replicate a real-world racing seat. While these seat styles offer an immersive experience and a snug fit, they often sacrifice adjustability and comfort.
The XL RS racing seat takes a different approach and more closely resembles a real-world car seat as opposed to a racing seat. It features a synthetic leather-style material, adjustability in the form of a reclining seat along with a built-in seat slider, and soft padding for a comfortable racing experience.
So what does the XL part of the name mean? Well, the XL RS is designed to allow sim racers with larger frames to remain comfy while sim racing. It is designed with slightly larger proportions compared to GT Omega’s other sim racing seat options.
This allows those with larger frames to fit and remain comfy. The seat itself also remains extremely comfy for sim racers with smaller frames. The extra space ensures you’ll find a comfy racing position.
View the best budget sim racing seats in this fantastic guide.
Is the XL RS easy to assemble?
When the GT Omega XL RS arrives, it is in a single box and very well packaged. Essentially, it has two main parts, with a few trim pieces and bolts supplied in separate packaging.
The seat slider comes pre-mounted to the bottom of the seat, which is much appreciated and saves one part of the construction. Instead, you simply have to remove the two main seat components, the backrest and the seat. Then like most gaming chairs, you simply line up the backrest with the two metal seat mounts that are already attached to the bottom part of the frame.
This is relatively easy to do, and can easily be done with just one person. Once you’ve aligned the rear part of the seat, just two bolts need to be inserted and tightened on each side to secure the backrest.
One area to note is, that you should tighten these bolts as much as you physically can. Over the course of me using the XL RS, I found that these bolts came loose on multiple occasions. This is probably due to the fact I was using a strong load cell brake pedal, meaning I was pushing on the backrest with a lot of force over long periods.
However, once you attach the plastic trim pieces which are secured with a third bolt on each side. It is extremely hard to remove the trim to re-tighten the main two bolts.
Getting back to the assembly, once you have attached the backrest to the seat, you can clip on the plastic trim pieces. An extra bolt on each side physically connects the trim pieces to the backrest, and plastic plugs cover these bolts.
I highly recommend not inserting the plastic plugs, as they are almost impossible to remove once they’ve been inserted. Without being able to remove them, it is extremely difficult to disassemble the seat or tighten any bolt.
Mounting the seat to a sim rig
Mounting the seat to your rig is also relatively simple. You mount it through the seat slider, which you slide backwards and forwards to access these bolts.
Compared to many gaming chairs that I have constructed, the assembly of the GT Omega XL RS seat is one of the simplest. The guys at GT Omega have done a great job of ensuring this seat is easy to put together in a short space of time. Overall, it took me around 15-20 minutes to assemble which included unpacking and giving the supplied instructions a quick once over.
How well does the XL RS seat perform?
We’ve spent a good few months with this seat, which we had mounted to the APEX Wheel stand and the APEX Rear seat frame. For the purpose of this GT Omega XL RS review, we have been using a combination of racing wheels and pedals including the Fanatec CSL DD, the GT DD Pro along with the CSL Load Cell Pedals.
Reviews for all of these items can be found here in our Fanatec reviews.
Initial design thoughts
The larger design suited my frame perfectly, allowing me to quickly and easily find a comfortable position. I also appreciated the reclining functionality. It allowed me to quickly and easily switch between an upright GT-style racing position and a more reclined Formula seating position.
This seat remained comfy during long endurance race sessions lasting four or more hours. I certainly didn’t walk away with numb legs or a painful back, so I was impressed on that front.
The lower seat padding provides a good initial comfort and squash factor (yes, that is a technical term)! But it remains sturdy enough not to compress over time or lose any of its comfort. The lower seat bolsters are far enough apart to allow me to not feel constrained and let me move my legs during longer race sessions.
The rear part of the seat has slightly less padding but that is to be expected. Again, there is enough padding to remain comfy, and you can’t feel any of the internal structure even when being forced back into the seat when stomping on the brake pedal.
The side bolsters are a little more prominent on the backrest, but again, they’re spaced far enough apart to not really constrain you. There aren’t any harness mounting points like you can find on some other sim racing seats. But that is to be expected, as this seat sits much closer to the casual side rather than a hardcore sim racing product.
My biggest complaint with the XL RS seat
One area where I did have an issue was with the backrest during heavy use. While I said above it is comfy, and the reclining does allow for a lot of adjustability, it is also this seat’s biggest downfall.
If you are using a strong load cell brake pedal like I was, you will know that you really have to stomp on the brake pedal to achieve 100% braking pressure. When pressing the brake pedal hard you will notice a decent amount of flex in the backrest. This certainly affected my braking performance initially.
Braking with a load cell is all about achieving consistency by applying the same amount of pressure every time. That is hard to do when your seat is flexing. While I quickly adapted to this movement and was able to find my rhythm again, it did directly lead to a second issue.
Over time I found that the backrest part of this racing seat had increased movement. I found that this boiled down to the bolts that secure the backrest to the lower seat coming loose over time.
No matter how tight I secured these bolts in, over time during relatively heavy daily use, they always required tightening every couple of weeks or so. As mentioned above, this was very hard to do thanks to the difficulty of removing plastic coverings.
This did lead to me becoming increasingly frustrated with this seat, and ultimately led to me switching to a fixed fibreglass bucket seat. But as I mentioned, this issue was only due to me using the seat for multiple hours daily with a heavy load cell brake pedal.
During casual use, I’m sure this wouldn’t be as much of an issue.
Value for money
All of GT Omega’s racing seats represent decent value for money. In the UK and Europe, the XL RS costs £180/€180, often less, and in the US it sits at around $300. This price beats the competition for a reclinable racing seat with a seat slider, so I’d consider it pretty good value for money.
Compatibility with other racing rigs
The XL RS seat comes pre-packaged with a seat slider which is already pre-installed on the lower part of the seat. This is mounted to your rig from the top of the seat slider, meaning you will need to have vertical mounting points on your rig.
The seat slider’s mounting points are 350mm apart from side to side and 280mm apart from front to back.
With all GT Omega sim rigs, the XL RS seat will fit without a problem, with mounting points being pre-drilled into all GT Omega sim rig frames. This also won’t cause any issues if you have an aluminium profile sim rig, as you have complete control over the seat mounting points with most 8020 rigs.
Regarding other budget-orientated sim rigs from other manufacturers, you may have a little more trouble mounting the XL RS.
Rigs such as those from PlaySeat and Next Level Racing aren’t directly compatible with the mountain points of the XL RS. You can, with a little bit of adaptation make them fit, but this will require drilling a few extra holes into your rig. If you have a PlaySeat or NLR sim rig, I would look to find an alternative seat rather than faffing trying to adapt your rig to suit the GT Omega seats.
Is the GT Omega XL RS seat worth buying?
Overall, the GT Omega XL RS is a very comfy place to spend a few hours sim racing. It comes with a good set of features, some of which, like the integrated seat slider, are premium add-on options with other manufacturers.
However, if you are looking for a sturdy sim racing seat, or looking to race with a strong load cell brake pedal, you may want to look for a bucket racing seat instead. There is noticeable flex in the backrest when using stronger load cell pedals, and the plastic finishes don’t make the XL RS look overly premium.
Despite its lack of rigidity with more premium and powerful hardware, the XL RS is a fantastic racing seat option for those who like to casually sim race. It is probably one of the nicest-looking racing seats on the market as it doesn’t feature any gaudy and bright colour accents that often plague gaming chairs. Instead, it’s subtle and elegant, and the overall durability and feel of the PVC are great.
Technical Specifications
Review written by Felix König
