Image: Razer
It’s becoming a tradition for Razer to show off some pretty wild prototypes at CES, but the concept gaming chair with integrated heating and cooling it just unveiled actually sounds downright practical. Project Arielle is a mesh gaming chair that features a bladeless fan system that’s designed to keep you at a comfortable temperature regardless of what environment you’re in.
We briefly tried it here at CES 2025 and it’s cool! Or warm, depending on the mode you set it to. When my colleague Sean Hollister tried it, he found it didn’t just warm or cool his butt, but gently and quietly blew a substantial amount of climate-controlled air onto his upper back from small holes along the chair’s top edge.
Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
A more comfortable way to freeze your butt off.
Building on the $1,049 Razer Fujin Pro mesh gaming chair that you can currently buy, Project Arielle has three adjustable fan speeds that can reduce the perceived temperature by 2 to 5 degrees Celsius (around 3.6 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit) in “dry environments,” according to Razer. That sounds pretty useful if you live in a hot climate or if your gaming PC kicks out enough heat to turn your room into a sweatbox.
Image: Razer
Here’s a rendering that shows how the hot or cool air is dispersed from the chair.
For chillier environments, the chair has a built-in PTC heating system (the same kind found in most vehicles and heated car seats) that can spit out warm air at 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit). The fans and that temperatures are adjusted using touch panel controls located next to the seat pad. And given this is a Razer product, there’s obviously RGB lighting throughout the chair. By default, it’s set to Razer’s trademark green when it’s off, and we saw the edge glow red when warm, blue when cool, and purple or orange when cooling or warming.
Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
Icons on the touch-controlled panel and the built-in RGB lighting indicate whether the chair is set to blast warm or cold air.
One downside: you can’t spin 360 degrees in this chair without wrapping a cord around yourself, as it does need to be plugged in. But even the prototype already has a cable that’ll safely disconnect if you accidentally give it a yank.
Photo by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
The breakaway cable will disconnect if it’s pulled, kinda like the early Xbox controllers.
Given Project Arielle is only a concept chair, this unfortunately isn’t something you can actually buy just yet. Razer has showcased a lot of quirky gaming gadget concepts at CES over the years, including chair cushions that shake your ass with haptic feedback.
While some do eventually get released as fully realized products — such as the Razer Edge gaming tablet born from “Project Fiona” and the Zephyr RGB face mask that got the company into trouble with the Federal Trade Commission over N95 compliance claims — others, like the Project Sophia modular desk computer and Project Valerie triple-screen laptop, have never been rolled out.