Hey guys, welcome! As you know, we love
the outdoors, but we don't hate comfort. When we're done for the day, we just want
to sit. So if you're like us, you may have been eyeing Helinox's funky foldable chairs.
We reviewed the smallest version last year, the Helinox Chair Zero, and we decided
we liked the chair and loved the weight, but we did feel you could tell that Helinox had
to cut some corners to get that weight down to less than 500 grams. But that begs the question:
which corners did they cut exactly? If you're on the fence between the Helinox Chair One versus
the Chair Zero, this one's for you. First though, let's get the obvious question out of the way: why
not just get one of these knockoffs? There's a lot of these on the market: same design, more or less,
at almost a third of the price. And we're cheap, so we got one. Unfortunately though, this
turned out to be one of those cases of 'you get what you pay for'. This is what ours
looked like after two years - actually, since the fabric is now completely delaminated,
it looks better than it did last year. So unless you know that you'll hardly use it, you
might be better off with an original. So yeah, until someone makes a non-binary
version, your choice is between one and zero. Here's the differences: the chair zero is about
two centimeters wider, deeper and higher - that's less than an inch in either direction. And it sits
you about two inches, five centimeters further off the ground. So it is larger in every dimension,
but the difference is so small that even the chair one still feels like some kind of micro-aggression
towards plus sized people. Handling is just about identical, though I slightly prefer the zero for
two reasons: one is that the fabric is thinner and easier to manipulate and two is the fact that
the position of this horizontal rod in the middle is fixed, so you don't have to align anything. On
the chair one it swivels, and I feel that's just a waste of time since you never actually need it to
be anything other than, well, straight. Weight is unsurprisingly the biggest difference: the chair
one is almost twice as heavy. Well, not quite half, but it's definitely not a close call. And a
fair bit of that weight comes from the fabric, so it's not just the poles that are sturdier. You can
actually swap them out too, by the way: put the fabric of the one on the zero and the other way
around. And that's inspired some people to create a Helinox chair 0.5 that combines the zero's seat
with the one's frame. You can watch John Kelley's video up here. Kind of neat, and useful for people
who have a heavier build and want to add a bit of comfort and stability to the chair zero. For most
people though, if you're aiming for more comfort, unless you know that you're going to be sitting
on rocky surfaces I actually think that a ground cloth is going to make more of a difference,
because I find that especially in forests and on the beach, the feet is sinking into the
ground is a lot more common than the structure of the chair not being sturdy enough. Helinox
sells these, but Steve's been experimenting, trying to DIY a lighter version and that seems
to work pretty well. As for comfort, if you put these side by side and ask people to test them
both, just about everyone agrees that the chair one feels sturdier and more secure, as well as a
bit more comfortable. No surprises, right? Given access to both, there is no real situation where
any of us would prefer the chair zero. That said, the difference between no chair and the chair
zero is a lot bigger than the difference between the zero and the one, if that makes sense. And so
which one's best? Well, they're both great, but there's only really one scenario where you should
be choosing the zero and that's the one where you are going to be carrying it around yourself for
a considerable amount of time. Like when you're hiking. You could argue that the zero's main
audience are people that are serious enough about ultralight hiking to pay more money for less
comfort, but not serious enough about it to ditch chairs entirely. And that's not the biggest of
niches. If that's you though, be sure to watch our review of the zero. It's a great product, and the
weight reduction is real. Just don't expect it to be as comfortable or as sturdy as the one.
Thanks for watching, and see you next time!
