The Best Camping Chair for Big Dudes

When I started this blog I didn’t expect to spend the time to write a review about a camping chair, but here it is.

I’m a large person (6’4″, 245 pounds). So, I’ve kinda gotten used to things just not fitting me. Heck I can’t even ride in some cars without battering my knees on the dashboard. So, in my mind, tiny camp chairs were just one of those things that I would have to deal with.

Generally, I would sit for a few minutes, then stand up for a while so the bars across the sides of the seats of those umbrella chairs wouldn’t create indentations along the sides of my legs and make my feet go numb. I was willing to put up with it so that I could at least have a chair that was easy to haul around.

I always bought those cheap ten or twenty dollar ones from places like Walmart or Academy. But, my wife decided, prior to our RV boondocking trip to New Mexico, that better camping chairs would be a good buy since we would be spending a lot of time hanging around our campsite.

Thank god she did, because our three or four day trip turned into an entire week, and being iced in, we ended up spending most of our time around the campfire trying to keep warm. I would have been pretty grouchy if I had to spend all that time sitting in one of those cheap canvas chairs.

She ordered us a couple of the Kelty Deluxe Lounge Chairs from Amazon. They’re not cheap (they’re also not the most expensive), but they were worth every penny, just for that trip alone.  They’re definitely the best camping chairs that I’ve ever tried out.

These chairs have huge seats that even swallowed me up and the heavy construction didn’t make me feel like they were going to collapse underneath me like our cheap ones do.

They also recline to three separate positions, so that you can lean back and relax. At first, the upright position didn’t quite feel upright enough for me, but after sitting in it a while, I realized it was actually very comfortable. Camp chairs are for hanging out and relaxing, not sitting at a desk and working on spreadsheets.

This chair isn’t for you if you’re looking for something ultra-light for backpacking. We keep these stowed in the basement or our RV for boondocking trips or, toss them in the back of the Jeep for car camping trips.

We only bought two though, so if you’re going to go camping with us, you better bring your own, or you’re going to end up having to sit on our old crappy ones that are collecting dust in our RV basement.

The last we looked, they had 4.8 out of 5 stars on Amazon. I give them five stars, they’re definitely the best camping chair that I’ve come across.