Sportaseat revisited

[Andy1237]

I finally decided it was time to buy one or two of those fold flat seats. West Marine has their next to the latest design on sale for half price (probably because they have a new highback version out now). Previous forum post here have bragged on how much better the genuine Sportaseat (as sold on this site) is over the "knockoffs". But I saw no post since 2007.
I love high quality stuff but I also have a limited cruising budget.
Are the genuine seats THAT much better? 2x? Has West Marine improved theirs at all.:neutral:

 

[syoun10]

if you mean the West Marine Go anywhere 2 seat, we have them and find them very comfortable. They're $49.99.

 

[noprob2]

10 years of use

I have the sporta-seats ( four of them)(ordered at boatshow) for ten years. They work as well as the day I bought them. A little fabric wear at the hinge location but if you use one of those blue press-on patches on the inside of the cover it is invisible and this problem goes away. For the younger members, these navy patches were often used buy Moms to press on "blue jeans" when we were kids a wore a hole in the knee.
A product that performs well that long might be worth a few extra bucks.

 

[zeehag]

i was gifted 4 of those by a sd neighbor a few years ago--they lasted fine until i got to tropix--now i will re-cover them...LOL so they will last longer....

 

[Gail R]

The knock-offs are POSs. The foam is of poor quality and the ratcheting mechanism will fail on them in no time. We went through a couple sets of them before wising up and getting the real Sport-a-Seats. Yes the Sport-a-Seats are more expensive up front, but you don't have to keep replacing them like we did the WM knock offs every time they broke.

 

[Scott T-Bird]

I think it depends on how often they are used. We bought the WM knock-off and it has been fine for at least 6 or 7 years ... but we don't use it very often (it looks like new, still, and it is comfortable). We don't find it to be very convenient to use so it stays stowed most of the time. I wouldn't buy a more expensive one just because we don't find it very useful, even though I'm glad we have it.