The Millennium boat seats I’m reviewing in this article were bought and paid for with my own meager money. Just over a year ago, I purchased two Millennium B-100 Boat Seats in tan to install in my little Jon boat. My wife and I are lucky enough to live on the Mobile-Tensaw Delta and enjoy fishing for panfish, but after almost a decade of enduring cheap seats, my wife had enough. If we were going to keep leaving after breakfast and coming home for dinner, spending the day on the water, I was informed that new seats were happening. As much as I didn’t want to spend the money initially, she did have a point. We’d put off sinking money into “good” seats for years and had learned some important lessons.
First of all, cheap, low-backed, plastic boat seats suck. The $29.99 Wal-Mart specials are actually, in my opinion, worse on your back than just sitting on the bench seats with a life jacket as a little cushion. Cheap seats also inevitably crack. If you’re lucky, they crack while your buddy is leaning back in them polishing off a cold drink, because that’s kinda funny. My buddy is a lucky guy.
High-backed, vinyl “bass boat seats” are more comfortable, but spendy. Early in the morning, it’s kinda nice riding around swallowed up in one of those seats; legs crossed and coffee in hand. But once the sun’s been up for a few hours, it’s a whole ‘nuther ball game. Vinyl gets hotter than Georgia asphalt in the summer, and not much ventilation gets through a layer of that stuff and several inches of foam. Just thinking about sitting in a vinyl seat makes me want to change shirts.
With all of that in mind, and with my previous positive experience with Millennium’s mesh tree stand seats during bow season, I decided to just pony up the money for Millennium seats. I do most of my fishing seated, and I figured that whether I caught fish or not on any given day, I’d be slowly getting my money’s worth on every outing.
Testing Process And Criteria
My wife and I fish whenever we’re able, which is more than most people thanks to my line of work and our close proximity to good crappie waters. An interesting viewpoint my wife brings to the table is that of a woman who went fishing while pretty heavily pregnant. This is a long way from an “unboxing” review of Millennium seats. We’ve spent a lot of hours fishing out of our seats over the past year.
Once I had the seats installed and we commenced fishing for them, I was looking for just three things. Comfort, durability, and value. Obviously, you want a boat seat to be comfortable. If you want numb legs, an aching back, and swamp butt, you can get that without spending a dime. Durability is also important. Spending hundreds on a boat seat becomes a pretty significant cost if you have to replace them every year. As far as evaluating value, the question isn’t “How much did this cost?” but “How much does this cost to own over time, compared to the competition?” A $20 pocket knife that breaks after 5 years of carry is a bad value compared to a $50 knife that you hand off to a grandkid after decades of daily use, for example.
The Verdict
With all that in mind, here are mine and my wife’s thoughts on our M-100s.
Boat Seat Comfort
Both of us agree that the seats are extremely comfortable. The seat design is pretty simple, but I suspect a lot of prototypes were tested to get the curves on the frame just right. The mesh breathes wonderfully on hot days, and unlike vinyl you can sit down on the seat on a sunny day without feeling like you need to spray cooking oil on the back of your thighs to keep them from sticking to it. Any water that you get on the seat drains right through it, and a quick wipe with a towel gets them immediately dry. Vinyl, in my experience, eventually cracks and lets moisture into the foam, which then soaks your butt.
I initially wondered whether the side straps that support the back rest would get in the way of fishing or otherwise be inconvenient. To date, I don’t have any complaints. Millennium does sell some shorter cables that can be used to replace the straps, which may be something to look into if you’re a big guy. These seats are rated up to 400 lbs, and I imagine at that point a person would be big enough that the side straps would squeeze you.
Most importantly, my wife was able to fish pretty much all weekend comfortably in the seats, even when she was sharing room with my daughter. I’ve also taken several friends fishing and had one guy in the boat who has some snazzy titanium hardware in his vertebrae from a car crash. To date, he’s never mentioned the seats upsetting his back.
Are Millennium Boat Seats Durable?
So far, yes. My seats haven’t been exposed to much saltwater spray, and I do try to store them inside when the boat’s not in use, but they show very little signs of wear. The mesh material hasn’t sagged, which was one of my initial concerns. After a year, the support straps look new, the logo hasn’t faded, the powder coating isn’t scratched, and the seat doesn’t squeak or pop when folded or when weighted. The only difference between a new seat and the seats we’ve been using for a year is a little light corrosion on some bolt threads, and some light stains from worm dirt, fish slime, and spilled drinks. Cleaning has mostly consisted of spraying the whole boat down with a hose once in a while though, and I imagine somebody willing to take better care of the seats could make normal stains come clean easily with some Tuff Stuf.
It’s hard to take a guess at how long these seats will last, but given how long I’ve seen Millennium tree stand seats last left in a tree all year, for year after year, I’d guess that I’ll have these seats for as long as I have the boat. Millennium does offer replacement mesh for the seat frames, so even in the event of a filet knife mishap I’ll be able to keep using the seat.
Are Millennium Boat Seats Worth It?
That’s ultimately the $132.99 question. I did mention at the start of this article that I paid for these seats out-of-pocket, but while that hopefully puts the fear of a biased, paid review out of peoples’ minds, there’s another bias to beware of when reading reviews. People who have spent money on something are often reluctant to admit that they wasted their money, and will gloss over issues to protect themselves from buyer’s remorse.
With that in mind, I let my wife answer the, “Were they worth it?” question. Anybody who is married knows that spouses have no qualms about letting you know what they think about the money you wasted.
“I think they’re probably the best money you’ve spent on the boat,” she said when questioned for this article. “The seats we had before were junk. They hurt my back, and I really didn’t like fishing all day in them. We fish more since we bought those seats, and it’s more enjoyable if we just want to go out and cruise for a couple of hours after work.”
Final Thoughts
It’s rare that I write 100% positive reviews, but I honestly can’t think of a downside to my seats. I do, however, have one small recommended improvement if anybody from Millennium is listening. There are several companies that make after-market cup holder and tackle tray accessories for these seats, but they’re all cheap plastic. I’d pay good money for a well made tackle tray that had a cup holder, plier slot, and a tray to keep a couple of jigs or pieces of split shot handy. It’d also be slick if Millennium added a snap-fastened envelope on the back of the seat that could be used to stash a tackle box.
Offer that, and you’re making a good boat seat perfect.
