When you spend long hours sitting at a computer all day you absolutely have to make sure what you are sitting in is fit for purpose.

So the first thing you have to realize is that $50 won’t hack it, I call this approach Decimal Point Syndrome because in truth you need to move the decimal point one place to the right and be thinking about investing more like $500.

Sorry if that’s a bit of a shock, nonetheless it’s reality. After all, when you consider you will probably be spending as much if not more time in a desk chair than you do in your bed it starts to make sense.

Seriously, I’m sure you wouldn’t think about only spending $50 on a bed, unless you relish the thought of lying on a bag of springs stuffed with packing foam.

It’s no different with an office chair, it simply isn’t possible to get any level of quality for even a $100, at this price point every component in the chair will be cut back in quality to meet the price.

Why is it people keep buying these sub-standard products? I believe there are a number of reasons.

First, big name office product retailers are constantly promoting these types of chairs competing with each other to be the cheapest. And so without realizing it you become conditioned into thinking this is what you should be spending on a computer chair.

Second, these products often look good, frequently upholstered in leather which somehow seems to convince people it’s a quality product, when in fact it’s anything but.

Lastly, people don’t very often get the chance to see and try a quality office chair in the flesh unless you go to a specialist supplier and they aren’t exactly on every street corner. Consequently, you rarely get the chance to compare the good with the bad.

This is unfortunate as the difference in quality and comfort would soon become apparent.

A good quality chair needs to have certain critical features, I’ve distilled these down to 5 key essentials you must insist on when buying a new office chair. Here’s a quick summary of ergonomic chairs worth checking out.

Riva Office Chair

Although Via is probably best known for its unusual Swopper stool it also produces some excellent office chairs too.

Amongst these is the Riva ergonomic chair collection consisting of a range of well engineered sturdily built task seating.

With 3 different seat sizes and 2 well proportioned back options it will appeal to a wide spectrum of different users.

Anyone from a 5 foot tall woman up to a 6 foot plus man should be able to find an option to suit them providing comfortable and supportive seating when working long hours at a computer.

If like many office workers you find that chair arms sometimes get in the way then take a look at the swing arm option. It provides a quick and easy way to swing the arms down towards the back of the chair. This can be very useful when working up close at your workstation, or maybe doing simple stretches and exercises while sitting.

The chairs have comfortable high quality foam seat and back pads and there is also an option to fit a mesh back instead.

All in all the Riva collection offers a versatile range of quality task chairs that are keenly priced when compared with some of the more well known chair brands. The full review of the Riva can be found here.

You see what looks like a great deal. You sit in it, pull a few levers, feels comfortable—hey, it’s even got leather too.

Everything looks great and yet, is it a serious bargain or is it a serious liability?

If you have a worn-out chair, then anything you sit in is likely to feel like a million dollars by comparison. Not only that, virtually any new chair you sit in for a couple of minutes will feel great, and that’s not altogether surprising.

After all, everything is new so it naturally feels good, and that’s where everybody gets it wrong with cheap chairs — they flatter to deceive.

To truly know whether a computer chair is right for you or not, you need to sit in it for several days — not minutes, not hours, several days. Only then will all its shortcomings become apparent. This is why a 30-day return policy is a must when buying either in person or online.

How do these shortcomings suddenly become apparent once you use it for a day or two? It’s down to what’s under the hood. Sure, on the exterior, the thing look great; yet what’s it really made of?

Any chair around the $100 mark will always be a compromise because it is made to fit a price, so corners get cut to achieve this.

Here are some of the things which aren’t immediately obvious about low cost chairs:

• Made with cheap foam pads normally seen in packaging which soon lose shape and go as flat as a pancake.
• Low cost upholstery which quickly takes a shine like a well-polished shoe. Or leather that likely came from remnants or rejects that ages prematurely becoming brittle and starting to crack.
• Low quality components — arms that break off, backs that won’t recline or stay in place, gas lifts that keep descending.
• Limited or no guarantee — a sure sign the supplier sees the product as little more than a liability.

So hopefully you now see why buying a cheap chair is the wrong approach. In the next post I will explain the reasons why quality office chairs cost a lot more.

Why is this? A lot of it has to do with the cost of tooling to make new components. It just costs a lot of money to create a new chair from the ground up.

It’s far easier to take what already exists and just tweak its appearance a little, rather like an automobile design where cars get facelifts every couple of years to prolong the life of a model.

Exactly the same thing happens with chairs. The basic guts of the thing, the bits you don’t see, stay the same. However, by reshaping the seat and back and maybe changing the base design, it’s possible to make the old appear new.

Fortunately, some companies are prepared to start with a blank sheet of paper and to do something radically different. Not surprising these tend to be the bigger players in the market who have the necessary resources and have a genuine desire to produce a substantially different and innovative chair.

Typically these manufacturers will do extensive market research into what problems users face and then go about creating a solution.

One of the big trends in recent years has been the launch of much simpler chairs, where the user just adjusts the height and maybe a couple of other things.

The chair has an inbuilt ability to anticipate what the user is doing by sensing their body movements as it self-adjusts and supports the user comfortably during the working day.

This is largely a good thing, as the majority of people don’t want to fiddle with loads of levers and buttons. Examples of these types of chairs include the HÅG Futu, Knoll’s Generation, and HumanScale’s Freedom and Liberty chairs.

Other manufacturers like Herman Miller and Steelcase prefer to create new models based on new technology and yet still let the user have lots of control over the settings.

Modern products like the Embody from Herman Miller, and the Think and Leap from Steelcase allow more user adjustment.

The one big downside with all of these new innovations comes down to cost. All that expensive design and tooling has to be paid for and as a result, chairs like these tend to start around the $500 mark.

This is why old, outdated seat design continues to be commonplace. Most of the components used in old-style seating can simply be bought off the shelf from component manufacturers who are geared up to turn out the various mechanisms and parts cheaply and quickly.

This results in a gulf in prices between old style models and newer ground breaking chairs, and once you try out one of these new breed of chairs and discover how superior they are, you will truly understand why they leave the same-old, same-old in the dust.

Generally speaking, people between 5’ 6” and 6’ 0”tall and weighing up to 250 pounds are deemed to be average build.

From the manufacturers’ point of view, this is the bulk of the market, so it makes sense for them to focus on this low hanging fruit. That’s all very well. What should you do if you don’t fit this closely defined size range?

Fortunately, a number of office chair manufacturers produce specific seating aimed at catering for you. Whilst this helps there is a problem, not all of these so-called “big and tall” chairs are a good choice, and one particular category needs to be completely avoided.

If you’ve spent any time looking at different models, you will probably have seen quite a number of chairs looking rather like armchairs on wheels. They are often offered in leather and look big, imposing and super comfortable, yet this sort of chair is the very one you need to avoid.

The reason for this is the lack of flexibility due to the way these chairs are constructed. The technical term for this kind of chair is a one-piece shell chair.

What this means is that the chair and seat back are all made as one piece, so they don’t move independently of each other. This is not good.

When you spend long hours in a desk chair each day, you need to be able to vary the angle between your back and legs throughout the day, as variation and movement keeps your body healthy.

Even when this sort of chair reclines the angle between you back and legs remains fixed and so you end up sitting in the same fixed position all day, leaving your muscles tired and stiff. So it’s best to avoid these armchairs-on-wheels models.

A better idea is to look at specialist manufacturers who really understand what you need and offer a comprehensive range of solutions. Probably two of the best to consider are BodyBilt and Neutral Posture. Both are excellent products for the big-and-tall user. And if you prefer not to have to make lots of adjustments it’s worth taking a look at Humanscale’s Freedom chair which largely self adjusts and looks great too.

It points out how humans aren’t designed to sit for hours on end. It’s only relatively recently we have all started to spend so much time sitting and this is all starting to have some nasty side effects.

From a health perspective excessive sitting encourages conditions like hypertension, obesity and high blood pressure, which is not good.

There are additional problems because all your upper body weight is concentrated on the pelvis and spine. However when we are standing and moving our weight is distributed more evenly via our legs, knees and feet.

And as if that wasn’t enough to worry about it suggests exercise won’t help much either, although I still believe doing regular exercise and stretching has to be a lot better than sitting welded in the same position all day.

One of the best forms of exercise after a busy day in the office is swimming because it allows a huge range of natural exercise for the whole body to take place in a natural supportive way.

The article concludes the best idea for sitting is to perch or sit in a semi-standing position using a height adjustable desk. Sit stand desks have long been popular in Europe and are now beginning to make inroads in the US too.

There are 2 excellent office seats which work well with this way of sitting.

First is the Capisco chair from HÅG, this seat looks kind of odd and yet it is a joy to sit in with its saddle style seat helping to encourage a healthier way of sitting.
Second is the Swopper stool which is also unconventional and has a spring loaded seat helping users to sit and move more actively.

Further Reading
The Businessweek article Your Office Chair Is Killing You
Review of the HÅG Capisco chair
Review of the Swopper stool

seat depth adjustment is vital

If you pick 10 people at random and measure their leg length as well as taking measurements from knee to heel and knee to waist it would be unlikely you will get 2 identical sets of dimensions.

Why is this important? Well, you would hardly expect them to all wear the same length of clothing, even if you allowed for different waist sizes. And yet the vast majority of office chairs make no allowance for this variation because the seat depth can’t be altered.

This is all well and good if you fit the size the chair manufacturer aimed the chair at. What is the average, does anyone know? 5ft 6ins 5ft 9ins who knows? I’ve yet to see an office chair which states the leg length it is supposed to fit, this is far from ideal.

Here’s how a chair can affect different users when it is not suitable for their leg length.

People who have short legs and particularly in their upper legs will find they have to perch on the edge of the chair. This is because they can’t sit back in the chair and bend their knees properly or place their feet squarely on the floor.

This often leads to back pain as their back is completely unsupported and sitting often becomes uncomfortable too.

At the other end of the height scale big and tall users often have the opposite problem. They have to sit right back in the chair and yet their legs still overshoot the edge of the chair by far too much.

This puts pressure on the underside of the thighs and also their back and some will have to compensate by setting their chair too high just to get their feet on the floor at a reasonable angle.

So it’s always best to insist on selecting a chair with leg depth adjustment. The commonest form of adjustment is a sliding seat, although some chairs allow the user to move the back in and out and this is OK too.

Here are a couple of articles you can check out. The first explains how to adjust your office chair for your own needs and the second looks at further aspects of seat depth adjustment.

And yet all too few realize why they should look beyond just dropping in and buying a new chair on their way home, especially when the one they have is so uncomfortable.

Why is this?

Price conditioning. I think one of the main reasons is we have unwittingly allowed ourselves to become conditioned by price. Likely the only time we see a task chair for sale is when shopping for stationery and stuff at the local office supplies warehouse.

There are always plenty of offers on chairs, usually sub $100 and so this sets the idea in our mind of what price they are.

Next is a lack of product awareness, nothing wrong with that we can’t all be experts in everything. So we see these glitzy chairs with their levers, shiny metal bases and often leather upholstery.

We start thinking these look great and this is just what the seller wants you to think. The only problem is they are rarely great, it’s nearly always a case of beauty being skin deep.

Price resistance. When people do come across a quality ergonomic office chair, one look at the price and the reaction is who in their right mind would pay this for an office seat?

After all it’s only for sitting on, true of course and yet if you stop to think about how long you do actually sit in your chair each day what do you get, 6, 8, 10 hours a day?

Ask yourself, would you be happy with a bed which only cost $70? Chances are if you work long hours at your computer workstation you may well spend more time in your chair than your bed. Does that start to make it important to get a proper chair? I think so.

Never tried one. Another reason for rejecting a quality office chair is most who do so have probably never sat in one and therefore aren’t in a position to make such a judgement. And I’m not talking about a quick couple of minutes in an office showroom.

It’s only by spending several hours or days that you will truly appreciate the difference between a quality seat and a budget one. It’s chalk and cheese.

Here’s a useful article on the 5 essential office chair functions you must insist on next time you buy a new chair, if you want to achieve true comfort.

Summary

• You need to get beyond price alone, quality first then the cost
• Looks isn’t a good guide to quality, don’t be fooled by surface gloss
• If you work long hours at your desk a quality chair is vital
• You may well be amazed how much better you feel in a quality office chair

So if this is you, chances are you are already spending six to eight hours each working day sitting in discomfort with inadequate support, which is not good. Now maybe when you get home, you spend a few more hours at the computer surfing online or working at an online business to escape working for the man.

Well, after the pounding your body has taken at work all day, the last thing it needs is to be given more of the same when you get home. So if you’re sitting in a dining chair or on a breakfast stool or in a cheap office chair, you really ought to think about giving your body a break.

By treating yourself to a new quality office chair, you will find it a pleasure to sit in after that back-breaker at work, and it may even motivate you to work harder on that online business too so you can sit in it even more. Here is a quick summary of some ergonomic office chairs worth considering.

You visit a site selling office chairs and you are presented with a scrolling page filled with 100 different chair images and they are all shouting “Buy Me! Buy Me!” and when you get to the bottom of the page it says page 1 of 4 meaning there are 400 to choose from, just how are you supposed to make an informed choice?

Maybe you decide to try Twitter for help, surely there must be someone there who can advise you? Well yes and no, these days there are a ton of spammy tweets from suppliers carpet bombing the same message nearly every time,  hardly fills you with confidence does it?

Add to that the shed load of fake reviews through multiple Twitter accounts sure the headlines sound good – “Why You Need An Ergonomic Office Chair” so you click in hope and what do you find? Well after you wade through the AdSense ads you get to a review where the English seems like it was translated from the original Portuguese by someone whose first language clearly isn’t English and so you end up baling out after the first paragraph.

What about an auction site like eBay, although there are undoubtedly bargains to be had it also is not without its problems. First there is the logistics of getting the chair from one side of the country to the other in one piece should you win it.

Second you can’t be sure of the condition it is in, often the image on the auction is from the manufacturer’s website and even when it is a shot of the actual item photos tend to make things look better than they are in real life, it may be immaculate or it may have 200,000 miles on the clock you won’t truly know until it’s on your doorstep.

One of the most abused words these days is “Ergonomic” especially when used to describe an office chair and the reason is there is no clear definition of what it means, it’s little more than a concept a convenient term for implied quality. It is frequently used by suppliers to enhance often poor quality seating, making it more difficult for genuine products to be heard. Here’s my take on what makes an office chair ergonomic.

So what should you do to find the right chair for you?

I believe there are 5 key features you have to have on an office chair if you insist on these it will narrow the choice down considerably.

Unless you’re an occasional user $100 chairs aren’t the answer, at this price there are just too many components which will be a compromise on quality to keep the cost down, you need to be starting around the $350 level and even then you may not get all the features you need.

Sites like Amazon.com and the better online seating stores have user reviews and this is a great way to gauge an idea of how good something is, however remember office seating is a very personal choice so what may be great for someone else may not work as well for you. For this reason it’s best to choose a site with a rock solid 30 day return policy, this way you get a good opportunity to really test it out to see if it’s right for you.

Lastly, you could always take a look at my office chair reviews section which has a quick summary with links to the full reviews of some of the better quality chairs available.