Chair Reviews

What a review on this site is, and is not

Every review here is built on the manufacturer's own published figures, with a link to where each number came from. We have not sat in these chairs for six weeks. We do not run a testing lab. We will not pretend otherwise, and the reason is simple: the moment a site invents a first-hand testing claim, every other number on it becomes unverifiable too.

What that leaves is still useful, and arguably more so. Published specifications are checkable, they are comparable between chairs, and they are what actually determines whether a chair fits your body. A reviewer's opinion of how a seat feels tells you about their build rather than yours; a published 15.75-inch seat pan tells you something you can act on.

So each review does four things. It states which published figures exist and which do not - and several budget brands publish overall chair height and no seat height at all, which we flag rather than paper over. It maps those figures onto body dimensions using the same seat height and seat depth tables we use everywhere. It names where the chair is weak. And it names who should not buy it, which is the section most reviews leave out and the one that saves the most money.

How to read a chair review, including ours

1. Check what is published, and what is missing

A brand that publishes seat height, functional seat depth, back height and armrest ranges is telling you it expects the chair to be evaluated on fit. A brand that publishes overall chair height and a weight capacity is telling you something else. In our registry, Steelcase and Herman Miller do the first; Sihoo and Hbada do the second.

An absent figure is information, and we leave the gap visible rather than filling it with an estimate.

2. Ignore feel, check fit

"Comfortable" in a review means comfortable for the reviewer's body. The two numbers that decide whether a chair works for you are its minimum seat height against roughly a quarter of your standing height, and its seat pan depth against your thigh length. Those are objective and you can check them before ordering.

3. Read the weaknesses section first

A review with no weaknesses section is an advertisement. Every review here names where the chair is weak and who should not buy it - and in several cases the answer is a large group of people. The Branch Ergonomic Chair is a well-specified chair that is wrong for anyone under about 5 ft 5 in. That is more useful to know than anything about how it feels.

4. Check the warranty terms

Years alone mean little. "12 years, multi-shift" and "3 years" are different engineering targets, and an itemized warranty naming which parts get which cover is more informative than either.