You should have brought your gaming PC and snacks and planned a sleepover to really test it out.
What about those foam ridges they added to the spine area? Do those stick out and annoy you at all?
So the place I was at changed their mind on 30 day money back guarantee on the Embody. Not cool. So I came home with the Aeron, but am seriously considering ordering online the Logitech Embody since I could get it with a great sales price and it would have 30-day money back guarantee as well… and then I could compare the two in marathon gaming sessions and take back whichever one provided the least comfort. I’m sitting in the Aeron at home right now and am not sure about this thing. I think I have it configured all wrong.
I have to say I didn’t realize how screwed up my positioning and posture was in the my old chair. Not having adjustable arm-rests was so much worse for me than I knew.
And as I lean forward to type, the back of my shoulder blades bite back into my chair and rub & scrape. Owww. I wonder if I can get rid of that with adjustments?
I should note I’ve been saving money for a good and proper chair for 2.5 years, so getting stuck with the wrong chair is totally freaking me out after all that time. Hope you all don’t mind if I ask a lot of questions. This is so much money, and whatever I end up with will be the last chair I will ever purchase.
A proper desk/computer chair is something that you may potentially spend a lot of time in, possibly second most after your bed. It’s a purchase you’ll spend a good chunk of money on and live with for a lot of hours - so nothing wrong with asking a lot of questions.
The hard part is that everyone is different and chairs are such a personal decision that it can be hard for us to give advice back - what works for someone here may not work for you.
Congrats and welcome to the club Jeff also good luck
Thanks. This is kind of a dumb question for you @rei and anyone else with an Embody. Would it be defeating to use a thick blanket on it (back and seat) for more cushioning? or would that take away some of its ergonomics? That thing would have been so perfect if it had thicker padding.
These stick outside the back opposite where my back rides up against, on the outward facing part of the chair right? So they don’t affect me in any way
I wonder Jeff if you need to add a gel seat or something to get some extra cushion. It sounds like your body type doesn’t fall into what is typical so you may need extra cushion whether it is usually recommended in these chairs or not. Also, maybe it is extra important for you to get up and move around every hour just so you don’t have that extra pressure on your bones constantly.
I’m not skinny - 200 pounds and I find the seat on my Steelcase Gesture a bit too firm. I think it’s pretty common in these ergonomic chairs since the common belief is more padding may feel more comfortable over the short term, but is worse over the long term. But I love the back support - it just feels right, and the adjustability of the arms rests are really good.
Maybe too late, but it looks like the lumbar support in the X3 can be adjusted by moving the backrest up and down. Or was the lumbar suppport uncomfortable in a different way?
The Nightingale CXO 6200 has the softest seat cushion of all the chairs I tested by far. I didn’t like the headrest and one other thing I can’t remember :) if there is one in your area it might be worth it to check it out.
I have no issues with the ridges on the back of my Embody
It had 4 positions, and I tried them all, but none of them were comfortable.
The more @jpinard posts about not finding a comfortable chair, with lumbar, the more I think of this.
Funny thing. My old chair wouldn’t go down far enough for my feet to be flat on the ground. Now that this chair can do that I feel like a dwarf looking up from below at my monitor.
You definitely don’t want to do that. Watch the link at post 688 in this thread for a good set-up.
I have the opposite problem! I weigh more than 2 @rei !
Finding chairs that work for a big guy at 350 lbs (6’5") is tough. There are a lot of options that meet the weight (I want something that can do at least 350, if not 400 lbs, to be safe) and also work for my height. There are plenty of chairs that adjust to my height but not the weight limit I want.
The weight limit thing is easier to get around, because a lot of that rating has to do with the cylinder, which you can often get heavier-duty versions.
This is why I don’t think I will ever get a “gamer” chair, as they just don’t seem to have the weight limits like the main office chairs do. The regular Aerons and steelcase chairs do 350 lbs, and the Aeron has a “c” model which has increased height and seat depth.
Just so expensive!
I ended up buying another sealy big n tall leather chair for 200$. I could get 6 of these for the price of one aeron c! And my previous one of these lasted at least 6 years before breaking.
Hey, fellow big mans. Any of y’all found a protective floor mat that doesn’t crack when you scoot around on it on your chair.
I’ve gotten two of Amazon’s extra heavy-duty chair mats now, the 0.2" thick polycarbonate Floortex Ultimat copycats, and both cracked within a month or so of daily use. I’m a 325lb man in an 85lb chair, so, mats rated for 500lbs cracking almost immediately was a huge bummer for me, and has made me reluctant to buy the namebrand Floortex product of the same thickness/material (the Amazon Basics version is no longer being sold, so it’s possible they realized it was hot shit and gave up selling them). On the other hand, the fact that I seem to crack anything I rest on makes me terrified of buying one of the ultra-heavy-duty glass mats some people recommend, cuz if and when that breaks, it’s gonna be a nightmare.
A possible accelerator of the wear and tear on the Amazon Basics heavy duty mats is that I have a thin sheet of grippy rubber roll (the kinda stuff you line cabinets with) running underneath it to hold it in place, and the cracks both started on the plastic that sits over the rubber material. Maybe they provide a kind of flex and give that impedes the integrity of the mat, but frankly, I can’t see how they’re worse about that than the medium-pile carpet I have in the office that the mats were sliding around on without the grippy rubber.
What’s the advantage of a glass (or crackable) mat to put your chair on? I’m curious because I’ve always used carpet and soft rollers. I don’t really move around much aside from maybe rolling the chair a few inches to get up / sit down. Maybe you’re zooming around a larger area?
Mostly I slowly annihilate the carpet under my chair otherwise. I’m frequently at my home PC 10-12 hours a day when WFH.
I’m only 180 lbs, so not in the same weight class, but I think you may have answered your own question: it’s the quality of the brand that matters. Amazon Basics is a brand known for lower quality in order to undercut the prices of the name brands; if quality matters, it’s not a brand you go with, but it’s great for simple, cheap, throwaway purchases, in my experience.
I’ve bought the plastic mats for various carpet depths over the years, always from my local Staples, and have had some that cracked. My current one, which I’ve used on both a low pile carpet and on a floor (mainly to deaden the roller sound), hasn’t cracked even a bit in the last few years since I’ve had it. They were always a name brand, but I’m sorry that I can’t say what brand they were now as that was never something I looked into.
Just brainstorming a bit: if you find the medium-pile carpet to be a problem, have you considered layering the carpet under your desk area with a low pile rug before putting the mat down on it (the inexpensive solution)? It’ll raise up the level a bit but you may find the plastic mat will last longer since it won’t bend so much. Purchasing one of those more expensive high-quality name brand mats to coincide may help.