I think the thread we had on this was back on the AO.
I have a ~$20 “garage sale” office chair, and, although it does its job, I would be open to getting one that “offers good support [and is] urkelnomically correct.”
As for price range, I expect it to be in the hundreds of dollars, of course…probably less than $500.
I can’t imagine buying a chair without sitting on it first. I recall some of the considerations on the AO were of the “mail order” variety. Feel free to try to change my mind on that.
fwiw, I loathe leather. Give me a nice fabric.
I live in the DFW area, so NFM is an option along with the usual big box stores.
Herman Miller is out at $500 unless you get a used one. There are tons of those available, many people buy them, fix them up and clean them, and resell them.
I have a HON Endorse chair that I absolutely love, they are around $400. Good amount of adjustments, padding is firm but not hard. I’ve used it for WFH full time for two years and it looks and feels brand new still.
I got the chair from a man who furnishes office buildings for a living. He sells odds and ends out of his warehouse for cheap. I paid $125 for the chair, brand new. So it might be worth calling a few folks to see if you can find a chair guy like that.
got this one, in coal (black). skip the lumbar support as it’s unnecessary. it’s $849 in coal. more for that beach color, and way more if you want to go through the non-store option and customize it to your liking. i’m a fan of it.
oh for haworth, they have a showroom in manhattan. I went during covid times when you had to make an appointment to go. Sat on the chairs and then when I decided what I wanted, I ordered it online, as the showroom does not sell chairs.
before buying the haworth fern, I had an aeron briefly. didn’t have to make an appointment there, just showed up at that store. I had really bad joint issues at the time, so the chair seemed uncomfortable to me. It might have actually been me that was the problem though, not the chair. I wound up returning it for the haworth fern that i’m pretty happy with. also got my joint issues under control. a new aeron is pretty darn expensive though, so from a price perspective, i’m glad i returned it for the fern. the aeron has way nicer and more comfortable arm rests than the fern and i fully expect my fern arm rests to break apart as haworth has issues with that, but i think you can replace them.
I also went to the steelcase showroom and sat on those chairs. for those, you can get them in any color at a reasonable price, unlike haworth. but i was more committed to haworth because i have a haworth chair in my office and like it. steelcase leap seemed solid too though and you can get it in any color you can imagine. also, if you buy it from the store rather than online, they give you a better price AND have more colors. but i don’t know where you live and if there is a steelcase showroom there to get said deals.
my mother and sister think i’m crazy with this whole spending a lot of money on an office chair. pretty sure they both went to staples and got a cheap chair for their home set-ups.
Almost a year ago, after getting tired of going through generic chairs acquired at Staples every 12-18 months, and perhaps because of getting sick of my office space at home while quarantined in it for 3 weeks, I acquired a Secretlabs Titan chair.
It’s a “gaming chair” rather than an “office chair”, but within the gaming community Secretlabs has been at the top of the “best chairs” lists for a while.
I was leery of buying chairs online, burned by the experience of buying an expensive office chair that folks raved about, but which I found miserably uncomfortable. However, Secretlabs posts detailed specs/measurements of their chairs, which gave me some confidence that it would at least “fit” given how I like to sit. (I move around, slouching to one side or the other. I like to sit cross-legged sometimes. Etc.)
The chair is firmer than I expected when I ordered it, and a little warm. But those factors aside…I love my chair.
Their chair color schemes are oriented towards computer gamers, but did get a nice fabric design in grey and black that I’m not uncomfortable displaying during meetings on Teams.
I think I had considered a gaming chair, and specifically the Secretlabs Titan chair, but iirc, the issue with it for me was, it’s meant for a taller person. I think that was an issue with most or all gaming chairs, so they aren’t ideal for an average height female. If you’re taller than an average height female though, they might be good.
I’m at my parents house at the moment, and sitting in my mother’s cheap staples chair, and it too, is meant for a taller person. My mother is tall.
I went and sat in every single office chair in Staples and Office Depot, as the top reviewed Internet chairs aren’t always the ones I feel are comfortable. Ended up buying the Shaq brand chair from Office Depot and I like it a lot
Just realized you said no leather. These are leather.
neither the haworth fern nor the steelcase leap, both of which are good to me are leather! they are more than $500 though.
also, both haworth and steelcase have chairs for under $500, but I didn’t find those lines as comfortable as the ones I liked upon sitting on them in the store.
ooooh, i just noticed that haworth has more colors under the cheaper store option than they had when i bought it. Still not every color you can think of and more for the seat than the back. I still probably would have gone with all black (coal).
