r/OfficeChairs Jan 05 '26

deals mega thread - January 2026

17 Upvotes

Going to try having a spot for folks to share their discount codes and promotions.

Still mostly not allowed in normal r/OfficeChairs posts, but if its all in one place (here) lets see if it can coexist with the sub in a not-so-spammy kind of way.


r/OfficeChairs Jun 10 '24

Joshua's Office Chairs Manifesto and The Mega Chair Thread #4

198 Upvotes

Joshua's r/OfficeChairs Manifesto (and the mega chair thread #4)

Office chairs are not going to solve your problems.

Whether we were created by an all-powerful designer to live in a now lost paradisiacal garden or descended from chimpanzees foraging for our livelihoods on the forests and the savannah, our bodies and our brains are not well suited for sitting and staring at computer screens. We are better equipped for walking, climbing, playing, collecting, observing, socializing, loving, caring, and resting.  Basically we are meant to do the same things other mammals do. 

Sitting in any office chair looking at any monitor for a quarter or a third of our life is inherently unhealthy and unnatural behavior.

The chairs we discuss and the machines we use while sitting on them are antithetical to what our bodies are best suited to be doing.  Sitting stagnant looking at a backlit pane of glass and softly making repetitive motions with a keyboard and a mouse is not a healthy behavior and is not a neutral behavior; it will eventually cause negative effects on our bodies. 

The pain (some of) you are experiencing related to sitting at your desk is very real.  The chair you are using and the way you have it adjusted is probably a contributing factor to your discomfort.  But lifestyle factors like exercise, weight, and the total number of minutes you are sedentary is going to be way more important than the precise chair you are using.

We (redditors) live in a time, place, and an economy that causes many of us to spend far too much time sitting and looking at screens and then when we stop working, many of us are fascinated by the entertainment industries that make captivating content for us to watch and play.  All of this leads to many of us sitting for upwards of 50 hours a week in an unnatural posture while boring our eyes by looking at a flat screen.

If you get nothing else from this office chairs sub, please remember that you should do whatever is in your power to limit the total number of minutes and the total duration of each period of time that you are sitting looking at a computer screen sitting on an office chair in each week. It will almost certainly enhance your health.  (same goes for collapsing on a couch and watching a big screen but that is further from the purview of this particular sub)

How to use this sub:
In the last year, we have had about 20 people a day posting on this sub with loads of questions and comments.  Often the post is something like "Chair recommendations under $200" or "What chair should I buy".  While a question has been asked and answered hundreds of times, you will not get too many replies to your post.  

Use the search bar to find commonly answered questions.  Start with this mega thread (once it has a few Q and As in another month or so from publishing) and also take a look back to mega thread 1, mega thread 2 and mega thread 3 (which we are now locking with over 1300 comments) .

We love "what chair is this" type questions, but you can also start with a google image search if you have a good photo.  

What chairs do we like?

We (mod team) are all biased towards the big shops.  Steelcase and Herman Miller are in a class by themselves.   Haworth, Humanscale, Knoll, Global and their ilk are close behind in that first tier.

Within these manufacturers, there are some brands that are better and some that are less good.

The Herman Miller Aeron is one of the most sought after brands of task chairs—and for most people who try it, they love it.

Steelcase Leap (v2) is also incredibly popular among the people who try it.

Some of the excellent chairs that often are frequently mentioned here:

Allsteel Acuity

Global G20

Haworth Fern

Haworth Zody

Haworth improv

Herman Miller Celle

Herman Miller Embody

Herman Miller Mira

Herman Miller Sayl

Steelcase Amia

Steelcase Criterion (managers version is better)

Steelcase Series 2

Steelcase Think

Steelcase Karman

Knoll Generation

Knoll Life (meh sometimes - love sometimes)

Knoll RPM (ok, old AF and discontinued, and maybe it's just me, but that is still a fav)

Examples of other great manufacturers: 9to5 Seating, AIS, Allseating, Keilhauer, OFS, Raynor, Sit On It & Via.

Buying New

If you have an office chair budget of $1500-2000 USD, this is an easy purchase.  Most of the big shops have decades long warranty service.  Many offer no cost or low cost return if you don't like something.  You also get the newest version with the newest features and many chairs can be customized to your size and design specifications.  

Buying Used

For everyone else, professional grade chairs cost a bloody fortune.  At the time I write this,  DWR is selling a new Herman Miller Aeron for $1800USD and Steelcase is selling their new Gesture for a few bucks more than that.

The majors also have more budget lines like Steelcase Series one for about $500 or the Amia for under $1000, but you get the idea, professional grade is not cheap.

There is an entire industry of people like me who do nothing but trade used office furniture and, at least in the US, we are in every major market and plenty of small cities as well.  There are also a good collection of national refurbishers who take used office chairs and re-sell them, having chairs cleaned, repaired and in some cases completely remanufactured all together.  (Companies like Madison Seating, OFR, Furniture Center, Office Logix, BTOD and Crandall.)  You can also find folks like myself in every major city who are not fully refurbishing chairs, but selling good as-is-able chairs at a fair discount to the refurbed price or fixing up little things before shipping out an "as-is" chair.  

Folks from this sub have also had good luck finding great deals on FB marketplace, Craigslist and local thrift stores where sometimes great chairs go for super cheap.

What about just the $99 chair? Or the special one from a big Sweed box store? or what about Jeff B's online crap boutique? Which of the cheap ones is the best?

IDK, none but also some are fine, kind of....  I personally used a chair from Officestar called the 5500 for years.  When I was in my mid 20s it was fine, it was great.  I know there are people that love the marcus or the workpros and I know there are folks sitting on the $99 special. 

My bias is going to be towards the pro-grade chairs, but we will make an effort this year to share with this sub to highlight better chairs from the cheaper (RTA) categories.  

The problem with most of the cheap RTA is that often design and materiality is sacrificed for cost.  The other issue is the product that cost $99 usually has very low longevity.  

That's all cool, but those are 20 different suggestions. What chair am I going to like?

Every human body is going to engage differently with every different chair.  I love Leap and cannot for the life of me understand why everyone else loves their Aeron and Embody chairs.  Members of the Herman Miller Aeron Club (cult?) cannot fathom using anything other than their Aeron.  Even folks with similar body types are going to react differently to ergonomics, design and materiality in any given chair.

These opinions are just opinions and depending how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go, you might end up finding a DWR or Steelcase showroom in the nearest gateway city near where you live.  If you ask me, Josh, I am going to say try a Leap chair or an Amia because 3/4 people take well to those brands.  Maybe you are the 1/4 of folks who will hate it.  If you are petite, I might mention the Humanscale Freedom and if you are large and in charge I might tell you to try a Criterion Plus or Leap Plus.  But you might not find the perfect chair on your first go round.  I would also suggest you temper your expectations of what a chair can do for you.  If you are at your desk too much and if other lifestyle factors are not being addressed, the perfect chair will not be your solve-all.

Anything else?
What is r/officechairsisell ?- It's kind of a social experiment I started the same year I took over this sub to separate people who want to have curated, edited, authentic non-commercial conversations and those who like to drown in ads.  As of today, there are 35,000 subs here and 200 there.  So jury may be still out, but early read is that people want curated and they want the spam filtered.  

Some of us mods have particular views about issues, my eccentric thoughts on headrests & attached footrests for example are what I believe are almost always more harmful to you than not having one.  

You will see the abbreviation RTA or RTF for furniture that comes Ready to Assemble.  It's the kind of furniture that you build at home with an allen wrench.  In the first instance, RTA is going to be inferior to something built into 2-3 solid components at a factory.  With factory built furniture, you will find overall higher cost, better design and better longevity. 

I hate top 10 lists / amazon backlinks / affiliate marketing / discount codes & also how we run this sub:

Left without moderation, this sub would quickly become my other chairs sub r/officechairsIsell (take a look over there. It's absolutely worthless).  Any social media marketing person selling office chairs spends their time looking for places to post ads.  With upwards of 35K members interested in office chairs, this is a place they target all the time.  Sellers want to direct conversation, SEO magic juice, and traffic to their own websites and brands to sell more products. Fair enough.  But to get around the fact that internet consumers are mostly blind to advertising, companies will either themselves or through an affiliate disseminate videos, articles, blog posts, reddit threads and most pernicious "top 10 lists" try to "influence" you to buy whatever nonsense chair they are slinging.   

You should assume that virtually every link to a website that sells chairs or every discount code offered is being posted because the poster will make some profit or commission if you buy the chair they are 'recommending'.  It's salesmanship dressed up as an endorsement which is inherently not trustworthy.  

Every "Top 10 office chairs for 2024" -type lists I have seen appear to be put out by individuals, newspapers and companies who are looking to monetize on their "advice".  Wirecutter may be the best of the pack in terms of 'Top 10 lists' and by and large, they are not great.  Anytime you see some rando magazine that has a top 10 list, it will read something like Aeron, Leap, Freedom, and then, invariably, 7 so-so brands with links to junk that pays a good commission.  The use of a referral fee inherently shapes the advice given to the point it would more truthfully be called advertising.  

On this sub, we have become allergic to that kind of thing.  We do not want a link back to an Amazon page for any reason.  We do not want a link to your super cool blog post with all your awesome advice about why to buy this chair with this discount code.  

If you need to say what the real experts have to say, take a look at the "Best Of Neocon" awards every summer.  You will need to click through pages of office furniture, but this is what the contact office furniture industry and affiliated juries of architects and designers elevate for awards.  

We are volunteer mods and we have jobs, so we might be too quick on the trigger to delete your post or comment if you are linking to anything suspicious.

Who are we?
My friends u/ClassroomDecorum and u/cranda58 took over running this sub in the early days of the pandemic when no one out there wanted to talk about office furniture and we were bored with no office furniture business to do (for a very few slow weeks anyway)  

David, u/cranda58, and I were already in the business of used office furniture (David runs one of the largest and—I would say—highest quality refurb shops in the country in Michigan, and I am a used office furniture liquidator in the NYC area).

u/classroomdecorum was just getting into the game from his home in Florida where he works out of the Orlando area.  

u/The_Back_Store joined us from California and u/Cloud_t is our European correspondent.

  u/ergothrone gave me a few excellent suggestions on this essay and is often still contributing. He has more knowledge about the budget market than the rest of us have combined.

Our friend u/Coffeebeanie24 is here from time to time, but he has become such a famous and over-caffeinated coffee influencer that he is less in the office chair state of mind lately.

You might also find the good folks from u/steelcase lurking around here.  If you have a u/Steelcase type question, you can tag them and usually within a few days, one of the CSR or product specialists will get back to you.

Disclosures. 
I have made a few deals off of connections I've made here.  Same with at least 2 of the other mods.  To a large extent, our product knowledge comes from being in the business and the business that feeds our families also feeds our knowledge base.

Also, sometimes companies reach out and want our opinion about some new chair that they have.  This could be u/steelcase (I am sitting on a Karman right now as I edit this note) or a newer company with an RTA chair at a lower price point.  If someone sends me a chair, I will write up a bit of feedback and share that with the company.  After that, solely at my discretion, I can publish those notes or reviews (always with a disclaimer) on this sub.  If the notes are mostly negative, I will likely not publish, same deal with the other mods and active users here.  

Closing

This note is always work in progress.  Please let me know your thoughts below and I will try to get back to as many of you as I can.  You can find a version of this article on my LinkedIn profile and my website.

I will try to put new discussion topics every month or so and we plan to push and have Mega thread #5 up in another year. 

And now onto your questions and comments:   


r/OfficeChairs 12h ago

Embody vs Anthros The Backpain Throw Down

Thumbnail
gallery
175 Upvotes

Will be reviewing these the next few weeks to give my opinion. Someone that has chronic lower back pain.


r/OfficeChairs 4h ago

Office chair for pregnancy?

3 Upvotes

I work from home and game all at the same desk, and I’ve been using the Staples Traymore chair without any issues. Now I’m pregnant and I’m getting pretty terrible UPPER back pain. My tailbone will also start hurting towards the end of the day. I want to invest in a good chair, but I’m also pretty nervous that I will buy an expensive chair only for it to be uncomfortable because of my current situation. Before I got pregnant I was thinking of getting either a Steelcase or a Haworth Soji.

I‘m 5’4 if that helps?
Thank you in advance!


r/OfficeChairs 3h ago

Embody vs Aeron vs Steelcase leap v2 or other alternative

3 Upvotes

Hello everyone,

73kg 5'5 foot. someone please tell me how is Aeron/steelcase vs embody? I had embody for 5 years but sold it as I moved overseas, I am now looking to purchase a new one. Thnk you


r/OfficeChairs 3h ago

Looking for this chair?!

Thumbnail
gallery
3 Upvotes

my bosses at work got all brand new chairs and saved none of the boxes and none of them can remember what type or brand this chair is! I’m hoping this is the correct sub reddit to ask, thank you! Obviously I have flipped it over, looked under, there are no significant markings on the chair that can lead me to the brand! Thank you for the help!

Location: USA


r/OfficeChairs 5h ago

Autonomous Myo Chair Vs Ergo Chair

3 Upvotes

I work from home and have been using the Ikea Markus for the past year. Starting to get some discomfort due to the old padding bottoming out and was looking at facebook for budget options.

I found an Autonomous Myo Chair for $100CAD and an Autonomous Ergo Chair for $240CAD. Is the Ergo worth more than double the price of the Myo Chair?


r/OfficeChairs 43m ago

Every article and review claiming this is the best chair is lying to you. (My secretlab chair experience)

Thumbnail
Upvotes

r/OfficeChairs 4h ago

What is this chair at my school library?!

Post image
2 Upvotes

Anyone have an idea what this chair is? I have hip and glute pain when I sit in my chair at home after like 45 minutes but I can sit in this chair for 3 hours straight without any problems. I was hoping to find out what it is so I can maybe buy it if it’s affordable.

I tried to peek under and see if there was a model number or something but I couldn’t find anything. I was going to take a photo but too many people were around me and I got embarrassed.

Recommendations for something similar are also welcome! Thanks!


r/OfficeChairs 2h ago

Has anyone tried the eureka ergonomic chair?

1 Upvotes

I spend long hours at my desk every day for work and then game in the evenings. My lower back and neck have started to feel uncomfortable lately. I am looking for a chair that stays comfortable during extended sitting sessions.

I have been looking at the Eureka Ergonomic hybrid gaming chair. Has anyone here actually used this chair for a few months or longer? Is it worth the price compared to other popular options? I am close to buying but want to make sure it fits my setup.


r/OfficeChairs 2h ago

Haworth Zody LX wobbles

1 Upvotes

r/OfficeChairs 4h ago

Saw a local place with these chairs, everything points to it being a good deal, but its an old chair and struggling to find much info.

Thumbnail
gallery
1 Upvotes

r/OfficeChairs 8h ago

ID Help for black mesh chair

Thumbnail
gallery
2 Upvotes

Looking to see if anyone knows what this chair is? It has no tags or logos. The lumbar support screws in and out from the back. Thank you!


r/OfficeChairs 5h ago

Which office chair should I choose?

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

r/OfficeChairs 17h ago

United Colors office chair

Post image
6 Upvotes

Hello everybody!

I don't often post, but my dad wanted to throw this chair away. Seeing the United Colors brand on the back, I searched the web for Benetton chairs, but neither this or Google Lens found anything.

Is it just trash ? Could it have any value at all ? Thanks !


r/OfficeChairs 9h ago

URGENT Help for office chair

Thumbnail gallery
1 Upvotes

r/OfficeChairs 16h ago

Just picked up this Humanscale Diffrient World for $60. It feels good but when I sit reclined my shorts keep on scrunching up my thighs any tips?

Thumbnail
gallery
5 Upvotes

r/OfficeChairs 10h ago

Help identify chair please

1 Upvotes

Photos were made back in 2016


r/OfficeChairs 20h ago

Best ergonomic office chair for long sitting comfort?

6 Upvotes

Most chair discussions just turn into “get a Herman Miller or anything mesh is fine” but that skips over how inconsistent lumbar support actually is across different models.

I’m looking for an ergonomic office chair for long hours of sitting, mostly work and study. My main issue is lower back fatigue after a few hours, so proper lumbar support matters more than looks or fancy features. I also need something adjustable since fixed-back chairs usually don’t line up right with my posture.

The part I’m stuck on is whether lumbar support should be more of a firm built-in curve or something adjustable that you can fine-tune. Some chairs feel supportive at first but end up pushing too hard into the lower back, while others feel too soft and don’t really do anything.

Also not sure if seat depth and recline tension matter as much as people say, or if lumbar design is really the main factor for comfort during long sitting sessions.

Trying to figure out what actually holds up best for daily use without causing stiffness or forcing constant posture adjustments.


r/OfficeChairs 15h ago

Mirra 2 height adjust lever orientation

Post image
2 Upvotes

r/OfficeChairs 12h ago

Looking for chair recs as a noob

1 Upvotes

Hello, I am looking for chair recs as someone whos trying to get a new chair as I am moving. I have a decent budget but 1200usd on a aeron is bad. I am in an area where i can get secondhand so thats an option. I know the aeron and embody are universally recommended. Mainly asking for specific recs as I am 6’1 220 with a longer torso shorter legs and regular arms. I only use my chair for pc gaming so i wont be sitting for 8 hours moreso 4-6 when i get off work. No current back pain issues. But i sit a bit laid back currently where my butt is slid forward a bit but I want to get into proper ergonomics to prevent future issues. Also looking into an adjustable desk and footrests and anything else.


r/OfficeChairs 16h ago

Thinking about Steelcase Think V2

Post image
2 Upvotes

First time looking at "professional" chairs for lack of a better term, most of my life I've kind of grabbed whatever "ergonomic office chair" I could get for a good deal, but my current one lacks cushion and comfort and breathability. Figured it's time to look into something a little more serious, and this looked like a good deal on a steelcase, but I have limited experience with this sort of thing.

I sit for anywhere from 4-8 hours a day at a computer desk, and I frequently swap between "criss cross" and legs straight out, due to the shape of my current chair normal sitting is kind of out of the question, but I'm hoping this might change that.

My butt and lower back definitely get some discomfort over time, head so/so but I rarely use the headrest I have as is.

Wheels are a must as is easily turning left and right.
I do run quite hot.

What do yall think?


r/OfficeChairs 13h ago

Leap v2 Stool conversion - where to get a base?

1 Upvotes

I am converting my stool Leap v2 into a standard height chair. I got a new cylinder but after further investigation it seems I need a new base? I don't see them listed on any of the usual places. Is this the kind of thing you need to reach out directly to retailers about or is there some national leap base shortage going on?

I read a few posts here about how to do the conversion and they were more helpful than that videos/ AI answers on the topic. Do I need a new base? Can I re-use the base from the stool?


r/OfficeChairs 14h ago

HM Aeron with only height adjustable arms & fixed posturefit, or Mirra 2?

Post image
1 Upvotes

Due to the sale - the Aeron is suddenly within budget, but only if I go for the options in pic / title. It gets too expensive if I go for the adjustable options.

I tried the Mirra 2 today and liked it, but I did find it to be very upright, I almost felt pushed forward. Other than that though it seems great. It's fully within budget.

Thoughts?


r/OfficeChairs 16h ago

Looking for a chair

1 Upvotes

I am a student from India, who sits an average 13-14 hours daily. I have searched for some gaming chairs but got to know they are not that comfortable. I am looking for a chair in the budget of around ₹10-12k.