Is there a price point where office chairs stop being squeaky, creaky, fragile crap?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve been using a somewhat inexpensive office chair for about 6 years. I inherited it when a family member passed away, it was brand new in 2016.

After about 1 year, the pneumatic tube became defective (it would drift down to the bottom of travel in about 30 minutes of sitting). I found a recipe on YouTube to circumvent this by adding an ABS tube around the base; the height was no longer adjustable but I could live with that. Messy, though, and possibly toxic, because friction when swiveling the chair would sprinkle fine ABS dust around the base, so it never looked clean.

Around the 4th year, the leatherette started to come apart. Small flakes of vinyl would fall down to the floor and then get laminated by the wheels, forming ugly black spots, and leaving the underlying fabric exposed. I bought some polyester wrappers on Amazon for the seat and back, and eventually for the arms as well. It looked and felt pretty cheap, but at least the vinyl stopped falling to the floor. Still, the thing creaked and squeaked, and leaked ABS powder.

Last month, I got tired of it and decided to buy a new chair. I wanted a mesh back. My employer pays a certain amount, so I chose a Serta Destin chair. Not the cheapest they had, sort of mid-range for what you find in a big-box office store.

I got it home. I hadn’t noticed when I sat on it in the store, but the angle of the seat wasn’t quite right, and that’s not adjustable, so I ended up having to insert washers under the front of the seat to get it right. Now the comfort is OK, it feels pretty solid, the pneumatic tube is holding, and I like the mesh back. But when I lean back it knocks and squeaks like it’s 5 years old.

Sometimes I think I should have paid more, but I’m no longer sure that price guarantees quality. Should I have bought a Branch chair for twice the price? A Herman Miller chair for about 5 times the price? Or do those eventually break down and make noise like the cheaper chairs? What brands have you found to be solid and durable?

2

I’ll be following this. Sadly no real advice.

I had a big box chair for about 2 weeks and the damn arm stripped out and fell off. They told me to send it back to the manufacturer Yeah, right, I’ll box that right up.

Bought another online, It’s pretty nice, but now has a bit of a list to it. It was ~$400. It’s good for now…

I’m going to look at Herman Miller chairs.

3

At the very start of COVID my gf began working from home. She placed orders for a better keyboard, some office supplies, and a chair. I got notification about the purchase (my account) and I nearly canceled the order, assuming fraud. The chair was 5 or 6 hundred dollars!

She insisted it was a good chair and she needed it, working 10-12 hour days sometimes, eating lunch at her desk.

It took 10 weeks to get the chair because of COVID, but she loves it. I’d guess my chair at work was $40-60 bucks. One arm is missing, the other arm wobbles, and Rocco tore up the upholstery. But work 5 hour days and don’t work all that hard.

4

If you are working from home, buy a plastic chair mat. Or be prepared to replace wheels if you are on carpet. And screw up your carpet.

5

The Hyken chair at Staples is excellent - I liked mine at work so much that I bought one for home. Allegedly the full price is $300 but it’s usually around $200, and sometimes as low as $160.

6

Chair mats are a good idea regardless. The ones designed to work on carpet tend to wear out after a year or two, and crack, and thus become useless. My husband finally solved this at his home office by getting a big square of plywood, and gluing wood-grain floor tiles on it. That thing will outlast our grandkids.

I have a much thinner floor mat in my office - it’s got hardwood, and I didn’t want to risk damaging the floor.

The cheap “gaming chair” I was using for a bit is still functional, though I had to replace the wheels - several were breaking, and the ones that were not breaking had enough hair wrapped around their shafts that they did not spin well. Luckily, replacement casters were cheap and took about 5 minutes to swap out.

I did splurge on a SecretLabs chair earlier this year - and surprisingly there are things I don’t love about it (it was over 600 bucks). The “cushion” is far too hard - an inexpensive lumbar pillow helped that (I already had a coccyx pillow from when I literally busted my ass a couple years back). It is, however, highly adjustable - though someone shorter than I am would not be comfortable even at its lowest setting, as I got the Big And Tall version.

7

In my opinion, if you are serious about your home office, then get serious about your chair and pay for a proper one. There’s a reason why the nice chairs at work cost >$1000.

I tried many different cheap chairs over the years from Staples and Ikea, never being happy, feeling a distinct list to one side, watching as the fake leather flaked off, wrestling with crappy adjustments. Then I decided to complete redo my home office with good furniture and never looked back.

I found a Steelcase on Amazon on sale for $900 and ordered.it. I have had the chair for a couple years now and can say with certainty that this chair is exactly the same quality as the ones at work, and it will serve me for many years.

So, look around for a deal on Steelcase. If funds are tight, I think there are places out there that sell second-hand office furniture, and you would be better off with a gently used top-quality chair than a new crappy one.

8

I agree on the Steelcase. It is what we buy at work and what my wife and I bought when we started working remotely (we both are mainly in the office with the flexibility to work remote when we want). We bought ours from an office chair remanufacturer and I believe our Leap V2s are better than what you buy new (they add more padding on the seat), and for several hundred less. Google search for “steelcase chair remanufactured” and it will probably be the top link.

9

We had Herman Miller at work, and I never had an issue with sitting for hours. IIRC they had about four different ways to adjust them.

I have a bungee cord chair I got at The Container Store about 8 years ago. It wasn’t excessively expensive, and it’s been fine. The seat gets a little hard if I’m sitting for hours, so I sometimes add a cushion, but it has had no other issues. The pneumatic tube still works fine (even though my dog sometimes hits it when he’s trying to sneak under my desk), so I’m pretty satisfied.

If I were really working (I’m retired now), I’d probably get something a bit better though.

10

After using several different Herman Miller chairs at work, a few years ago (pre-dated COVID, but I worked at home 2 days a week then) I bought a used Aeron chair from a local office furniture liquidator. It was in excellent condition.

It was roughly half the price of new (I paid $450-500), and ~4 years later I’m still thrilled to have it. I have confidence it will last longer than I will.

11

I got myself a $600 custom made chair from Sitmatic many years ago. Probably 12 years ago? It’s been totally worth it. I think the hydraulic quit pretty early on but I never used it since my height and my desk height has never changed. I actually have really short legs and a long torso so I bought one of their chairs meant for really short people and keep it all the way down.

It is creaky I guess but I never notice it. I just wiggled around to check. I did have the casters break one by one but I reached out to Sitmatic and they sent me beefy replacements. I also was using it on a rug.

Investing in a great chair is definitely worth it. Consider how much time you spend in the chair every day and what that does to your body. My $600 chair has given me roughly 3000 days of sitting (250 days/yr * 12 years)… it costs me 20 cents a day to sit like a queen.

12

I bought an Aeron six years ago, and it’s still silent and looking much like it did when new. The only thing I’ve done for it is replace the default wheels with large urethane “inline skate” wheels so it glides around on my hard laminate floor.

After having one at the office, I realized I wasn’t using any of the fancy features like forward tilt, and some features like movable armrests were actually annoying, so I bought the bare bones basic model with fixed armrests and saved a bunch of money.

You know it’s a good investment when it so unobtrusively does what it’s supposed to do that you don’t even think about it.

13

Here in happy Silicon valley there are a lot of used office furniture places around. They have stock from all those optimistic start-ups that go bust, and have to sell off the office furniture. I have found that you can get some nice bargains on office chairs and furniture.

I bought a Herman Miller Aeron for under $450 there early in the pandemic. Only slightly used. It’s been great. They also offered a discount for cash.

They tend to have a lot of Steelcase products in stock also.

14

I used to work in the office furniture industry; our company contracted with various manufacturers to sell their products. From my memory, the best chair manufacturers were (some already mentioned):

  • Herman Miller
  • Steelcase
  • HumanScale
  • Neutral Posture
  • Knoll (for a certain price point)

All of these are going to be pricey, if you’re accustomed to getting a chair at Staples or similar retailers … but 10 to 15 years ago they were the companies who made the catbird seats.

15

We got a couple of the Herman Miller Sayle chairs as dining room chairs. Very comfortable, relatively reasonable ($650), and roll very smoothly.

16

I got my Aeron at the local Design Within Reach outlet and got it brand new for somewhere in the $600-700 range. Yeah, not cheap (although significantly off the list price) but when I look at the long list of cheap chairs I wore out and tossed, I’m kicking myself for not having done it sooner.

For reference, I worked for one particular company in Seattle for 7 years. I had the same Aeron the whole time and it was still in excellent, fully operational shape on my last day. I tried to roll it out with me* but I was also anxious to leave and didn’t want to wait for the receptionist to go on break.

* my company was acquired and shut down. Rather than sell or even give away any equipment, they elected to junk everything for liability purposes.

17

If you’re going to get a mat for your home office, spend a little more and get a glass one. You won’t regret it. Don’t get the expensive one you hear on the radio, just search online and you can get one much cheaper.

When I started my second career working at home in 2018, I bought a Lazy Boy office chair. Took about a year for the cylinder to fail and now the leather is splitting. Will definitely upgrade next year.

18

If you gotta ask, you can’t afford it.

19

You can Google for office chair reviews. One recently in Wirecutter recommended the Steelcase Gesture.

20

Take a drive through an expensive neighborhood on trash day. You can get a 400.00 chair for free.