4D Adjustable Ergonomic Office Chair

First of all, despite the 5 stars, I'll concede it's not 100% perfect. But for the price and functionality, it's great - and easily modified to make small fit customizations. My main use case is work from home. My WFH office is also my music room. I play bass, guitar, and piano, and standard desk chairs with arms are kind of incompatible. So the first win (and a big part of why I chose this) are the flip up arms. Sure there's several chairs on Amazon with this feature, but there were other features that sold me. This chair replaces a HON Ignite that served me for quite a long time, but just wasn't cutting it on a number of fronts (for music, I took the armrest hand knobs out of the base to allow them to be easily slid out and set aside). Having two distinct use cases means finding a comfortable supportive chair that can do both is a bit difficult. Doing this on the cheap is even harder- especially when you consider most chairs are designed to fit a wide range of body sizes and shapes. And the lower the price, generally the fewer adjustments there are to fit and make the chair work for you. My first choice for hitting both of these targets would be the Humanscale Freedom, however the $1500+ was just too high without first being able to try one (there are no dealers within 100mi of me). While this chair lacks much adjustment other than seat height, tilt resistance, arm height (they also swivel a bit and slide side to side a little) and headrest height, it's a good platform for making subtle mods to make it fit right. Initially I was a little unsure I'd like the full mesh seat. The back is just fine, but I never liked the Aeron chair as the seat mesh is so firm. The seat on this is a little less taught than the Aeron, and it's more resilient (and no, I'm not trying to actually compare this to an Aeron Chair). I also frequently use a Skwoosh Pilot Travel Gel Cushion- especially when playing bass or guitar, as the seat frame on the sides does come up a bit on the sides without it and the lower bout tends to bump into it a bit. I work long hours and the chair is comfortable all day long. The second feature that sold me on this model over others with flip up arms was the adjustable lumbar support. It's not perfect, but it's there and it's height adjustable at least. I added a Therm-a-rest travel cushion attached with an elastic strap clipped to it and run around the back (otherwise it would fall into the gap between the seat and back). This works great and self-inflates if you lean forward and open the valve. I generally want more (thicker) support when reclined, and a little less when upright. $1500 chairs like the Humanscale Freedom do this automatically as you recline. The third thing that made this a contender is the 18" low seat height. I'm 5'9" and my preferred typing height is about 26-27", and 18" is about right for me. It's also about right for me for playing piano with a 28" key height. I've come across a lot of chairs that don't go below 19", which puzzles me because I don't know how anyone with shorter legs than I have would be comfortable. I also wanted a chair with a headrest to hopefully help encourage me to sit upright and not slouch forward. This has an adjustable headrest, but I find it is too far back except when reclining in the chair staring at the ceiling. So I added a TravelMate Car Neck Pillow (Soft Version)- Neck Pillow strapped to it. It's not a perfect fit, so I modded the strap on the pillow to better strap to the chair's headrest to hold it in the right position. But it totally solved the issue. The headrest has a tilt /pivot feature which is a little puzzling. It doesn't really seem to do anything useful; as soon as you put your head against it, it just folds back down. To work for me, it would need sort of lockout on the pivot. But as I stated, the added neck pillow really solved the issue for me. It's really comfortable reclined with an ottoman or other leg support. I use Flash Furniture Black Ergonomic Stool - which I used to use for bass, guitar and piano. The wheels make it easy to push out of the way or under the desk. The foot ring works as a foot rest, and the seat is the leg rest when reclined. If there are any real shortcomings it's the armrests and the foam edge at the front of the seat is a bit hard on the back of the legs. The armrests pivot with the back - since that's where they're attached, so when reclined, they point up a bit, which doesn't work if you're trying to type reclined. But it's not really a design flaw, especially at this price range. The armrests are also a bit hard and with the upward tilt when reclined, they're a bit uncomfortable. I solved this by removing the back edges of the armrest cover and inserting a foam wedge. This not only changed the angle of the armrests, but added a bit of springiness which counteracts the hardness quite well. I tried it as a temporary solution to make them more comfortable, but it works so well, I just left it like that. The firm edge at the front of the seat is aided by a foot rest under the desk, and of course there's no adjustment for seat pan angle. But it's easy to change the angle of the seat a little. The seat attaches to the base with four m8x125 bolts. I remove the rear bolts and put a couple of 1/2" thick by 1" diameter rubber bushings as spacers between chair base and reattached the rear with two 1/2" longer bolts I picked up at the hardware store. This tilts the seat a little bit more forward (or towards level to the floor). It was a super simple mod but it seems to help me quite a bit, and it's now totally comfortable with me feet flat on the floor- or on the foot rest. There's also naturally (at this price point) no seat depth adjustment, but the back of the seat is assembled in two pieces. The rear trim cover will come off with a little effort, and there are four m8x125 bolts attaching the main seat back to the lower attachment section. Longer bolts and spacers could be added there as well to shift the seat back forward a bit, or even the angle of the seat back by only putting spacers say on the upper mounting bolts to tilt the back a little relative to the seat.