Best Office Chairs

CR's in-house ergonomics expert reviewed popular models from Branch, Herman Miller, Steelcase, and others. Here's what we learned.

By Nicholas De Leon

Updated November 14, 2024

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person wearing green Consumer Reports shirt, sitting in office chair with 7 other office chairs surrounding them

A well-designed office chair is one of the smartest upgrades you can make to your home office.

Ideally, it’s comfortable to sit in, easy to adjust, and provides plenty of support for your back, butt, and arms.

But with so many models to choose from, it can be hard to find the one that’s right for you, especially if you’re shopping online and unable to test for yourself how well the chair fits your build. Given the high prices on certain designs, the last thing you want to do is spend your hard-earned money on a model that leaves you in pain.

To help guide you through the selection process, we’ve purchased and evaluated 16 office chairs, ranging in price from $90 to $2,340. The list includes models from Amazon, Branch, Herman Miller, Ikea, Staples, and Steelcase. While all are billed as ergonomic, that leaves lots of room for interpretation, our testing reveals.

“When you see a chair branded as ergonomic, you can’t put a lot of stock in that,” says Paul Ritchey, doctor of public health and certified professional ergonomist (CPE), who oversees office chair testing for Consumer Reports. “What you should be looking for is adjustability, because one hallmark of ergonomics is understanding that one size does not fit all.”

According to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, good ergonomic design can help reduce the number and severity of work-related musculoskeletal disorders caused by varied and repeated stress on muscles, nerves, blood vessels, ligaments, and tendons.

In our testing, we rate office chairs on not only ergonomic design (how well they comply with standards and best practices), but also comfort, ease of use, and ease of assembly. We give more weight to the ergonomic design scores than ease of assembly for one simple reason: While building a chair can be a hassle, you only have to do it once.

The comfort scores come from a panel of three people with various body types, who reviewed each chair after sitting in it for 90 to 120 minutes in a typical work setting. Ease of use considers things like how simple it is to adjust the chair’s controls while seated, how well the controls are labeled, and how clearly the model’s features are explained in manuals and other documentation from the manufacturer.

Before getting to our full impressions, it’s helpful to explain how to properly sit in a chair. That may sound strange—who doesn’t know how to sit in a chair?—but even a top-rated model will offer little benefit to you if you don’t know how to use it.

How to Properly Sit in a Chair

According to Ritchey, there are a few high-level principles to follow when sizing up a chair. Ultimately, the more it adjusts to fit your body, specifically your torso and limbs, the better off you’ll be.

The armrests should support your arms, elbows at your sides (and bent at a 90- to 100-degree angle), while your shoulders are completely relaxed. You may need to raise or lower the height of the armrest to make that happen. Some models also let you slide armrests forward or backward, pivot them, and set them wider apart to provide more clearance for your hips.

The seat should be high enough for you to keep both feet flat on the ground or on a footrest, with equal pressure applied to both. That means your knees are bent at an angle of no less than 90 degrees.

Ideally, you want to adjust the seat pan to leave a roughly 2-inch space between the back of your knee and the edge of the seat. “If you don’t have a gap there, it can cause pressure and discomfort,” Ritchey says.

The backrest should ably support your back, of course, but also allow you to ease into a comfortable recline. To start, you want the angle between your torso and thighs to be a little more than 90 degrees, with the lumbar support positioned to help you maintain the natural inward curvature of your lower spine.

Good Ergonomic Design

When reviewing office chairs, we look to see how well each model aligns with modern ergonomics practices, including those outlined by the ANSI/HFES 100-2007 standard, which is widely used by ergonomists and furniture manufacturers.

The categories include the seat pan, backrest, lumbar support, armrests, and general features (like weight capacity) that increase a model’s adjustability.

Most of the chairs we’ve tested offer some degree of adjustability, but you generally have to pay more for extensive control.

One notable exception is Steelcase’s Series chairs, which grant a fairly broad range of accommodating features, including four-way adjustable arms, for roughly $500 to $800. That’s not exactly a budget price, but it’s well below that of similar chairs we’ve tested.

Shopping Tips

Here are some more things to think about when shopping for an office chair.

Assembly: Some manufacturers package their models fully constructed, which can be a great time-saver, but also a big headache if you’re not home to receive the delivery or you don’t have a simple way to get the box inside. (Who has a private loading dock at their house?) Putting the chair together presents other challenges. Either way, it helps to know what to expect before the chair arrives.

Materials: Ideally, you want the seat and back to have a breathable fabric or mesh. Leather, synthetic leather, and plastic are not ideal for long days in the saddle, especially if you live in a hot climate or work in a home office that gets very warm during the day.

Casters: Manufacturers often will let you choose chair wheels best suited to the surface beneath your desk. This allows you to glide more easily across a carpet or, better yet, avoid wrestling with a chair determined to zip across the hardwood. If the model you choose doesn’t offer this option and the wheels give you a problem, you can buy a floor mat from an office supply store for about $30 to $50 to help you refine your roll.

Cohabitation: If the chair will be used by various people in your family, it’s even more important to select a model with fine-tuned controls that let you quickly and easily adjust things to suit bodies of different shapes and sizes.

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