Why we recommend Rh chairs over cheaper online alternatives.
You will have Googled ‘Ergonomic Office Chair’ and the results show lots of products, mostly between £200 & £300.
One of our best selling chairs is the Rh Logic, which starts at over £1000, and that’s before you’ve added armrests, VAT, and anything else to it that you might want. Do these people simply have too much money? Am I trying to rip you off? Of course not, so let’s have a look at what makes a really good chair worth it.
I’ve talked about what ‘ergonomic’ means before, so i’ll not go one about that again now, but suffice to say that ergonomics refers to the interaction between a person – you, and a thing – in this case, a chair.
So I would argue that a chair that does not have a mechanism to adjust the depth of the seat cannot be ergonomic, as it will fit very few people. You could argue that if that seat depth is 410mm, it will fit a lot of people so doesn’t really matter. Therefore, you will find a great deal of products that are labelled as ergonomic, are really not. Although they may be right for you, so that’s ok!
The price of a chair, most products, will be determined by two factors.
- quality
- specification and adjustability.
Some products cost a premium because they are fashionable or cool, but that doesn’t really apply here.
Good chairs tend to be quite heavy. They’re made from high quality components and are usually rated for users up to 150kg. They’ll often be guaranteed for 10 years, and unlike a supermarket shop bought chair, you don’t have to worry about keeping a receipt – the manufacturer stamps the product with all the information they need should something go wrong.
And that really highlights a big difference. Most of our chairs come directly from the manufacturer. We speak to the people that design and build them. They are interested in what customers report they like, and what they don’t. Whereas most of the ‘brands’ you’ll find online, are just marketing names, nothing more than a website, and the products they sell will be mostly compiled in China with a minimal amount of research, but a lot of care taken to ensure the package the product is sent in as small and light for cheap worldwide distribution.
Every part of a well designed office chair such as an Rh Logic is highly adjustable, so it fits you, your unique proportions and preferences, and the work you are doing.
The Desk Chairs page on the website of a well known provider of furniture displays prominently at the top, a Desk chair. The picture they have used to represent a desk chair has large fixed armrests that cannot be adjusted in any way so will be suitable for very few people. Furthermore the armrests are so large that the user won’t be able to get the chair anywhere near to their desk, and they’ll be lifting their arms and reaching forward to the desk, which will likely cause neck and shoulder pain.
The next chair is better in that it doesn’t have any arm rests. Your arms account for 10% of your body weight so if we can adjust them correctly they’ll be a real benefit. But a bad armrest will do more damage than no armrest.
And the last chair in the picture repeats the mistakes of chair one, but goes further in that you can’t adjust the seat depth, or back rest angle. If all you’re doing in your office is chatting on the phone it might work for a bit, but most people would be better off standing. There will be a time and a place where these chairs are fine for you. But if you’re working at a desk on a computer, I wouldn’t recommend any of them.
A good chair manufacturer knows all this, and buying a chair from a seating specialist rather than a marketing team or a household department store will prevent you from buying products that are unsuitable and potentially harmful to you.
Take the Rh Axia in the picture. It costs about as much as a good mobile phone. Most people change their phone every 2 to 3 years. This chair is guaranteed for 10 years.
Its armrest adjust for height, depth and width. The seat can be adjusted forward and back 10cm, so pretty much everyone will be able to fit. The backrest angle is adjustable and it has a unique tilting mechanism which provides movement which is crucial for the body to function at its best.