Take A Seat - purchasing an ergonomic office chair

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, July, 2001 by Elizabeth Razzi

HOME OFFICE | The lowly chair has gone HIGH FASHION and, oh yes, it's good for your back.

IF YOU'RE ENTICED by cachet alone, picking the right chair for your home office is easy: Just flip on the TV. Herman Miller's Aeron chair (about $700) was part of a plot-line in an episode of Will & Grace. If The West Wing is more to your liking, choose the darling of presidential aides, the Leap chair, (starting at about $800). And Ally McBeal aficionados can head for Humanscale's Freedom chair, which is far from free, starting at about $900.

Without question, the office chair has evolved into an icon of style and power. But fashion aside, it was legions of well-paid techies spending 18 hours a day staring at computer screens who prodded chair makers to push the ergonomic envelope. The goal: marathon sitting without discomfort or pain. The result: some exceptionally comfy seats that are adjustable in a startling number of ways. While the prices are steep, savvy shoppers can find bargains.

The sit test

BUT DON'T BUY based solely on price, fashion or the number of levers. Especially if you already have some strains, first assess how the chair comforts you where you ache, says Linda Cantley, a physical therapist and ergonomist at Yale University. "Sit in the chair before buying," Cantley advises. "You want to make sure that the adjustment features work for your body."

What you're after in a chair is an "effective working posture," according to Marvin Dainoff, director of the Center for Ergonomic Research at Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio. For someone mind-melding with a computer, that could be what he calls the hacker position--slouching all the way back in a reclining office chair, keyboard on lap. "But the rest of us need to refer to materials as we work," says Dainoff. "For that, your trunk needs to be upright." Upright, but not uptight. That's the goal.

Dainoff says it's important to be able to sit with a 120degree angle between your thighs and back (think lounge chair). Most of the high-end chairs have some system for assuring that critical angle by allowing the seat to slope forward, or the back to slope backward.

A pneumatic chair-height adjustment lever is standard, even on inexpensive chairs. You should be able to sit with your feet flat on the floor--and have your elbows at a right angle as you work. (If you're short, you may still need a footrest to sit at a desk without looking like Mini-Me.)

Better chairs have combinations of levers to adjust the angle between seat and back, the bounciness of the chair (you can get practically a recliner or rocking-chair effect) and the arm height. Arm height is especially important for computer users. "The worst thing is fixed chair arms that won't let you get close enough to the workstation," says Dainoff. The chair's levers and knobs must be accessible and easy to maneuver while you sit. "If you can't adjust it while you're sitting in it, you can't adjust it," he says.

A look around a local office-supply superstore revealed 26 office chairs priced mostly between $130 and $150. But the chairs had few of the features Dainoff recommends, and the cushions were hard and uncomfortable. Such a chair would suffice for an occasionally used home office.

You'll move dramatically into the comfort zone with the distinctly unchic La-Z-Boy line. Some models feature easily reached levers to adjust the chair's height, recline the back, and adjust the pitch of the seat. Not surprisingly, La-Z-Boy offers cushioning that is fairly plush for an office chair. We found good adjustability and reachable controls in the La-Z-Boy Management Task chair, at $399. Another $30 gets you a model with a seat that slides forward and backward, better accommodating users with long or short legs. (Find local dealers at www.lzbcontract.com.)

Image counts

IT CAN BE OUR little secret if you choose to wheel a La-Z-Boy up to your desk. But at $400 you're approaching the neighborhood of high-tech ergonomic chairs. That's especially true thanks to the dot-com flameout, which has pulled top-end chairs out from under destitute techies and onto the resale market.

The Aeron chair is as famous for its retro modern design as it is for comfort. Winner of a slew of design awards, it's part of the design collection at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York City. The Aeron's most distinctive feature is that it is unupholstered; you rest on a breathable, flexible vinyl mesh. The chair comes in three sizes (for small, medium and large people), and it is widely available at back-specialty stores and Web sites, including eBay.

We found the Aeron for $675 plus $98 shipping on the Web at Design Within Reach (www.dwr.com). If you buy the chair from a back-specialty shop--where we found prices between $700 and $750--you can expect to pay $39 or more for shipping. The chair is $699 plus tax and $49 shipping from manufacturer Herman Miller (www.hermanmiller.com). We recently found nearly 50 Aeron auctions on eBay.com, with prices ranging from $500 to $600 plus shipping.