[Review] Autonomous ErgoChair 2 - $294 - $324

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Autonomous ErgoChair 2 - $294-324

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Use referral link https://bit.ly/2Xb6QrO or code R-7ceb4d at checkout to receive $25 off orders of $200 or more.

11/17/20 UPDATE: The black or black/white models are currently $304 after $25 off!!! Black Friday sale ends 11/20/20, all black items including desks are at discounted prices

Evergreen color is currently on sale for $319, all other colors are $349. $25 credit works on any color

a Manbearpig review:

I personally have this chair, AMA.

TL;DR - get this if you’re wanting a new chair. Best in class for the money. Comfy, cool/breathable, and highly adjustable to fit your body.

Long version:
As many of you know, I have an office job for my main money maker. Absolutely nothing tech related, but am sitting there at least 7-8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and even more when I get home from work and hang out with all you lovely fools. Especially now with all the WFH shenanigans, this means on a real bender of a day I can be spending 20+ hours in an office chair sometimes.

Backstory - My chair at work is a piece of shit probably $40 walmart chair that is worn out. Chair at home was nicer, but again old and not super great. Typical executive plushy leather high back, nothing too ergo friendly. I was sick of my back hurting from prolonged sitting, and constantly having to adjust positions to get comfortable.

No more I said. No more. Time to find something that is far better. Then began the research. As with most things I look to purchase, I spent hours upon hours looking for options and trying to figure out what was the best available at still a decent price point. Screw ‘racing/gamer’ chairs. they are 100% a waste of money and not ergonomic at all. I knew this already so anything like that was out of the question. Should be for you too. I asked around for some suggestions, most people said Herman Miller Leap or Steelcase Gesture/Leap. Lets look at those. 2 seconds later closed the pages. They start around $800, totally out of budget here. If you’re lucky and live near a larger city, they can be found at massive discounts from warehouse resellers that sell used office equipment, but I unfortunately did not. The hunt continues…

The Chair - Ok, lets start looking at some top lists of ergonomic chairs. This starts pointing out some commonalities. 1) there’s almost always Herman Miller & Steelcase on every one. 2) Budget ones really do look like cheap budget remakes 3) ErgoChair 2

The ErgoChair 2 began showing up on most lists I was looking at for a highly rated option for this type of chair, other than the previously mentioned 2 brands. Deep dive time. Every review I was looking at was raving about this thing. Fairly budget friendly, yet has many of the niche features only high end chairs have. Basically nothing else at that price ($349ish is the normal retail) even compares. Tons of adjustment points, nice material, a headrest (which I did want, some don’t, it is removable).

Gripes - There were 2 common gripes people had with the chair.:

  • First, the headrest adjustment is a bit weird. Most adjustments have a lever or knob, but the headrest is basically friction. up/down you have to pull hard as it ratchets through plastic notches and is extremely loud. Same with the tilt up/down of the headrest. After I received mine earlier this week, I 100% agree. Not the end of the world, it works, and I find you don’t need to adjust often once you find the sweet spot.
  • Second, the arm rests. While they are adjustable for height with a simple pull of a lever and slide (like the headrest should also have), the tops also adjust slightly forward/back and in/out. Great you say, except there is ZERO locking mechanism for this. Either full forward or full back usually stays in place, but I find the in/out to go all over. After a few days of use now, I’m used to it, but some kind of simple lock, again, would have been a huge improvement.
  • Third. This is just my own gripe, I didn’t see it around as much as the first 2. The wheels. They are generic plastic office chair wheels. I just feel for the price, they could have at least thrown in some roller blade style wheels, even if they were a cheaper made version (I know you can get some for $20-25 on amazon). I have hardwood floors at home, so will likely be getting some. That said, they do roll fairly good compared to many cheap chairs, and for that shitty office carpet at most companies, wouldn’t be a big deal.
    11/17/20 UPDATE: I ended up purchasing new roller wheels, and it is a night and day improvement. Here are the ones I got, currently $27 after applying $5 coupon on the item. Highly recommend.
  • kind of fourth? Shipping. These things take about a month to ship out. Granted, might be currently Covid related, but it was hard to wait that long. Oh, also on that, the damn box weighs 67 pounds. It’s hefty.
    11/17/20 UPDATE: It may have just been the green color with long delay in shipping, currently the black models ship out next day

any other options? - As previously mentioned, both Herman Miller & Steelcase make amazing chairs, if you are willing to spend the money. I wasn’t prepared to dump that kind of cash at an office chair, or possibly 2. Think of how many EasyStores that is! I’ll admit, in the $300-400 range, there really is not much else comparable to the ErgoChair even. Not with the same feature set, most are typical e-girl gamer chairs. There was one option I was ready to purchase - the Wau Desk Chair, commonly known as the ‘chair from Silicon Valley’. At my time of research, it was on sale for around $350 which is what first caught my eye. That is, until I went to checkout and shipping was in the $220+ range, as they ship from Scandinavia.

Conclusion - I purchased the Evergreen model, because I both kind of liked the look best, and it was/is currently cheapest by $30 (that $30 savings can go towards roller blade wheels! shit!), I’m on day 3 of use. It was a bit weird the first day, but as I sat in it more and fine tuned the many adjustments, it started becoming more and more comfortable. As I sit here now typing this, chair is full upright and back hasn’t been hurting nearly as much. When I want to lean back to be on voice chat or watch youtube, it’s still comfy as hell (headrest is very nice for this). I will likely be buying a 2nd one to bring to the work office, well, should be ever return to work.

Feel free to ask my anything here or on discord if you’re interested. Like/follow on instagram to keep up with other Serverbuilds.net shenanigans. Also just for full disclosure, by using the referral link or code above, you get $25 & I also get a $20 credit. It’s a win-win. My credits will go towards another of these, or possibly try a different model for at work and also review it. Anything beyond that, maybe a raffle or giveaway, who knows, but I don’t need more than 2 :slight_smile:

If you happen to order one, sound off in the replies!

CHEERS!

Proof of life:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B_5wn1IhhBm/

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How tall are you? Any idea if this would be sufficient for my 6’ 4" frame?

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5’ 10" around 200 lbs, I have it just under max height and is perfect height to have feet flat on the floor. Both headrest and lumbar support are almost at the lowest positions, so should be plenty of room to adjust higher for taller people. Width wise, I can slide like 6 inches left or right, it’s a wide seat. Their site has specific dimensions listed

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Can you tell me what the distance from the floor measurement is when the seat is at it lowest, flat setting?

to the bottom of the seat and
to the top of the cushion at the point where your knees would be

Trying to figure out if my feet will dangle. I am only 5’5"

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around 18" at lowest, the cushion is pretty firm so doesn’t sink much when you sit in it, max is like 21" to floor, with stock wheels

The actual seat slightly tilts up/down as well, I i have the front tilted all the way up as i feel like i’ll slide off if it’s tilted lower, just personal preference, i do that in vehicle’s as well cuz i had feeling like i’ll slide forward. but, that would lower the knee-ground distance

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is that 18" from the top of the cushion or from the bottom edge of the seat?

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little under top of the cushion, bottom is a weird shape so no real point of reference

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Well darn that will be a couple inches too high for me… finding the right chair is difficult when you are my height

Thanks for checking it out

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Thanks for detail notes on your experience with your chair.

The features you get are actually very good, only way that chair could be better would be mesh seating.

Gripes 1, 2, and 3 are actually quite common among many chairs. At work I have “Raynor Ergohuman Chair ME7ERG - Mesh with Headrest” which exhibits the same issues. It hasn’t bother me though. That is a $700 dollar chair though. I am currently searching deals on used market. Side note it does not matter how expensive or good a chair is, everyone needs to get up for at least a minute every few hours. Like go grab a glass of water, take your 10 minute break, use the restroom. Humans aren’t designed to sit or stand up for non stop periods.

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Was able to get ahold of customer support finally and determined that the chair will work for me so I finally got one ordered!

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At the start of the pandemic, I was in need of something better than my dining room chair for my new office. I was looking at different office chair options and ended up going with the MyoChair from Autonomous because it was cheaper than the ErgoChair.

For anyone looking for a chair under $200, I can highly recommend it, though go for the ErgoChair 2 if you can swing for it. Also, if you’re looking to save another $25 off your chair use the discount code R-7ceb4d at checkout. https://bit.ly/2Xb6QrO

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Bought a green one today. Got around $32 bucks off with a Honey coupon code. Have a Steelcase Think as my daily driver and have been wanting something with neck support. We’ll see how it goes!

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I finally got mine but my biggest gripe is that the cushion is a bit hard and you can’t lean back with the back at a set recline. You can only recline the back rest. But over all it’s better than my Ikea chair I had.

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I ended up picking up an ErgoChair for home back in June after ManBear’s recommendation. I also have a Hermon Miller at the office to compare with.

The ErgoChair is great for the price point. It doesn’t really compare to the Aeron from HM, but it’s 1/3rd of the price

Assuming you can’t find a used Hermon Miller at a reasonable price, the ErgoChair is a great buy.

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Sad update. Ended up returning the chair. It was actually quite nice for a $330 chair, but with my wfh job, it didn’t quite cut it… The lumbar support wouldn’t push back and could not find a position where it didn’t bother my back. The roller blade wheels were substantially better than the stock ones, but ended up raising the chair just enough where my knees were bent greater than 90 degrees, which is not ideal.

Autonomous was super awesome about the return. Once I proved (with uploaded photos) that I had the original box and the chair was in like-new condition, they sent me a FedEx label for the return and shipped it off.

I ended up buying a refurbished Steelcase Amia and an attachable headrest for around $388 shipped. Here’s what I bought:

It shipped super quick.

I’ve just found that sometimes you just have to go with a company that builds professional grade equipment if you are working/playing 10+ hours in it. I currently have a refurbished Steelcase v1 that I have had for years and years and it’s been totally awesome, the downside is that it doesn’t have a headrest. For this reason, I was wanting to find something that did.

Hopefully this helps someone… :slight_smile:

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WHO TF JUST SPENT OVER $1,000 AT AUTONOMOUS?!?! I will send you some serverbuilds stickers!

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Just curious if you are still happy with your Steelcase Amia chair? Been killing myself trying to find a decent chair that is also durable.

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Yep. You can’t go wrong with Steelcase. It’s what you see in high-end offices and universities. Look up Steelcase. They are over $1k new, and most carry a 10 year warranty. The ones that I have had have lasted me over 5 years and still are comfortable.

The Amia is working out great. I still have a Steelcase Think that is still a great chair, but needed one with a headrest.