Robb Recommends: The Comfortable, Customizable Desk Chair That Makes Sharing Your Home Office Easy
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Welcome to Robb Recommends, a regular series in which our editors and contributors endorse something they’ve tried and loved—and think will change your life for the better.
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Around this time four years ago, my household faced a dilemma. We were at the height of the Covid-19 lockdown, working from home, and trying to make the best of a situation that was far from ideal.
That meant my partner and I eventually stopped working from our couch, huddled over our laptops and curving our spines to send emails. We turned our guest bedroom into a functional, decent-looking home office. Out went the bed that guests used to sleep on. (Would we ever have guests again?) In came a wall of Vitsoe 606 shelving, a white standing desk from the now-defunct company Fully, and an office chair from HON, which we mounted on slick rollerblading-style wheels that made zipping from one end of the room to the other a fun distraction from the world outside.
But while the desk and the shelves were built to last, the chair didn’t make it. As the hardest-working component of a home office, chairs are notoriously hard to keep in the long term. So when it came time to replace it a few months ago—one of the arms had fallen off, and the cushion was starting to wear out—we went with a much more durable chair packed with features that would enable us to keep it for the long haul.
X-Chair X-Tech Ultimate Executive Office Chair
The X-Chair X-Tech Ultimate Executive Office Chair—with its leather cushion, back, and headrest, is about as customizable as a made-to-measure suit. My partner and I are different heights and weights, and we share the office, so this is important. When I work from home, I only need to make a few adjustments to the armrests, the height of the seat, and the angle of the back of the chair, to have a comfortable sitting experience. And there’s a gentle learning curve you have to get over to make all of these changes, it’s easy to learn where all of the chair’s buttons and levers are. The one element we both love is the cooling memory gel seat cushion, which feels supportive and buoyant at the same time.
But I think what I like most about the X-Chair is its capacity for upgrades. You can opt for a lumbar massager and a separate heating and cooling unit, which keeps your lower back comfortable and relaxed. There’s a choice between standard wheels or the now-popular rollerblading style that we added to our last chair. And while we opted for the black leather, the chair is available in five other fabric and color combinations, so there’s likely something that’ll work with your home-office decor to choose from.
If I could change anything about it, it would be the user manual. X-Chair has a number of models, many of which feature similar specifications and elements, and the instructional pamphlet reflects this by combining instructions for different SKUs into the same document. Putting the chair together can be confusing—something I wish I’d known when we placed our order. The comfort and customization are worth the hassle in the long run, but if you get one for yourself, be prepared for a little headscratching when you get it out of the box.
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