State of the Art: A Good Office Chair, Not So Different From Others

A Good Office Chair, Not So Different From Others

90 Seconds With Pogue: Steelcase Gesture: The Times's David Pogue tests out Steelcase's Gesture, a chair that adapts to multiple positions.

The first time I had to buy a mattress, I remember being shocked at how much it cost. “Ah, but just remember,” the sales representative told me, “you’re going to spend a third of your life on it. Isn’t it worth investing in something you’ll use for a third of your life?”

When you think of it that way, maybe it’s not quite so crazy to spend $1,000 on a desk chair. You sit in that thing eight hours a day, too.

Actually, the term “desk chair” may be obsolete. That, anyway, is the conclusion that Steelcase has reached after conducting what it says was a study of 2,000 people in 11 countries â€" and how they sit. (The people, not the countries.)

Steelcase says people don’t just sit upright in their chairs anymore. In this age of phones, tablets and laptops, people slouch and lean back and curl up in all kinds of new ways.

Nine new ways, in fact, to which the company has given names like the Cocoon (reclining, feet on the seat, legs drawn in), the Take It In (slumped way back, arms relaxed while you watch a video) and the Strunch (a stretched hunch from chair edge to table, laptop pushed far away from you, chin propped up with nondominant hand).

According to Steelcase, if you don’t have the right chair, each of these new postures can lead to fatigue, pain and injury. For example, hunching forward to see your laptop “leads to disc compression, excess pressure on the neck and strain on the back and shoulders.” If your chair’s arms don’t support yours when you’re using the mouse for a long time, you can get “unnatural twisting of the wrists, hands, elbows and shoulders.”

And it’s important to move around, to shift, to avoid hours in the same position. Otherwise, you might “decrease blood flow in the legs.”

The fruit of all of this research, study and philosophizing is the new Steelcase Gesture chair, available later this fall for $980 and up (depending on whether you opt for leather, vinyl, cloth and so on). It’s supposed to be the ultimate work chair â€" “a new sitting experience,” the company asserts.

It certainly is comfortable. Both the seat and the back are deeply padded and expansive; you could even, if you wanted, sit with your legs tucked under you, or partly so. The arms are connected to the chair behind you, so they don’t block your thigh should you decide to swing it over the side.

And it certainly is adjustable. Like most office chairs, you can make this one taller or shorter when you press a lever on the chair’s stem. The chair spins easily and rolls extremely easily on its five ball-bearing feet, which, as my 8-year-old can attest, is loads of fun.

The back can recline very far â€" farther than any other Steelcase chair â€" without risk of toppling backward, which is never a good way to score points in the office. You can adjust the tension on the spring, too, so that it goes back and forward more or less easily. You can lock the back into one of five angles with the flip of a lever. All the controls are on the right side, below seat level.

By turning a knob, you can move the seat forward or backward relative to the back, to accommodate the longer or shorter of limb.

The armrests are miracles of mobility. By squeezing a lever under each one, you can move them fluidly and independently up or down, inward or outward. And in any of these positions, you can rotate the armrests.

The designers also put a lot of thought into where to end the chair’s various pieces. For example, the arms are short enough that they don’t get in the way when you want to pull up close to the table or desk. And the back doesn’t extend past your torso. It doesn’t block or restrict you when you turn to around to yell, “Hey, Frank! Do we have any C-120s in stock?”

Finally, a shout-out to whoever had the idea of wrapping the padding all the way around all four sides of the seat’s edges. Suppose, for example, that you wanted to assume a position that’s not among the Steelcase Nine. That’s entirely possible, thanks to this all-the-way-around padding; you can hang a limb over any of the seat’s edges without worrying about getting gangrene.

(Don’t try that with the famous Herman Miller Aeron chair. Its sharp, rigid seat edges could lop your leg right off.)

And, so, yes: This is a wonderful chair. It’s supremely comfortable, impressively adjustable, exceptionally supportive.

And yes, it’s also true that we work in weird new positions these days.

What’s not so clear is Steelcase’s claim that these two statements are connected.