Customer Reviews

Freedom Chair by Humanscale - Headrest, Adv. arms, Gel seat, Black Wave on Graphite

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I have owned this chair for over a year now. I purchased it when I was doing web site design from home, and would be sitting for long periods of time. I was having severe back pain prior to this purchase. This chair has made all the difference in being able to be productive for long periods of time. It is very comfortable, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has to sit and work from behind a desk, doing computer work, for long periods of time.

This is one amazing chair. I work out of a home office, and sometimes sit for 8-10 hours at a time, I also have some serious lower back problems. I can spend all day in this chair and my back doesn't bother me a bit. The coolest thing is the headrest, don't ask me how it works but it is out of your way when you sit upright, but when you recline, it adjusts your body angle so that you are still looking straight ahead, not at the ceiling as one normally would. The chair is not cheap, but since I spend alot of my day in it, I don't mind spending the extra money.

Make sure you read the negative reviews before investing so much money in this product, they are absolutely spot on.

1) The headrest pushes your neck sharply forward into a deeply uncomfortable position. It hurts to lie back and rest your head to read or work in this chair, despite the fact that it is designed to recline. I want to remove the headrest altogether.

2) The seat padding is hard and extremely uncomfortable and bruises my behind on regular 7+ hour use. As much as the padding is insufficient, the supposedly ergonomic bowed 'bucket'-shape of the seat compresses the glutes and thighs into themselves. I recommend adding a soft cushion to try and work around the problem.

3) As mentioned by others, the arm rests are very poorly designed. Both of mine cracked after a single year of use and finally snapped off the chair completely. And I consider myself to be very careful with my possessions. Additionally, the mechanism for raising and lowering the arm rests became looser and looser through use until it began to sag and no longer support the arms horizontally, making them nigh-on useless.

4) As others have said, the chair reclines much too easily. Even the slightest backward pressure and you find yourself flying back and lying like you're in a business-class airline seat. It's really extremely impractical and very annoying.

5) The way the back sits in relation to the base means you tend to slide forward in the chair and feel like you're going to slide right off. You have to keep pushing yourself back into the seat, which becomes tiresome and stressing after a while.

6) The headrest on mine started to come off because the screws embedded within the headrest pad (!) came loose, leaving a dangerously sharp screw protruding beneath the headrest. And because those screws are embedded within the headrest padding, you can't reattach them without literally tearing the headrest material apart.

7) The supposed 15-year 'warranty' is a complete nonsense. Try getting a response from Humanscale! They simply ignore all emails and phonecalls. I even asked to just pay myself for replacement arms, and still received no response. Unbelievable.

8) I don't think this chair is as good as many chairs on the market at just 10% of its price. Its unbelievable they hype and myth they've managed to build around this badly designed, unergonomic rip-off. I sincerely suggest - at the very least - that you TRY this chair before committing to buying it. I didn't, and I regret that I can never get that money back from this awful product.

The fact that I spend at least 6 hours a day sitting in this chair and don't have back, neck or shoulder pain is a testiment to the way it's built. The lumbar support is better than any chair I've ever had before. The ease of changing the armrests is a great feature. The wave fabric stays clean and has a cooler feel than leather. There are so many adjustments you can make it will fit most any body type.
I would recommend this chair to anyone looking for a comfortable sit.

The pictures look inviting, don't they? The reviews are good. Buyer beware! This chair is absolutely terrible in every regard.

Let me start off with the seat cushion. I opted for the additional "gel" feature. Sounds really comfortable, doesn't it? I have used gel wrist rests before and those were comfortable, so this seat must be comfortable too, right? Well disregard everything you might associate with gel because this isn't what you'd expect. If there's anything that may be considered gel in it, which I would be surprised, then it's only a layer that's a millimeter thick and offers no discernible benefit. I was certain they sent me the non-gel seat. I wrote to the manufacturer and they shipped me a replacement (just the part you sit on that attaches to the frame). This one was exactly the same. It's a very thin cushion, so thin in fact that you can feel the raised molded plastic that's under the cushion in your buttocks. I'm 150 lb person so I don't think weight is a factor. It's just an unimpressive, cheap cushion.

The back. It's my understanding that the back does not have the gel option and that it's their standard cushion, which seems just barely adequate, but it's odd that it feels exactly like the seat which is suppose to be gel. The back also has some strange design where it juts out on the sides midway up and is annoying for your arms in a rested position.

The arm rests. I chose the gel option for these as well. They feel absolutely nothing like the gel seat--they are extremely firm. You have to apply tremendous pressure in order to compress them at all. For resting your arms they provide no comfort whatsoever. They could be upholstered bricks and I would not be able to tell the difference.

The headrest. This has got to be the worst part of the chair that's literally a pain in the neck. A soft, pillow like cushion would be ideal, but this thing is the total opposite. It's like a rock pushing into the back of your neck/head. When you recline, which you will since there's no way to prevent it, the headrest stays in a position so you're always looking forward. That might be okay if it were the least bit comfortable. It might be tolerable if it were able to be lowered enough so you could rest your head on top of it, but the seat back is too large and will only allow limited movement of the headrest. The sliding action while reclining was less than smooth. I used some lubricant on the guides which helped, but the plastic handle must have gotten a drop or two on it and had a reaction because one day, while I was moving the chair, the handle instantly broke off in my hand. Maybe that's my fault for using an oil based lubricant, but I shouldn't have had to worry about using lubricant in the first place.

When I bought the chair it was completely silent, but only after a few months of owning it, every move I'd make, no matter how slight, there'd be noise emanating from every part. From the rubbing plastic of the headrest, to the metal on metal squeaking from somewhere under the seat, to the casters settling with a thud. It's extremely irritating to be plagued by this sound the entire time you're sitting on it.

I made a big mistake buying this chair. I think I would have been more happy spending a hundred dollars for a new chair every year for the next 10 years. At least if you didn't like it after a few months then you wouldn't feel obligated to sit in it. I have owned this chair for over a year and that's all I want to do is get rid of it. I'm writing this review to warn others so they don't make the same expensive mistake I did. Don't be fooled by the pictures, buzzwords like "gel" or the good reviews. I have to imagine the people posting positive reviews are either making money off your purchase or they enjoy sleeping on wooden boards at night.

Save yourself a lot of money and aggravation by avoiding this chair.

this chair is worse than sitting on a block of ice..it feels like you have a rubber pole up your hindquarters...do not buy unless you plan on having back surgery from sitting in this chair a few days a total waste of $$$