Customer Reviews

HumanScale Freedom Chair with Headrest, Black Wave Fabric

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

First, let me say that if you don't spend much time reclining in your office chair, then this is the WRONG chair for you. Plain, and simple.

Second, getting this chair without the headrest is a waste of time. If you don't get the headrest, get a different chair. You'll thank yourself.

This is by far the best chair I've found and this is almost entirely due to the recline-headrest mechanism. The most unique feature of this chair is the ability to recline and still have adequate support to see your monitor.

Out of a 10-hour workday, I will spend roughly 7-8 hours of it in a slightly-reclined to fully-reclined position. This position helps take a lot of pressure off of my back. The headrest is designed to stay "upright" while you lean back which makes it easy to read, view a monitor, type, etc.

The lower-back/lumbar support is aggressive when compared to other chairs, mainly because it's intended to be used while reclined. The back support also moves a little to encourage movement and shifting while sitting in the chair.

The arm rests recline with the back which helps keep the arms comfortable. They also can adjust in quite far and are longer than normal arm rests.

The seatpan can include standard foam or gel. I personally prefer the gel and can easily sit in this chair for 10-hours or longer.

That all said, in the upright position, the headrest may be in the wrong position for some folks and may push your head too far forward (or let it fall too far back). As I mentioned before, the headrest works best when slightly reclined. I had one of these chairs for 7 years and there was never a problem--even the fabric showed almost no wear. I sat in it 10 hours a day, 5 days a week.

Before you buy this chair, you *must* try it out and see if it works for you. If it doesn't fit, you *will* be uncomfortable (as other reviewers have complained). And by try it out, I mean sit in it for an hour. Bring a book, your laptop, whatever. Sitting in it for 5 minutes doesn't prove anything and is a good way to get hurt.

I borrowed one of these while recovering from a severe pinched nerve and needed strong shoulder support. I found the chair great in that aspect, and I loved that it would adjust to my seating position instead of having to move a bunch of levers.

The big problem is that I can't sit in the chair for much more than an hour. There's hardly any padding in the seat, so after I while my butt gets sweaty and starts to hurt. Other chairs seem to have solved this problem by having either a mesh seat or a lot of padding. Not sure how they messed this up.

Maybe this is a subtle way of encouraging us to get up and walk around every hour or so. If so, that's not what I was looking for. Even after taking a 5-10m break, sitting back down still hurt.

Too bad; otherwise it's a remarkable chair.

"upgraded" from an aeron chair (actually handed it down to my wife) as I work from home and am sitting in a chair for many hours straight. I tried many, many different chairs from specialty stores at all different price ranges and spent about 4 weeks of trial and error before deciding to get this one. I am 5'9", 185 pounds and sorta muscular build. Some things I have noticed:

1. Chairs are very personal items. This chair seems to be designed to fit average sized people.

2. I first tried the regular seat for a couple of days before deciding to upgrade to the gel seat. But I think this is a personal choice issue. Some people like the gel and some dont. I much prefer the gel.

3. I found that I had to go with all of the upgrades to get the most out of the chair such as the advanced arms.

4. Even after all of the research it still took me about a full day to get used to the differences of this chair. Wouldnt give it up if you paid me double for it:)


Also...after 3 years of owning this chair one of the functions of the arm rests stopped working properly. I called humanscale and they were EXTREMELY responsive to my issue and are sending a replacement are right out. Nice to have a lifetime warranty.

When I first used this chair it didn't seem to quite fit my proportions until I realized that the chair had many degrees of adjustability. Once I figured that out it was fantastic. The back support really distributes the weight well across the entire back rather than concentrate at any one spot. I find I am basically able to sit in a completely neutrally relaxed position while working at the keyboard. I am also able to lean back and doze off and the chair will not tilt all the way back so as to topple over. The degree to which that tilt occurs is also adjustable.

For the reviewer that said they felt like they were sliding off the chair, there is an adjustment to change the tilt of the seat which will essentially stop that from happening.

4 months after using the one in my office, I bought one for my home office. It is now September 2010 (almost 3 years since I originally owned the first chair) and both chairs are just as good as the day I bought them.

I'm enjoying this chair immensely. Not only does it look pretty good (less like a dentist chair than some healthy-back chairs), but it is remarkably comfortable. It invites you to lean into it, which gives you more back support and puts less strain on the disks in the lower back, hence less agonizing back pain. It also moves with you as you lean back and the headrest keeps your head in alignment, too. The arm rests tilt in to support your forearms comfortably when you type. I'm able to sit longer without the discomfort (and subsequent pain) I experienced with other chairs. It's a little pricey, which is why I've put on 4 stars, rather than 5. (On the other hand, all such chairs are pretty expensive.)

I've used this chair, with the headrest (which it shouldn't be purchased without) constantly for almost 8 years now and it's absolutely the best. Plus Humanscale is a great company -one of the arms recently broke and the company paid to have it replaced, after 8 years!! I didn't have to beg or cojole, either.

The cushioning isn't as thick as some others for a very good reason -so your butt doesn't get locked in deep cushioning, which may seem more comfortable in the short run but is really detrimental after a few hours work. The best thing is the way the headrest works -if I'm in need of a few minutes break, leaning back brings the headrest into position and wow, is it nice. And it's perfectly balanced even all the way back.

This may be a particularly good chair if you're tall -I'm 6'5", almost two meters.


Check out Humanscale's own website (http://www.humanscale.com/products/freedom_index.cfm?detail=features) for more info on its settings.

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.

I've had my HumanScale Freedom chair for 2.5 years and there's a lot to love about it. The automatic adjustments and back support are superb.

The arms, however, are its Achilles heel. First, they're hard to adjust correctly, but more importantly, they're very brittle. We have half a dozen of these chairs in the office and every one of them has had problems with the plastic bits that anchor the arms to the frame breaking. Some of our chairs have been repaired twice. Even though I have taken scrupulous care never to push down on the the arms when I stand up, one of the arms on my chair has still failed.

The good news is that other reviewers report that the company has a lifetime warranty and is good about facilitating repairs. I sure hope it's true.

Length:: 2:36 Mins

I love this chair for my home where I play video games and work on the computer. For the office I have a liberty chair though. I liked this better than the embody chair because the chair moves with your back when you lean back. It feels like it has more lower back support too. Here's a video review I did
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I found it more comfortable than several that we tried at my office. The simplicity is amazing, no fiddling with 4 knobs and levers. The counterweight reclining is awesome. I can recline and take a short nap no problem. Do get the headrest. As advertised it promotes moving your position without needing re-adjustment. I do wish the lumbar support moved higher, which is more comfortable in the reclining position. Personally I liked the padding rather than the cooler mesh chairs. Service is great. I did crack one handrest after putting too much weight on it repeatedly, but HumanScale sent me a new one free with one e-mail, no questions asked.