After years of abusing my body, tendons and nerves by using my computer in an antiergonomical manner I developed hypersensitivity to everything and became allergic to sitting in chairs. Especially I just can't type or mouse with an armrest touching my arms or elbows all the time. Years of sitting in a chair with hard armrests and mousing and keyboarding frantically irritated the hell out of my ulnar and median nerves.
At that point it became an emergency for me to find a chair that caused me the least pain possible. This was years ago.
I went to Office Depot and tested out all of their chairs. The first thing that terribly distressed me was that every single chair in the whole store had arm rests! Argh! I simply cannot tolerate touching armrests ever again! And most of the chairs had HARD armrests. Ugh. But then the nice salesperson told me that certain chairs would function perfectly if I simply did not attach the armrests in the first place. I don't understand why that information was not clearly stated on the label or the box.
What is important to me:
Height adjustable to as low a height as possible. Even though I am a tall dude. I picked out the chair that went the lowest in the whole store. It still was not low enough for me. Pressure on my sciatic nerve kills me so I compensated for this by placing a large seat cushion from a couch under my feet to lift up my feet and keep pressure off my sciatic nerve.
Shape of seat should be what I call "normal". Some/many chairs have a seat that lifts up toward the knees. This mashes a lot of pressure into my sciatic nerve. I never liked seats like that even before I developed all this chronic pain. I always had Restless Leg Syndrome and my legs never liked being mashed into like that.
I was once given a $700.00 really fancy office chair. But due to the seat pointing upwards I just can't use it. (Also it has FIXED Armrests argh!). It is now the guest chair. My guests love that chair.
High Back I have a bad back so I need a high back chair. I simply can't tolerate low back chairs.
It has to give. The chair must have give. In the seat and in the back. In other words it has to be the exact opposite of concrete. It has to flex and squish and have some elasticity. The difference in comfort level between a hard ungiving chair and a soft giving chair is tremendous.
I prefer a chair with springs in the seat for suspension. But they didn't have any at Office Depot or Wal Mart so I had to give up on this.
Mesh Back This is not necessarily a dealbreaker. But a Mesh Back sure is nice. The one on the chair I got gives and stretches quite comfortably. Aaaahhhhh... And it is so much cooler than a solid back! I live in Texas where we have 4 seasons: Hot Humid Summer, Hot Humid Summer, Hot Humid Summer, Warm Humid Fall.
So the mesh back just really works great for me.
Wheels. Wheels are great.
I think the only adjustments on my chair are height adjustment and back can be locked or not locked. AFAIK it has no other adjustments.
Thank God I was able to get this chair! Without this chair there is no way I could be here typing this message!
And the best part was, it was ON SALE for only $199.00. Holy crap! No wait, the best part was, they tried really hard to give it to me for free! They seemed very confused. I picked out the chair and they just took it out to my car. I was like "uhmmm what are u doing?" and they were like "taking your chair out to your car for u" and I was like "uhmm ok but shouldn't I pay for it first?" And they were like "but u already did" and I was like "Crikey! I know I am on serious drugz but I just can't remember paying for it..." So I went back in and paid for it. Maybe I paid twice. But I think I only paid once. Who really knows.
I have had the chair for about 4 years now. It still rolls quite well despite being abused and rolled across the parking lot each month to do the doctor visit.
The upholstery is all cracked and ikky looking, partly from being jammed into the back of my Escort's super small car. The very first time this chair was jammed into a small chair it developed a crack. The crack got bigger each time.
I do not know the make or model of my chair. I can try to find the instruction manual some time if anyone wants to know.
My fave chair of all time was a long time ago: the seat in my beautiful Pontiac Bonneville. It was sooooooooooo soft! It had lots of
springs. Imagine that! They put springs in a chair! Who would ever think to do that!? And it was super duper mega hydraulically adjustable. You could adjust every little aspect of that seat hydraulically. It was Awesome! It actually fixed a lot of my back pain back then.
I would love to have a chair like that again! Only in my house this time!
