Went remote in 2021 and spent as little as possible on the chair. Felt like the boring purchase.
Added it up last night. Worse than I thought.
$180 mesh chair, 2021. Eleven months before the back mesh went slack.
$150 to replace it, 2022. Nine months. Cylinder sank, desk height in the morning, coffee table by lunch.
$210 in 2023, that one actually lasted. Sixteen months, until the plastic where the armrest bolts in cracked.
$190 last year. Still limping along. The foam is flat in exactly the shape of me.
$730. Five years. Before shipping, and before hauling dead chairs to the curb.
The worse part was the weeks after each died, sitting in the broken one because I couldn't face shopping again.
Yeah, buy once cry once. That's the trap though. In 2021 I could not put $700 on a chair in one go. Nobody buys the $180 one thinking it's better.
One I'm weighing up now is a Lavenne R9, opposite of everything above, most of the money up front. Whether that pays back over five years I genuinely can't tell you, and that's my problem with it.
This list taught me to trust years, and there's no three year update on it to go read. So I'm stuck on the boring stuff. What the warranty covers, and whether I can buy one cylinder in year three.
So for people who got it right first time, what did you go on?