Aeron Chairs

A couple of months back both Leanne and I suffered Catastrophic Chair Failure (CCF) when the chairs we use in our home office failed with a week or two of each other.

I had been thinking about a new chair for a while, and Leanne was using a very old and not particularly good quality chair too.

After much searching (and some advice from a friend – thanks Stu’ !), we went and looked at some Aeron chairs.

I had used these while at IBM (one of our conference rooms had them), and thought they were okay – but they always seemed to be set wrong for me.

I found a company here in Sydney that sells them and arranged to visit to have a look and try them with Leanne. The sales rep started by showing us how to adjust the chairs correctly – and once I realised how flexible they were in adjustment, I was sold. Particularly important was the tension adjuster on the tilt function – because I am heavy, most of these chairs feel really “floppy” and unsupportive, but by dialing up the tension, I was able to set it to give me enough support to feel comfortable and actually be able to make use of the tilt function.

They also come in multiple sizes – so I was able to get one wide enough for my body, while Leanne got a smaller model that suited her better.

Given that I work from home, I use my chair a lot, and with the neck problems I’ve had in the past, posture is really important. It took me a while to get used to the chair, but now that I am, I find it quite comfortable. It will be interesting as we are coming into summer and warmer weather – the mesh back and seat allows more air circulation, which should hopefully keep me a bit cooler.

They are expensive chairs, but come with a 10 year warranty, and given that my last chair (which was also fairly expensive) only lasted about 5 years, I’m expecting that the quality makes it worth the extra cost. By the way – we didn’t get the chrome version shown in the picture, just the regular version!