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- Verified Buyer
WOW! Just WOW!! I'm seriously impressed with this chair, so far.I'm 6' and 250 lbs, I spend 60 - 80+ hours a week at my desk in a chair. I've had some good chairs that I've paid a lot of money for and I've had some poor chairs I've paid a lot of money for too. This is the first really good chair I didn't have to pay a lot of money for.The engineering in this chair is first rate. Putting it together it's obvious that it is meant to withstand some punishment. The metal hardware is significantly beefier than my last chair (Which was a Serta Big and Tall and lasted 2.5 years before failing totally). The struts that comprise the arms and hold the back to the seat are massive for a desk chair. The gas strut actually stays where I put it and doesn't leak down giving me that sinking feeling every time I lean back. The lumbar support is a plus and it is infinitely adjustable from nothing to a fairly good lumbar bulge.The seat padding is very firm, of course it's meant to withstand a hundred pounds more than I'm putting on it so I guess that's understandable. It's not so firm that it's uncomfortable but compared to my last chair it's very noticeably more firm. The arm rests are well padded and larger than my last chair.The castors roll very easily, maybe even a little too easily because the chair tends to want to scoot away from me if I'm not careful as I sit. The chair rolls on a chair mat on a tile floor silently.I'm about 2/3rds the capacity of this chair so I maybe didn't need a "big and tall" model but I bought it because I tear up chairs. I figured that this would be sturdier than a standard chair and it certainly appears that's the case. In my way of thinking a sturdier chair should last longer, though there's no way to know that yet and if not ... Just like my LAST chair I'll come back here and update my review as time goes on. My last chair started out at 5 stars too, it was great when it was new but it didn't make it three years and that review is now one star.I'm of the opinion that a quality, well made chair should last 5 or more years before it fails. I don't mean before it starts showing wear, I don't give a fig what it looks like when it's 5 years old as long as it's still comfortable and serviceable. It's nice having a pretty new chair but the esthetics are irrelevant to me after a reasonable period of time. Things are going to wear, they should not wear prematurely but if they wear over time that's to be expected. When I say a chair "fails" I mean it is no longer serviceable because it is BROKEN and unusable.I'd been looking at this chair for quite a while, it's been in my Wish List for months. I had determined that this was the next chair I was buying when the one I had became unserviceable. It came up on an Amazon Deal for significantly less than the listed price so I decided to go for it, the old chair was on its last gasp anyway. I wish I had gotten it sooner (though not that I'd had to pay more for it) because I was holding on to the old one trying to squeeze every month out of it I could get. I should have bought this chair sooner but as chance would have it all's well that ends well.There was a hole in the box when the chair was delivered but there was no damage to the chair itself. It was very easy to follow the instructions and assemble the chair. I use a socket and ratchet to tighten up the bolts because it's been my experience that if those fasteners are not as tight as they can be without stripping then the chair will loosen up and fail sooner than it would have if those bolts were good and tight. If you get them snugged up good and tight there's no slop and no play in the assembly to allow things to get out of dimension and fail.This is Bonded Leather, not top grain cowhide leather. Most such chairs are Bonded Leather. If you don't know what that is you should look it up. It's a leather product made by dissolving the connective tissue in leather, extracting the fibers, then bonding the fibers to cloth making a sheet of dimension material for upholstery, book binding, etc. You should care for Bonded Leather the same way you care for any other leather, it is actually organic leather material. Before I put the chair into service I wiped it down good with Pecards Leather Dressing and after that sat for a few minutes in I used a leather sealer to be sure my new chair and I got started on the right foot. This moisturizes the leather but also decreases friction and keeps dust and dirt out. Friction and the cutting/grinding action of dirt and dust cause accelerated wear so if you want your chair to last you should clean it and treat it about once a month. (Don't soak your chair in leather conditioner, less is more when it comes to conditioners.) Clean and treat more often in dirtier environments like warehouses and such. The best time to do that is as you leave your desk and chair for the day so it can penetrate over night.Note that I am NOT saying that Bonded Leather is just as good as top or full grain genuine leather. It most certainly is not. If you want full grain leather you shouldn't even be looking at chairs in this price range. IF you think you got full grain leather on a chair in this price range you didn't, sorry. One of the main things that cause deterioration and failure of Bonded Leather is letting the leather fibers dry out, this makes them lose their adhesion to their backing material, crack and flake off. That is going to happen eventually to pretty much all bonded leather but you can stave off that eventuality somewhat by proper care and treatment with a decent conditioner.I'm seriously impressed and happy with this chair. If that changes have no doubt I will absolutely say something about it.A NOTE ABOUT "NOISY" CHAIRS-The chair I have is silent. It makes absolutely no noise at all. While it's possible I got lucky and that production values and quality control on these chairs is hit-or-miss ... It's more likely that I put my chair together differently than people who are having noise, wobble/wiggle and stability issues.I never use the hex key that comes with chairs requiring assembly. I can't get sufficient torque on the bolts that fasten the chair together with the included hex key. I use a socket and ratchet wrench set to assemble chairs and have done so for years. This chair uses 1/2 inch bolt heads (if I'm remembering right, or they might be 7/16ths) so I crank those bolts down pretty hard. To avoid stripping them I "choke up' on the ratchet holding it closer to the ratchet head than farther out along the handle. You can put too much torque on almost any bolt and that will destroy your chair, so you need to be careful.That spot of blue looking plastic stuff on the bolts is thread locker. It locks the bolts in place once they're tightened down. I don't know what brand or characteristics the thread locker on these is. Some, most thread lockers are activated by pressure and heat. It's possible that the bolt is now locked in place and will only tighten with significant force applied. If you try to tighten up your bolts as per my advice then first break them loose by turning them a quarter to a half turn OUT before you try to turn them back in to tighten. That will break the thread locker loose in a safe direction and allow you to snug the bolt down tight as it needs to be. The thread locker with then re-lock the threads because you have put more pressure on it than it had before.The fact that the manufacturer includes thread locker on the bolts tells you a couple things. It means they're aware that loose bolts are a problem. They have no control over how much torque you apply to the bolts so this is all they can do in that regard, except maybe send a better tool than a hex key. It also means that they're conscientious enough about quality and customer satisfaction to put thread locker on the threads for increased positive customer experience.Update:It's July 2019 and I've had this chair now for 1 year and 7 months. I've replaced the gas strut lift cylinder and just now replaced the base plate where the chair attaches to the lift cylinder and star legs. The base plate is the part that bolts to the bottom of the chair and has the tension adjuster for leaning back and the lock/lift control lever for raising and lowering it.So now this chair has cost me the price I paid for it on sale plus another $60 +/-, which brings the cost to me up to about what the regular price of the chair is. Which still isn't bad and I only took a single star off of my initial review.The chair itself is still almost like brand new with just a little flaking of the bonded leather on front sides of the arm rests. That's no big deal to me. The seat and back are holding together very well with no rips, tears or worn spots and the cushioning is still as good as the day I bought the chair. It still looks very nice except for that minor flaking on the arm rest covers and a spot on the front support of the right arm rest where the pocket clip on my pocket knife abrades the silver coloring and has worn it down to black plastic. The pocket knife damage isn't the chair's fault, it's mine.The lift cylinder died the way they all seem to, it would not hold its setting and slowly sank to the lowest position. That happened about a year into owning the chair. I replaced it with one that is a little bit longer and the new one places the seat at exactly the right height when the seat is in its lower most position. Which means I'm not really using the gas strut at all unless I want it to sit up higher for some reason, which is rare.The base plate failed at the same place they all seem to. There's a pivot pin in front of the lift control and behind the tension control, the thing you tighten or loosen to make the chair lean back. That pivot pin is where the chair pivots to lean back and is the actual point of attachment between the chair itself and the base plate/lift cylinder/legs. That's the part that takes ALL the strain of having your bottom in the chair and moving around, leaning back, side-to-side torque, etc. The bushing around that pivot pin broke causing a definite lean and wobble with the seat. A gap of 1/8th inch at the center of the chair translates to about an inch and a half or two inches of drop at the outside edge of the chair and that was unacceptable. I probably could have lived with it anyway but I decided to replace that part with an even heavier and sturdier after market base plate. Which I will review when it has been on the chair for a while.Because the seat has held up so well and because the chair is made with standardized parts that allow me to make repairs and do replacements while keeping the comfortable, serviceable seat and backrest instead of buying a whole new chair -- I only took one star off of my 5 star review. I'm trying to be fair because I know I'm really, really hard on chairs. Most people who use a chair in an office environment are not going to be nearly so demanding of a chair as I am.It is extremely hard for me to find a good chair that will last more than a couple of years. I'm very happy that I can fix this one rather than replace the whole thing. I got this chair at a very good price so I do not mind the minor-to-medium extra expense of buying replacement parts now and then. I replaced the failed parts with hardware better suited to the torture I put a chair through which means that now I have, for the price of some parts, what amounts to a brand new chair that should last me even longer than the original parts allowed.All of that said, the original parts failed sooner than I expected them to for a "Big and Tall" chair so keep that in mind if you're thinking about buying this chair. If you're any good at all tracking down the point of failure and determining what part to buy and are a little bit handy with tools you can do what I did. If not then you might want to look elsewhere but like I said ... It's REALLY hard to find a chair that lasts and remains comfortable for a long time.If you do find something better I'd appreciate it if you'd leave a comment and let me know where I can find that chair. I've had $1200 chairs that also fell apart so it's not really a matter of what you spend in an attempt to get higher quality. I had an Office Star Space chair that I loved when it was new but the base plate SNAPPED in half from metal fatigue. The company replaced it and eventually it got to be unserviceable for someone like me so I gave it to my nephew who weighs 120 lbs. max after a heavy meal. He's still happily using it for the couple hours a day he needs a desk chair. The problem is one of engineering more than anything else, though of course a cheaper chair is made with cheaper, lighter parts and the difference becomes obvious on some of the really low-priced chairs. This Amazon Basics chair would benefit from a heavier base plate like the one I installed and now being as I've replaced that plate it WILL benefit from it. All of which is fine and dandy IF the actual seat/backrest/arms part of the chair holds up, which this one seems to be doing very, very well. I feel that my rating of four stars is fair and reasonable, if I had the means to rate in fractions of a star I'd give the chair 3.85 stars but I had to round up to 4.At 3.85 stars for quality and value I'm very happy with this chair still.Despite all the mixed recent reviews, I needed a new office chair and opted to take a chance on this one. With so many 5-Stars overall, I figured it was worth chancing it. General me info: I'm a decently large guy but won't be maxing out the weight rating on this chair (6'1", ~230lbs). I'm pretty active while sitting and tend to fidget quite a bit, lean/sit unevenly, sit cross-legged, and lift myself with the armrests. I generally spend 3-4 hours per day at my workstation, but with quarantining it's been more like 8-10. So any problems or shortcomings with this new chair should present sooner, rather than later.This just delivered today so it's still pretty early for a review. I'll likely update this if anything breaks, falls apart, or irritates me. If it's been a while and I haven't added an update, you're safe to assume this chair is holding up as expected.So- for anyone else on the fence over whether or not to order, here are my initial thoughts:Shipping:* Delivered in a large corrugated cardboard box, approx 50 lbs and 2.5'x2'x1.5'. Components were wrapped either in bubble wrap or in plastic.* Worked out fine for me, but if yours takes a beating in transit I can easily imagine components getting damaged.Assembly:* Lots of people complaining about assembly on these, I had precisely zero troubles. I've put together quite a few chairs of this type, so that may play into my experience with this one.General Assembly Tips:* Make sure you're using the correct bolts in the correct places. There are three different lengths, and the instructions are pretty clear on which are intended to go where. No, I don't usually read them either, but skimming through the instructions is generally a good idea- especially when there are a bunch of really similar components involved.* Bolts each have a patch of the dry blue thread locker, ignore it. It's nice they added it for you, but this stuff is nearly useless. It'll work well enough to hold things together while you go get some real thread locker, but not for permanent installation or extended use.* If you don't add real thread locker, plan for the fasteners to work themselves loose. You'll know they're loose because you'll start experiencing shifting/leaning/squeaks and the chair will wobble when you move around. That's not a chair problem, that's an assembly issue. Easy enough to fix, just tip the chair over, remove fasteners, apply thread locker, and reinstall. What do you mean you still don't have thread locker? Go order some now!* Tilt mechanism and seat cushion are both clearly marked which direction is front. On mine, the front side of the seat cushion has a plastic spacer thing that the front bolts run through. Looks like it's intended to angle the front edge of the seat high. The Tilt mechanism should be marked with the front side- if yours isn't marked, the tilt lock lever should be on your right when you're sitting in the chair. If you install the seat cushion to the Tilt Mechanism backwards the seat angle will be weird, the arm angle will be weird, the seat back angle will be weird, and you'll end up being one of those people complaining that you can't sit up straight and your chair is tilted back way too far.* Arms bolt in 4 places, two on the bottom of the seat cushion, one on the side of the back cushion, and the last on the back of the back cushion. Install the two seat cushion bolts hand tight into both arms first, then flip the chair over and put in the back cushion and those fasteners. Don't tighten any of these past hand tight until you've got all 8 bolts (both sides!) in place. The cushion padding in this thing is pretty thick, so as you're putting things together you'll need to shift, squish, and wiggle. The bolts align with the threaded t-nuts just fine if you do it this way. Once everything is in place, start working your way around tightening bolts. Tighten them in evenly- don't crank one all the way in while the other three are still way loose or you'll just be pulling everything out of alignment.Fit and Finish:* It's bonded leather... so I expect it'll hold up better than cloth. Won't be as breathable, so take that into consideration if you're somewhere warm. Will definitely be easier to clean.* Arms and base are plastic that looks to be coated with a metallic paint. Its got a glossy finish, so likely has some kind of hardener. Don't know how that'll hold up, but I honestly don't care how the plastic bits look as long as they're sturdy and function properly.* Castor wheels have very low rolling resistance, so this chair rolls around really easily. Great if you like that, might need to loop something like yarn around the castor axles to add some resistance if you don't.* Padding feels thick and firm, nothing poking through where it shouldn't be.* Lumbar support is more noticeable than I expected. Cranked it all the way in and could still feel it. Initially this bugged me, but it's been a few hours now and I don't even notice it.*Looks good- Black Bonded Leather and white stitching look good. Arms and base plastic bits look good.Overall, I'm very happy with this chair. Again, it's still really early for a review, but like I said; With so many bad reviews filled with what seemed to be self-inflicted assembly problems, I wanted to get this out there quickly.The chair is big and looks impressive. However, there are a couple of issues with it:1. The base is plastic / fibre. That may be a problem for a chair of this bulk2. There are small caps to cover the screws. Some of the caps have already fallen off because the screws do not fit completely in the cavity and the caps then do not fit properly.Pros:1. Pleasing looks2. Large seat cushion providing good thigh support3. A good lumbar support which can be adjustedTime will tell how this chair weathers[Update 04 Nov 2018] One of the arms has come loose and there is a play in it.The tilt mechanism is not working.That is a lot of problems in a short time[Update 06 Jan 2019] Have had the most horrible experience with Cloudtail and Amazon. The servicing issue mentioned above on 04 Nov 2018 is still unresolved and the vendors are playing games. First they wanted a photo of the product, then a video - both of which were sent to them, and now they want another photo and video !? Is this what they expect their customers to be doing? Why can't they send a service personnel to fix the problems instead of playing games? A very sad and very disappointing experience. I am downgrading my earlier rating and giving it a 1 star.Chair is comfortable but with in 7 months the leather stitches started getting torn. Leather is damaged on the Hand support and lot of places.Cloudtail support is the worst. Its been 2 months since I contacted them and all I get reply as "we are working on it".Contacted AMazon also. AMazon support keeping me telling I need to contact cloudtail and they never resolve. Loosing confidence on AmazonIt is a good chair. Comfortable, and well built. Butter smooth wheels. The base is strong, though made up of plastic. It has a nice back arch support adjustment. Can sit for 2-3hrs without break. Can bear heavy weight. Well cushioned.But, I am 5.6ft and my legs barely touch the ground even at the lowest setting. It also hinders my ability to lean back.Bought this for office. I also have the Green Soul Vienna Big & Tall chair at home, and I liked it way better than this. Strange, because that one cost me 4K less.EDIT1: After 1 week of use I have changed my opinion of this chair. I get back aches with this chair if I sit for over 1Hour in it. I believe it is because of the poor back support at the bootom. Perhaps it is actually meant for people who are taller than 5.6ft. But, for me - this chair isn't good.I try not to write Amazon reviews until after I've used the product for a while. Initial impressions count for nothing over the years.This chair was reasonably comfortable, had reasonable support, and was relatively easy to assemble (done that before). Having said that, it wasn't great at anything. Did I get my money's worth? Yes. It's basics, it functions, and is reasonable money. But, you get what you pay for, and I sit in this thing an average of probably 8 hours a day.After a year and a half, there are a multitude of complaints, and I'm replacing it. The bonded leather is cracking on the arm rests, and quilting edges on seat and back (which back is quite short for something labeled tall and barely makes it to my shoulders; I'm 5'11"). I'm under the rated weight limit (though not by much), and that's probably the problem. The chair creaks, it rocks. If I lean to the left the whole thing tilts and I support myself on the L of my desk. The height adjustment died a long time ago. It goes up, and within an hour is at the bottom. If I lean back, the whole thing rocks, and I'm continually afraid I'm about to hit the floor. The little snap-in covers over the bolts holding it together pop out when you lean the right way. I could go on. If you were well under 300 lbs this would be a great chair. But, listed as big and tall, it's not able to take the beating.
