How to choose an office chair: seven checks before you pay.

1. Back height against your shoulders

This is the check that decides most of it, and it is the one people skip. A backrest that stops below your shoulder blades will never support your upper back, no matter what the mechanism does underneath.

Across our catalogue backrests run from 536 mm to 860 mm tall. That is not a small difference — it is the difference between a chair that ends at your mid-back and one that carries your head. As a rough rule: if you are under about 175 cm, a back in the 536–700 mm range usually sits right. Taller than that and you want 750 mm or more, with a headrest if you lean back to think.

Measure yourself sitting, not standing: floor to the top of your shoulder, in the chair you use now. Then compare it with the figure on the product page — every chair we list shows the manufacturer’s own back dimensions.

A tall example: ErgoLife Set 11 B1-111K TG1.0Pl AED 1,090.

2. Seat width and depth against your body

Seat widths here run from 440 mm to 510 mm. Forty millimetres sounds trivial until you sit in the wrong one for eight hours. Too narrow and the side bolsters press on your hips; too wide and you cannot use the armrests without shrugging.

Depth matters as much and is quoted less. Sit back fully: you want two to three fingers of gap between the seat edge and the back of your knee. Less than that and the seat cuts off circulation in your calves — the classic reason legs go numb by mid-afternoon and people blame the chair’s foam.

3. The tilt mechanism — the part that costs money

Under every office chair is a metal box that decides how the seat and back move when you lean. It is the single most expensive component and the one that fails first on a cheap chair. There are three families worth knowing:

Mechanism	What it does	Worth it when
Permanent contact	The back follows you, the seat stays flat.	Short sessions, tight budgets, a second chair.
Synchro tilt	Back and seat recline together at a fixed ratio, usually around 2:1, so your feet stay down as you lean.	Full working days. This is the sensible default.
Multiblock synchro with slider	Synchro tilt that also locks at several angles, with seat depth that slides.	You share the chair, or your legs are long or short for your height.

Of the 157 chairs we sell, 81 use a synchro mechanism of some kind. If you sit for a living, this is the line item to spend on before you spend on leather.

A synchro example: ErgoLife Sit Air 24/7 B2-287D AED 1,290.

4. Lumbar support: a cushion or an adjustment

«Lumbar support» on a spec sheet can mean two completely different things. A lumbar cushion is a fixed pad in the lower back — it works if the pad happens to land where your spine curves. An adjustable support moves: 2D means height and depth, 3D adds firmness.

In our range 43 chairs have the 3D version. Whether you need it depends on one thing: whether the fixed pad lands right on you. If you have ever caught yourself putting a folded towel behind your back, buy the adjustable one.

An adjustable example: Samurai S-1 L1-1K AED 2,290.

5. Armrests, and why fixed ones are not a scandal

Adjustable armrests are marketed as the difference between a serious chair and a toy. They are not. What matters is whether the armrest ends up at the height of your desk surface, so your shoulders drop and your forearms rest level.

If your desk is a standard 720–750 mm and you are of average height, a well-placed fixed armrest does that job. If you are tall, short, or your desk is non-standard — or if two people use the chair — adjustable earns its money. 36 of our models have 2D, 3D, 4D or 5D armrests; the rest are fixed, and for many people that is fine.

An adjustable example: ErgoLife Set TV L2-107D AED 2,190.

6. Gas lift class — the number nobody quotes

The gas cylinder that raises the seat is rated by class. Class 3 and class 4 are what you meet in office chairs, and class 4 is the higher rating of the two: more cycles before it starts sinking, more load tolerated. A sinking chair after two years is almost always a cheap cylinder, not a broken chair.

Nobody advertises this, which is exactly why it is worth checking. We list it on every product page. 44 of our chairs use a class 4 cylinder.

The stroke is quoted too, as two numbers like 140/85 — the travel and the closed length in millimetres. A longer stroke means a wider height range, which matters if you are tall or if the chair moves between a desk and a counter.

7. Base and castors against your floor

Two decisions, both cheap to get right and annoying to get wrong.

• The base. Steel or aluminium bases take abuse and weight better than polyamide. Polyamide is lighter and cheaper and perfectly adequate for a home office where the chair is not shoved across the room daily.
• The castors. Hard polyamide wheels are for carpet. On tile, parquet or the polished concrete that is in half the apartments in Dubai, you want a polyurethane rim — quieter, and it does not score the floor. 37 of our chairs use anti-roll castors, which brake under the chair’s own weight when you stand up, so it does not drift away from the desk.

What does not matter as much as the photographs suggest

Some of what a chair is sold on has little to do with how it feels on day two hundred:

• Leather. It looks expensive and it is warmer than mesh. In a climate where you run the air conditioning nine months a year that can be pleasant — but it is a comfort preference, not an ergonomic feature.
• The number of levers. A chair with eight adjustments you never touch is worse than a chair with three that fit you.
• «Ergonomic» as a word. It is not certified by anyone when used in a headline. The European standard for office chairs, EN 1335, sets out dimensions and safety requirements — a standard is a floor, not a promise that a chair suits your body.

Questions people ask before ordering

The short version

Back height to your shoulders. Seat that fits your hips and leaves room behind your knees. A synchro mechanism if you sit all day. Lumbar support that lands where your spine curves. Armrests at desk height. A class 4 cylinder if you can. Castors that match your floor.

Seven checks, and the cheapest chair that passes them is a better buy than the most expensive one that fails two. Price is not the signal people think it is: in our own range a synchro mechanism — the check worth spending on — starts at AED 1,290, while plenty of chairs above that price do without one. Sort the catalogue by price and read the mechanism line before the photograph.