Branch Ergonomic Chair review

Where this chair sits

There is a gap between the £60 mesh chair from a general retailer and the £900 contract chair, and it is where most people shopping for a home office actually land. Branch built a business in it.

The Ergonomic Chair is $369, sold directly, delivered in a box, available in seven seat colours and two frame colours, with an optional headrest. It has over seven thousand reviews on its own page at a 4.5 average, which tells you it sells in volume and that the average buyer is content.

Our verdict after several weeks: it is the best new chair we have sat in under $400, and the advice we give most people is still to buy a used Steelcase instead if they possibly can.

What actually adjusts

Eight points, and unlike a lot of chairs at this price the list is not padded.

Seat height and seat depth. Tilt, and tilt tension. Armrests that move up, in and out, and pivot — Branch call them 3D and they are removable. And a lumbar rest that slides up and down the back and comes off completely.

Seat depth is the one to notice. It is the adjustment that most separates a chair from the tier below, and plenty of chairs at this price simply do not have it. If you have long or short femurs, this is the control that makes a chair fit rather than approximately fit.

The removable lumbar is the second good idea. Fixed lumbar bumps are the most common complaint about mid-price chairs, because a bump in the wrong place is worse than no bump at all. Here you can move it, and if it still does not suit your back you can take it off and sit against the mesh.

Fit range, stated plainly

Branch publish a range: roughly 5'2" to 6'2". We appreciate that they say it, because most makers do not, and it is the most useful sentence on the product page.

Outside that range the chair does not become dangerous, it becomes a compromise — the back is too short or the seat too deep — and there are better answers. Under 5'2", look at a smaller chair or a Herman Miller Aeron in size A. Over 6'2", you want a taller back and a longer seat, which means the Leap or the Gesture.

The seat and the back

The back is a mesh panel in a rigid frame with a pronounced curve at the top, which pushes the upper back forward slightly and encourages a more upright posture than a flat panel does. It works, and it is more opinionated than most chairs at this price.

The seat is foam rather than mesh, firm, with a proper waterfall front edge. After several weeks it has not developed a dish, which is the failure we half-expected and the thing that ruins most budget chairs inside a year.

The mechanism is synchronous: the back and seat move together at a fixed ratio as you recline. It is smooth and it is not adjustable beyond tension, so there is no separate back-angle lock. If you like to sit at one fixed recline all day, you will be holding it against the spring.

Where the money was saved

The arms. Firm plastic pads with an edge you can feel if you lean weight into them. They move in the directions that matter; they are not pleasant to rest on for hours.

Tension range. The recline tension covers a reasonable middle band of body weights. Heavier sitters will find the firmest setting looser than they want.

The warranty. Branch's cover is good for the price and it is not the twelve years that Steelcase, Herman Miller and Haworth put behind their chairs, nor is there the same parts catalogue in year eight. That is the structural difference between a $369 chair and a $1,300 one, and no feature list changes it.

Against the two chairs either side of it

Against the Sihoo Doro C300, which costs about the same: the Branch is better built — firmer foam, a more rigid frame, less flex under load — and the Sihoo has a dynamic lumbar the Branch does not. We would take the Branch, narrowly, for the build.

Against a second-hand Steelcase Leap, which sells for roughly the same money in any city with an office market: the Leap wins on every measure that matters over ten years. Better foam, better arms, more adjustment, parts you can still buy.

The Branch's answer to that is a box on your doorstep, a warranty, a colour you chose, and no drive across a city to a clearance warehouse. For a lot of people that is worth the difference, and it is a legitimate reason rather than a lazy one.

Practicalities

Assembly is about twenty minutes and one person; the parts are labelled and the tool is included. Shipping is free and Branch quote a delivery week rather than a vague range.

Accessories are sold alongside — a chair mat and an adjustable footrest among them. The footrest is worth considering if your desk is fixed-height and slightly too tall, which is most fixed desks for anyone under about 5'6".

Verdict

A 7.9. A genuinely good chair at a fair price, sitting in the awkward spot where the second-hand market undercuts it on quality and nothing new undercuts it on value.