Flexispot Flexi-Chair Oka Office Chair BS9 Review

Flexispot makes a range of office furniture, more particularly what you’d call “home office” furniture, including desks and even an exercise bike-desk I reviewed short while ago. The lineup also includes the Flexi-Chair Oka Office Chair. Personally, I’ve always thought that there are certain things in life you shouldn’t scrimp on. Office chairs are definitely one of those things. Let’s take a look at the Flexi-Chair chair in this review and see how it fares.

Take a seat

Let’s go over some of the physical attributes of the Flexispot Flexi-Chair Oka Office Chair. It’s meant for office use and is evidently designed for long duration of sitting. It’s not an occasional use chair and meant for extended sessions of seated work.

The seat material is a modern breathable mesh, in a striking orange, which means when sat in, it feels comfortably similar to the ambient temperature in the room, being neither colder nor warmer than the surrounding air. The chair back fabric is tensioned on a frame rather than being over a cushion and is shaped to provide good lumbar support.

There are five legs on the floor, each with its own caster, and the central column contains a gas canister, which facilitates the rise and fall of the height adjustment. The arms are slim curves of textured plastic, and the back is lockable but tilts back if you lean on it.

Not a Hot Seat

Having been a freelancer for more decades than I’ll freely admit to, I’ve sat in many chairs for work, most of which I had to buy for myself. Choosing a chair that you are going to spend so much time sitting in is something you can’t really rush, but the risk is that a chair which is okay to perch in for five minutes isn’t going to cut it after five hours. It’s a difficult problem to solve.

The best advice I can give you is to choose one which uses a suspended mesh rather than a cushion, as these feel cool when it’s hot and warm when it’s cool. Air circulates around you when you sit in them. Also, I would advise a chair that is adjustable to the height of your desk and the length of your legs. Ergonomics, or the science of merging physiology with engineering, dictates that being too high or too low or skewed in any way will literally come back to bite you in the bum.

The Flexispot Flexi-Chair Oka Office Chair BS9 scores very highly on my personal checklist of comfort and adaptability. Although it’s not as configurable as chairs costing hundreds more, it is adjustable enough and comfortable enough to serve the needs of a frequent user.

The suspended fabric holds you like a taught hammock. Sitting in it is an almost surreal floating sensation, where it feels almost too light and airy to support you. But the parts of the chair which anchor you to the ground are heavy and sturdy. Overall, you feel very supported and comfortable.

Adjusting the chair to the right height for your table, where your forearms are totally horizontal, is an easy matter of pulling the lever under the seat and raising and lowering yourself until the height is correct for your legs and desk.

One excellent feature which I didn’t know I needed was the tilt back. You can lock it off by pushing in the height adjusting lever. Releasing it, you can lean back until you are almost lying down. At no point does the chair feel unstable or unsteady, even at full stretch. Its build quality, as with other Flexispot products I’ve tried, is very solid and well finished with attractive materials, which feel nice to the touch.

The Flexispot Flex-Chair Oka Office Chair BS9 comes packed flat in a large sturdy cardboard box and is really easy to put together, although because of the weight of the base, quite challenging at times. I’d highly recommend putting it together in the room where it’s going to be used, as carrying it from room to room fully assembled is quite hard work. If you need it upstairs in a back bedroom, I’d lug it up there in the box with a friend.

It’s hard to find much in the way of downsides, but although I love the color, which is a kind of burnt orange, I do worry it might hold a stain. That said, the material does feel like it would repel liquids somewhat, so I imagine it’ll blot successfully if you are a bit flamboyant with the coffee cup. Orange appears to be the only color offered, and despite the fact I like the orange, it would be a good thing if they chose to offer other colors in the future. A raspberry color would be great to see.

Availability

The Flexispot Flexi-Chair Oka Office Chair BS9 is priced at around £299.99 and is available from the Flexispot website and a range of online retailers.