Michael York

Three years ago I was working 10-hour days from a $150 office chair I bought on impulse. By month six my lower back was in constant pain. My doctor said “get a better chair” — but every review site I found was either pushing the same sponsored picks or written by someone who clearly never sat in the chairs they were ranking.

I spent $4,000 of my own money testing a Herman Miller Aeron, a Steelcase Leap, and three budget alternatives side by side. The Aeron fixed my back in two weeks. But the process of figuring out which chair to buy was absurdly difficult — buried specs, inflated “sale” prices, and reviews that read like product descriptions. I started documenting what I found. That documentation became Office Chair Judge.

Since then I've tested over 50 chairs and standing desks. I track prices, dig into specs sheets, read hundreds of Amazon reviews for every product, and try to answer the one question that actually matters: is this thing worth your money?