I've had this chair for about a month now – I work from home and use it
as my office chair so I've logged 150–200 hours in it and feel like I can
give it a solid review at this point.
First, I'll go through some of my gripes/mishaps with the chair.
Unfortunately, the top of the right armrest on the chair came completely off
when I tried to adjust it after I'd set it up. Fortunately, though, the
manufacturer sent out a replacement armrest straight away which bolted in as a
swap for the broken one and I haven't had issues since – both Mighty Ape
support and the manufacturer were super helpful here. Otherwise, the armrests do
rattle a bit, but not enough to be a bother.
The tilt resistance handle doesn't appear to work anymore – I ended up
overtightening it when I was trying to get the tilt to lock in place, and now
it just turns loosely. Might be fixable – I imagine it's just slipped off
the head of whatever it was on – but I can live without it, so be aware not
to tighten this too far.
The mechanism that controls the tilt of the chair doesn't do an amazing
job – maybe for lighter folk, but not for my 120ish kg self (chair is rated
to 200kg). I tried to get it to stick at a very slight angle using the
lock/unlock handle, but I wasn't ever able to get it to stick, it would just
break right through it into the unlocked mode again when I put my weight down
into the chair. This is part of the reason why I overtightened the tilt
resistance because I was wondering if having that tight and the tilt locked
would keep it stuck into place, but unfortunately, this wasn't the case. Not
sure if this is just a faulty chair, but after a few weeks in free tilt mode,
I'm actually kinda used to it so I'll keep it as-is.
Now the good stuff! The installation is super simple. There's an included
tool which tightens all of the bolts you need to install, the instructions are
fine, but the YouTube video from Vertagear (in the Mighty Ape product
description) demonstrates all you need to know. The one small thing that
deviated from the instructions was when installing the backrest, I had to put
some force down on it to get the bolts to bite into the sides properly.
It took a few days of mild discomfort to break the chair seat in, but once
that happens, it's comfortable. The seat and space between armrests are
generous, the lumbar support is good – although it did take a little bit to
find the sweet spot – though, with this support, I find I rarely lean back
far enough to use the backrest or the headrest. I imagine both of these would
come into play without the lumbar support, but I'm happy with the setup at the
moment so I haven't given this a go. I've seen a review on YouTube where the
guy takes some stuffing out of the lumbar/headrest pads to make them more
comfortable for him, but I find them ok as-is.
The seat adjustments (aside from tilt mentioned above) are solid. Height
sticks in well and is in a good spot where the armrests slide under my desk, and
my feet are planted on the ground. The tilt would come in handy here too though,
as I'd like to go a bit higher and flatten out the bottom of the seat using the
tilt, as it's pointed down to the front slightly by default.
The armrest adjustments are great – up/down, swivel left/right,
forward/back. Once you've found a good spot you don't really need to adjust them
again. The pads have a little bit of give to them but are definitely on the
firmer side which is fine, I tend to just have my elbows on them with my
wrist/forearms on my desk. The same YouTuber I mentioned above took his
armrests off completely – you do this through some (incredibly tight!) bolts
underneath each armrest, and you actually need a different-sized key to the one
that's provided – but I like having them around so I'll keep them.
So I'm pretty happy with the chair. It has its quirks, but all in all,
it's exactly what I was after. Comfy for a bigger frame, adjustable to my
requirements, heavy chair with a (mostly) solid build that'll last.
