Embody Chair by Herman Miller X Logitech G Review: Why I Ended Up Spending $1,500 on a Gaming Chair!

POSITIVES

✓ Aesthetically pleasing

The signature Logitech turquoise blue accent pops

✓ Ergonomically friendly

It even keeps your butt cool from sweat

✓ Gaming street cred

Bragging rights for a very expensive and enviable item

NEGATIVES

✘ Heavy to roll around

On both hard and soft surfaces

✘ Uncomfortable elbow rests

A little too hard for my liking

✘ Price

This costs a full stimulus check

Retail Price: $1,595.00

Buy on Herman Miller

---

When you think of a gamer chair, a very specific mold of a seater comes to mind. They usually consist of this T-shape head and neck support with racing ergonomic roots that look like some sort of Iron Man armor. This chair we’re reviewing today is absolutely none of that. If anything, this chair actually looks like any ordinary office seater you may find working at a Fortune 500 company. That’s because this chair is made by a company named Herman Miller which is synonymous with premium office furniture. There are many Herman Miller chairs in offices across the world, but what makes this particular chair so unique is that Herman Miller partnered with computer accessory maker Logitech to come up with a design specifically with gamers and their habits in mind.

The Office Basics

The Herman Miller Embody chair is a staple for office work chatter. Pam from The Office said it best, the chair you sit in for hours and hours a day has to be the most important purchase of your office. When you take that mindset and apply it to long sessions of hunting people down in a battle royale game instead of crunching numbers in a cubicle, what you end up with is the Herman Miller x Logitech G Embody Gaming Chair. It’s the Embody brand lots of us have come to admire but with the signature Logitech turquoise blue accents.   

We’ll get into the details of what makes this chair valued at an MSRP of $1,495. That is also the price in which I bought this chair for during the height of the Stay at Home orders of the Covid-19 pandemic. To size up the situation, the most expensive office chair I have purchased with my own funds (not affiliated with a job) is a measly $300. I say measly as if that isn’t a big chunk of money, but clearly in the scope of actual “science-backed” ergonomics, that’s a quarter to a dollar. While looking for a better chair on the orders of my chiropractor (I have some nagging high school sports back injuries), I quickly came to the realization that of all the desk setup accessories, the chairs are the most underappreciated. I’ve never cared much for branding or the science behind a chair’s design, that is up until my back literally couldn’t stand sitting anymore in 2020. 

A Different Mindset

Lida on the other hand has been sitting pretty on $1,000+ Steelcase and Herman Miller chairs throughout her adult working career. That’s what happens when you work for a government institution and then later a Fortune 500 company! I was in for a shock being educated by her on the ins and outs of the chair buying market. Good chairs are expensive! How expensive is too expensive? My mindset was that I’m going into this to buy a chair that will be my companion health-wise. It, more than any other piece in the office, has to take care of my body. My keyboard, my computer, my monitor and all the RGB lights in the world don’t have a physical impact on me. The chair does. I, more than most people, have to begin taking this aspect more seriously before it’s too late.

This mindset led me to products like the HAG Capisco Puls or the Herman Miller Cosm or Aeron in my search. The Humanscale Freedom was also intriguing. These chairs and brands have a lot of goodwill from people who have their butt in the seats for what literally is a culmination of years. Then I stumbled onto the Embody line. Even someone like me who has no idea about the office chair industry knew what the Herman Miller Embody is. What I didn’t know was why Logitech is involved in this.

Breaking Down the Thought Process

Can I vouch after sitting in this chair for 7+ months that my body feels better taken care of while in the chair? Absolutely not.

Like most of you out there, I scoured the internet to see what the differences exactly were between the Logitech version vs. the regular Embody. All I could really come up with (as I don’t have a standard Embody with me to compare) is that aside from the color accent representing Logitech, there’s a slight angle difference in the support of the spine that is supposedly beneficial to people who sit in a gaming position. If I’m going to buy a $1,000+ chair, with minimal differences, I may as well purchase the one that screams Millennial more than anything else. Why not?

Here’s what the Logitech version of the Embody does for your body: more foam allows for a better “active” position, the PostureFit spine looking design apparently copies your spine’s standing position while the pressure points of the seat evenly distribute the force from your weight in order to help with blood flow. Sounds nifty. Can I vouch after sitting in this chair for 7+ months that my body feels better taken care of while in the chair? Absolutely not.

While everything about the G Embody is of high quality including all the adjustment points from arm height and width to BackFit and depth, comfortability can also be obtained with chairs half this price. So while I do feel comfortable sitting in this chair for long periods of time, there is no way I can explain or even notice the science backed benefits in all honesty. 

Standing While Sitting

All I can simply say is that I was not let down by the build quality nor the comfort level my butt and spine feel. I do like the foam fabric Herman Miller uses in this chair as I have yet to feel my seat wet with sweat. Yes, butt and back sweat onto chairs is a real thing. Apparently this is also one of those differences from the original Embody. There is a patented type of technology that keeps the chair cool for gamers planted in this chair. The same goes for lumbar support which is actually quite important for car seats as well. Many gaming chairs have a lumbar pillow area that provides that lumbar support. The Embody relies on it’s PostureFit spinal system to support that lower spine point. I can vouch at least for this aspect that my spine does feel extremely supported. I may even claim that it’s the most lumbar support I’ve ever felt before in any type of seating. My spine stays in essentially the same position when the backrest tilts back ever so slightly.

The first of my only two complaints about the G Embody would be that the chair is quite heavy to roll around on. While Herman Miller claims the wheels are able to tread on both hard floors and carpets, the weight of this makes it quite difficult to move efficiently. This isn’t specifically an Embody problem as many chairs of similar size and shape also have more weight behind it thanks to all the additional adjustable mechanisms. The second would be that the elbow rest is a little too hard for my liking. It’s a foamed plastic-like material that just doesn’t feel too inviting on exposed skin. I’ve definitely sat in chairs with harder arm pads, but with this price point, I was hoping for an ideal fit. 

Final Thoughts

There are just some things you have to have in life that just make sense. A solid form supporting chair for someone who sits in a chair most of their working adult life? That sounds like an item worth investing in. Does it make sense at a $1,500 sticker price? Well, I’ll simply say that I do enjoy using the Embody Logitech edition, but if it were easier to dismantle to ship back and I was a bit less lazy, I would have returned it. That’s just the truth of how I feel about the chair. I don’t know if I can honestly tell the difference between a $600 chair and a $1,500 the overall scheme of things. While my spine does feel better after half a year in this chair, could I have felt the same physically with something like the Steelcase Gesture or the Vertagear Triigger Line 275? Who knows? If anything I guess I’m left with not only a good chair but also bragging rights for a very expensive and enviable item.

---

---

Related