Officient Compact Ergonomic Fabric Chair Review 2024

Have you been struggling to find a worthy successor to your current office chair, which is getting a little long in the tooth?

If so, you’re certainly not alone. There are so many chairs out there, offered by so many companies (some you’re familiar with, many that you’ve never even heard of) that it can lead to a kind of analysis paralysis. There’s just too much information to make a good decision.

If that rings familiar, then you’re going to like this piece. The Officient Compact Ergonomic Fabric chair is offered by one of those little brands you’ve probably never heard of. But if you’re not especially brand conscious and looking for something that provides a comfortable platform to work from that’s also attractively designed and blends seamlessly into most home or office environments, this is an excellent option and well worth considering.

We’ll be quick to point out that it’s not a perfect chair, and if you don’t like buying from off brands, then you probably won’t give it a second look. If you can get past that though, we think it will impress you. Let’s take a closer look at what Officient’s little chair has to offer.

An Overview of the Officient Compact Ergonomic Chair

Stylish simplicity. That’s the phrase that will likely enter your mind the first time you see the Officient Compact Ergonomic Fabric Chair. Although it is designed along purely conventional lines, there’s something about the black and burgundy combination that just makes it look delightful (Note: You can also order the chair in basic black if you prefer that).

Bear in mind that this is a task chair, and as such, it’s not really optimized for use by power users, but we’ll go into that in more detail in just a moment. Before we do, though, let’s take a quick look at the core stats that define this model. 

Chair Specifications

Looking at these numbers, a few things jump out at us. The very first thing we noticed was that the depth of the seat is adjustable. That’s a rare, highly prized feature. You don’t find it very often, even on chairs that cost several times more than Officient’s offering here, and that’s a very good thing. We love it!

Second, check out the height adjustment range. Bear in mind that the big and tall range typically starts at 18” and goes to at least 22.” This chair falls just a little bit under that, which might make you think, “oh, so it’s for people on the smaller side of the big and tall range.”

Unfortunately, there’s a catch. The maximum supported weight is relatively modest, and totally blows the idea of this being a big and tall chair out of the water.

Put all those factors together, and it’s a great fit for:

The seat depth adjustment range supports this. At its smallest setting, the 18” seat depth is perfect for shorter users, and the fact that it opens up to a maximum of 21.5” deep makes it a much better and more natural fit for average-sized and taller users.

That makes it a fairly versatile piece of furniture, and useful to a broad swath of the market, but it does have certain limitations on that front.

Features of the Officient Compact Ergonomic Fabric Chair

Adjustability and Comfort

Let’s start with adjustability since we’ve already talked about the height and seat depth adjustment range. In addition to those things, the Officient Compact Ergonomic Chair offers you the usual adjustment options: 360-degree swivel, and a tilt and lock function, but on top of that, it has height adjustable arms.

Padding

The armrests are reasonably well padded, but not ergonomically sculpted, but we honestly weren’t expecting them to be. That fact doesn’t detract from the surprising adjustability of this model though. You don’t often find that kind of adjustability on an off-brand chair, which is another nod in this model’s favor and a clear sign that Officient knows their way around the office furniture market.

Comfort-wise, you’ll find generous amounts of conventional padding in both the seat and the seatback. The seat tries hard to be a waterfall edge design but doesn’t quite get there. It’s close enough that it does provide at least some ergonomic benefit though, which is another plus for the chair.

Ergonomic Feature

Officially then, this model only has one ergonomic feature: Lumbar support. While it’s not adjustable in any way, it is very well implemented, which definitely enhances the comfort of the chair. Comfortable and adjustable or not though, as a task chair, it offers no head and neck support, and while the fabric is breathable, task chairs just aren’t great for extended periods of use, so if you’re looking for a chair optimized for heavy daily use, this isn’t your best bet.

Assembly is Required

It will probably not surprise you to learn that if you decide to order the Officient Compact Ergonomic Office chair, it won’t arrive at your doorstep fully assembled and ready to use. It’s going to come in a box and in several pieces, which you’ll have to take a few minutes to put together.

Here, the fact that it’s a task chair works very much in its favor. None of the pieces are big or bulky, and it goes together fairly easily. Although the Compact Fabric chair is built using fairly low-end materials, the production quality is better than we were expecting, and you won’t have much difficulty on that front.

The instructions aren’t great but are certainly adequate to the task, and everything you need to complete the assembly is included.

From start to finish, you can expect it to take about 20 minutes to put the chair together, and there’s no real gain to be had by enlisting the aid of an assistant on the day the chair arrives.

Pros and Cons Officient Compact Fabric Chair

There’s a lot to like about the Officient Compact Fabric chair. In no particular order, here are the things we found most compelling about the design:

There are some design flaws we’d like to see the company work on in a future model upgrade, however. These include:

Honestly, though the single biggest obstacle this chair faces is the fact that it’s offered by a brand, almost nobody has heard of. If you’re not brand conscious and you remove the brand weight dimension from our scoring, this chair re-scores at 3.92 stars out of five, which is a solid score that falls just short of greatness. That’s impressive and is the main reason this model belongs to your shortlist for consideration.

Final Thoughts on Officient Compact Ergonomic Fabric Chair Review

Not every off-brand chair is worth a closer look. For that matter, not every off-brand chair is even worth reviewing. The Officient Compact Ergonomic Fabric Chair is an exception to that rule. We find this chair to be surprisingly versatile and robust, and we look forward to seeing what the little brand is capable of producing in the future.

Where this chair is concerned, it’s got some limitations, and we haven’t been bashful about pointing them out. Even so, this model impressed us, and assuming its measurements and yours are a good fit, we recommend it for light to moderate daily use.

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Official Manufacturer Support

References & Resources

• How to Stop Your Office Chair from Killing You, Forbes
• Why Proper Lumbar Support Matters, Dunn’s Business Solutions.
• Effects of Differences in Office Chair Controls, Seat and Backrest Angle Design in Relation to Tasks, ScienceDirect
• What You Need to Know About the Future of Ergonomic Office Furniture, MBI + ImageWorks.