Best High Weight Capacity Folding Chairs Review 2022

In this roundup review, we’re focusing on the best high weight capacity folding chairs and related products that we count as close cousins to the folding chair. Let’s start by introducing you to our top pick in this category and the other products it beat out to claim top honors. Here they are:

Best High Weight Capacity Folding Chairs 2023 Comparison

Best Power Wheelchair for Outdoor Use - Top Pick

White Color, FF Hercules Plastic Folding Chair, Left View

FF Hercules Plastic Folding Chair

OUR RATING

PRICE

$

PROS

Equally suited to indoor and outdoor use. Offers tremendous value for the money.Above-average selection of colors.

CONS

Mixed materials (plastic and metal) makes cleaning and maintenance a little more time-consuming.

OUR VERDICT

Highly recommended.

More Specifications...

Best Power Wheelchair for Outdoor Use - Runner UP

Red Mahogany, FF Hercules Resin Folding Chair, Left View

FF Hercules Resin Folding Chair

OUR RATING

PRICE

$ ½

PROS

Highest supported weight in its class. Offers a more refined aesthetic. Better suited for outdoor use but can certainly be used indoors. Has a (nominally) padded seat. Modest selection of colors (three).

CONS

Slightly more expensive. The seat padding is extremely thin and doesn’t really add anything to the chair’s comfort.

OUR VERDICT

Highly recommended.

More Specifications...

Best Power Wheelchair for Outdoor Use - Alternative #1

Dark Grey Fabric, FF Hercules Fabric Stacking Church Chair, Left View

FF Hercules Fabric Stacking Church Chair

OUR RATING

PRICE

$$

PROS

Sharp looking, fabric clad chair with surprisingly generous padding and a waterfall edge style seat. Offers extras like gaging brackets and a storage pocket. Ample selection of colors.

CONS

Not well-suited for outdoor use. A bit more expensive.

OUR VERDICT

Provisionally recommended.

More Specifications...

Best Power Wheelchair for Outdoor Use - Alternative #2

Green Color, Triple Tree Folding Stool, Left View

Triple Tree Folding Stool

OUR RATING

PRICE

$

PROS

Arguably the most versatile product on our list. Can be used as a luggage stand, in the garden, camping, etc. and moves indoors just as easily. Lifetime warranty.

CONS

No seatback. Not everybody wants to sit on a stool.

OUR VERDICT

Provisionally recommended.

More Specifications...

Best High Weight Capacity Folding Chairs 2023

White Color, FF Hercules Plastic Folding Chair, Left View

FF Hercules Plastic Folding Chair

Red Mahogany, FF Hercules Resin Folding Chair, Left View

FF Hercules Resin
Folding Chair

Dark Grey Fabric, FF Hercules Fabric Stacking Church Chair, Left View

FF Hercules Fabric
Stacking Church Chair

Green Color, Triple Tree Folding Stool, Left View

Triple Tree
Folding Stool

Luraco i7 Chair

Our Rating

3.7

3.7

3.6

3.2

Price

$

$ ½

$$

$

Dimensions

17.5” x 18” x 31.5”

18” x 17.5” x 30.8”

25” x 21.2” x 33”

13.9” x 14.3” x 17.8”

Max. Supported Weight

650 pounds

1000 pounds

800 pounds

650 pounds

Pros

Equally suited to indoor and outdoor use. Offers tremendous value for the money.Above-average selection of colors.

Highest supported weight in its class. Offers a more refined aesthetic. Better suited for outdoor use but can certainly be used indoors. Has a (nominally) padded seat. Modest selection of colors (three).

Sharp looking, fabric clad chair with surprisingly generous padding and a waterfall edge style seat. Offers extras like gaging brackets and a storage pocket. Ample selection of colors.

Arguably the most versatile product on our list. Can be used as a luggage stand, in the garden, camping, etc. and moves indoors just as easily. Lifetime warranty.

Cons

Mixed materials (plastic and metal) makes cleaning and maintenance a little more time-consuming.

Slightly more expensive. The seat padding is extremely thin and doesn’t really add anything to the chair’s comfort.

Not well-suited for outdoor use. A bit more expensive.

No seatback. Not everybody wants to sit on a stool.

Our Verdict

Highly recommended.

Highly recommended.

Provisionally recommended.

Provisionally recommended.

Author’s Note: This roundup review is of special interest to me. As someone who is 6’6” tall and weighs in at 340 pounds, conventional furniture is largely useless to me. As I evaluated each of the options presented here, I did so at least partly thinking in terms of which ones would add the most value in my home and on my property. I guess you could say then that I have a personal stake in making sure this roundup is as good, thorough, and accurate as it possibly could be.

Is conventional furniture just too small and lightly built for you to make use of?

If you’re on the heavier side, you’ve probably found yourself frustrated at nearly every turn when shopping for furniture because it’s just not rugged enough to support you properly.

Worse, you probably encounter the same problem no matter what kind of furniture you’re shopping for, from recliners to things like folding chairs.

The good news is that there are companies out there that create products catering to heavier folks. True, you won’t find a dizzying array of choices in most cases, but you’ll seldom find yourself limited to a single option.

Having surveyed all the currently available options, we found and identified a winner. More than that, we discovered that this part of the market is utterly dominated by a single company: Flash Furniture.

Flash isn’t a huge brand, but they’ve been in the furniture business for a long time, and they make consistently good furniture. Even though they don’t have a national footprint, more than once, they’ve been able to steal top spots in other roundup reviews from much better-known brands. In this case, they’re virtually the only game in town.

Our Selection Criteria

As the title of this roundup indicates, our primary goal here was to identify folding chairs that were capable of supporting a lot of user weight. Of course, “a lot” is a subjective term, so let’s get more specific.

Given that most conventional furniture is capable of supporting between 250 and 300 pounds, we defined a “high weight capacity folding chair” as being one that could support at least 400 pounds.

The higher the weight limit, the better, naturally, but we viewed 400 pounds as our starting point. After that, we looked for chairs that offered solid value for the money, with high-value extras being an additional, minor factor. Now let’s take a closer look at our top picks.

Our Winner – Flash Furniture Hercules Plastic Folding Chair

Flash Furniture Hercules Plastic Folding Chair

Value

Comfort

Aesthetic Flexibility*

Brand Reliability**

3.75

Summary

In our view, Flash Furniture Hercules Plastic Folding Chair is the best folding chair on the market today, and offered in a variety of colors, to boot! Recommended for anyone. Sooner or later, everybody winds up needing a folding chair (or several).

*While aesthetics is a matter of taste, aesthetic flexibility is a measure of how easily a given design would fit into a wide range of home décor schemes.

**Brand Reliability is a measure of the strength and longevity of the brand, which by extension, is a measure of the level of support you can expect.

Our top pick is a conventionally designed folding chair offered by Flash Furniture. We’re super impressed by the entire Hercules product line, and these chairs are no exception. Flash is really maturing as a furniture vendor, and this product is impressive indeed.

Chair Specifications

Before we get into the particulars, let’s do a quick review of the core stats that define this model. Here they are:

Dimension Stats, Flash Furniture Hercules Plastic Folding Chair, White Color
  • Overall Product Dimensions: 17.5” x 18” x 31.5”
  • Folded Dimensions: 17.5” x 2.5” x 38.25”
  • Seat Dimensions: 15.5” x 15.5”
  • Seat Height: 17.75”
  • Seat Back Dimensions: 17.5” x 15.5”
  • Chair Weight: 17 pounds
  • Maximum Supported Weight: 650 pounds (!)

In the selection criteria section here in our roundup of the best high weight capacity folding chairs, we mentioned that 400 pounds was our minimum supported weight threshold. As you can see, this model exceeds that by a wide margin. That’s impressive, especially given its modest total weight.

The seat height makes the chair well suited to a variety of user heights, but shy of the lower end of what is usually considered to be the big and tall range. The only real problem we see is the fact that the seat width and depth are a little underwhelming, especially for heavier folks. It’s fine if you only need to keep your seat for an hour or two, but much longer than that, and it’s going to start getting increasingly uncomfortable.

The good news there is the fact that most of the uses you’ll put your folding chair too won’t see you sitting for periods much longer than that, so in most cases, it won’t be too big of a problem

As you might expect, the chair doesn’t have any adjustable features. If you order yours, it will arrive fully assembled and ready to use when it hits your doorstep. Just take it out of the box, unfold it, and have a seat.

The only potential wrinkle with buying one of these is the fact that the chair is made of a mix of plastic and metal. That matters in terms of maintenance because metal and plastic have very different cleaning profiles. You’ll spend slightly more time on periodic maintenance than you’d spend taking care of a chair made of a single material.

It’s a basic, no-frills folding chair that can support an impressive amount of user weight, and it’s offered for a song. Best of all, the company sells this chair in a variety of colors, and you can order one, two, or ten, depending on what your needs are. That’s awesome, and in our view, this is essentially the final word where folding chairs are concerned. We love them, and we think you will too!

White Color, Flash Furniture Hercules Plastic Folding Chair, Front View

Our Runner Up – Flash Furniture Hercules Resin Folding Chair

Flash Furniture Hercules Resin Folding Chair

Value

Comfort

Aesthetic Flexibility*

Brand Reliability**

3.72

Summary

These Flash Furniture Hercules Resin Folding Chair don’t offer quite the value punch as Flash’s plastic folding chairs, but they offer a more elegant, refined aesthetic. Recommended for anyone who wants a little more than a basic plastic or metal folding chair.

Sometimes, you want more than just a basic folding chair. You want something with a little more elegance and refinement, and that’s exactly what our runner up offers. Like our top pick, it’s part of Flash Furniture’s exceptional Hercules product line. There are, however, a few important differences. 

Chair Specifications

Let’s take a closer look, starting with a few basic stats:

Dimension Stats, Flash Furniture Hercules Resin Folding Chair, Red Mahogany
  • Overall Product Dimensions: 18” x 17.5” x 30.8”
  • Folded Dimensions: 17.5” x 2.25” x 35”
  • Seat Dimensions: 15.5” x 13.75”
  • Seatback Dimensions: 17.5” x 15”
  • Seat Height: 17”
  • Chair Weight: 9 pounds
  • Maximum Supported Weight: 1000 pounds

Like our top pick, this chair can support a simply insane amount of user weight. In fact, this chair outperforms every other entry on our list in that regard, and it does so while providing a much more refined aesthetic. 

If that matters to you, then this is actually the model you want, despite the fact that it narrowly lost to another of Flash’s excellent products. You’ll pay a little more, but depending on what matters most to you, it’s a worthwhile trade.

Another similarity this chair shares with our top pick is that, although it’s got a fabulous maximum supported weight limit, the seat dimensions are underwhelming for a chair designed for heavier people. Again, that’s not an outright deal-breaker because most of the time, if you’re using a folding chair, you won’t be spending the better part of the day in it.

That’s a good thing. Given the smallish size of the seat, it’s okay for an hour or two. Still, much beyond that, it’s going to get increasingly uncomfortable.

Seat Pad

The company does try to address this point by incorporating a seat pad into the design. We rate this as a good try, but in truth, it does almost nothing to enhance the comfort of the chair. It’s simply too thin, and it’s covered with PU.

That’s a relatively poor choice, in our view. PU isn’t breathable, but that’s not why it’s a poor choice because you probably won’t be sitting in the chair long enough for the lack of breathability to become an issue. The real problem is that the offered padding is too thin to matter much, and the PU covering will start peeling and cracking after about a year. If you’re super careful with it, you might be able to milk a bit more life out of it, but don’t expect much.

The good news is that since there’s so little upholstery to contend with, it’s a trivial matter to use the existing seat pad as a template, buy some memory foam and upholster it with something that will last.

Red Mahogany, Flash Furniture Hercules Resin Folding Chair, Front View

It’s a small investment you can make when the default upholstery starts wearing out that will not only make the chair more comfortable but will help ensure that the chair continues to serve you well for years, making the seat pad the equal of the chair itself in terms of longevity.

Red Mahogany, Flash Furniture Hercules Resin Folding Chair, Side View

Easy to Clean

Also note that since the chair is made of a single material (resin), it’s much easier to keep clean and looking like new than our top pick of best heavy duty folding chair, which utilizes a mix of metal and plastic that require you to clean different parts of the chair in different ways.

Aside from the slightly higher cost, the only other potential downside is the fact that this chair is offered in a much more limited color selection. Where our top pick offers more than half a dozen color options, you only get three choices here. They’re good choices (white, black and mahogany), but there aren’t many of them. Even so, this is an excellent alternative to our top pick that might be perfect for you.

Note: These chairs are optimized for outdoor use. They can be used indoors in a pinch, but they’re much better suited as outdoor furniture, which stands in contrast to the next chair we’ll talk about.


Alternative #1 – Flash Furniture Hercules Fabric Stacking Church Chair

Flash Furniture Hercules Fabric Stacking Church Chair

Value

Comfort

Aesthetic Flexibility*

Brand Reliability**

3.6

Summary

The Flash Furniture Hercules Fabric Stacking Church Chair is a good looking, fantastic option for people who are looking for an alternative to folding chairs. Recommended for anyone. These are nearly (but not quite) as versatile as folding chairs and substantially more comfortable.

If you’re looking for a viable alternative to folding chairs, stacking chairs are a great option to consider. They offer most of the same advantages folding chairs do, including relative ease of storage. In addition to that, stacking chairs tend to have more “extras” that are difficult, if not outright impossible to build into folding chairs. Mostly then, it comes down to what your preferences and specific needs are.

Like our top two picks, this one comes to us from Flash Furniture and is another product in their Hercules furniture lineup. Let’s begin as we have previously, with a quick look at the core stats that define the model.

Dark Grey Fabric, FF Hercules Fabric Stacking Church Chair, Side View

Chair Specifications

  • Overall Product Dimensions: 25” x 21.2” x 33”.
  • Chair Weight: 18 pounds.
  • Seat Height: 18”.
  • Seat Width: 21”
  • Maximum Supported Weight: 800 pounds.

As you can see, this chair resides in the middle ground in terms of supported weight, resting neatly between our first and second picks. Another thing to note is that the seat width is a much better fit for bigger folk, which makes it more comfortable to sit in for extended periods.

There’s more to the story than is revealed by the numbers above, though. These chairs also sport generous amounts of block foam padding, comparable to what you find in many office chairs. The padding is four inches thick and even better, the seat features a waterfall edge design, giving this chair a powerful ergonomic feature.

On top of that, these chairs also boast small pockets sewn into their seatbacks, ideal for holding books, binders of information, programs and the like, and they feature ganging brackets, allowing you to attach the chairs to each other, creating uniform rows in the event you use them as wedding or seminar seating.

If that wasn’t enough, they also feature glide rockers, which will help protect your flooring. There are also rubber guards built into the legs that prevent damage when you stack the chairs for storage. Best of all, this chair comes in an impressive array of fabric colors and frame finishes, allowing you to customize your purchase to suit your tastes and preferences in ways that none of the other options on our list can match.

There are only two drawbacks to talk about here in this section of our roundup of the best folding chair for heavy people. First, these chairs are a bit pricier than the other options we’ve discussed so far. If you’re on a budget and you need several of these, that fact might put them out of reach.

Then there’s the fact that this model was optimized for indoor use. That’s not to say you can’t use them outside; you can, but you’ll need to be sure that there’s no chance of rain and be very confident of the day’s weather forecast.

Dark Grey Fabric, FF Hercules Fabric Stacking Church Chair, Front View

If you get the block foam padding wet, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to dry it out completely, which could lead to mold issues that will render them unusable, and you’ll lose your investment.


Alternative #2 – Triple Tree Folding Stool

Triple Tree Folding Stool

Value

Comfort

Aesthetic Flexibility*

Brand Reliability**

3.2

Summary

They’re not gorgeous, but they sure are sturdy and functional. If folding chairs are too much for you, this Triple Tree Folding Stool is a great option. Recommended for anyone who needs a reasonably priced alternative to a folding chair.

If none of the options we’ve mentioned so far are exactly what you’re looking for, have you considered the possibility of a folding stool instead? Not everyone likes sitting on a stool, but for the right user, this option could be absolutely perfect. Before we get into the details, let’s review this model’s basic stats.

Chair Specifications

Dimension Stats, Triple Tree Folding Stool, Green Color
  • Overall Product Dimensions: 13.9” x 14.3” x 17.8”
  • Folded Dimensions: 13.9” x 2.4” x 22”
  • Stool Weight: 4.3 pounds
  • Maximum Supported Weight: 650 pounds(!)

As you can see, the Triple Tree matches our top pick of the best high weight folding chair in terms of supported weight. The stool itself weighs next to nothing and has a delightfully small collapsed profile, making storage a breeze. 

Lifetime Warranty 

Even better, Triple Tree offers a rock-solid lifetime warranty on every stool they sell. The brand may not be huge or particularly well known, but it’s hard to argue with a lifetime warranty. It is something that no other product on our list of finalists brings to the table.

Seat Design

There are no color options here, and the seat is composed of durable nylon straps. Those facts, paired with the absence of a seatback to provide added support, will make this a non-starter for some people. Still, the Triple Tree stool is arguably the most versatile product on our list of finalists.

Uses

In addition to being able to use it indoors as easily as out (this, in part thanks to the rubberized feet that will help protect your flooring), this little stool is easy to take with you if you’re planning to play in the garden for a while, pack it as part of your camping kit, or even take it with you when you’re traveling on business to use it as a handy luggage stand. It offers many more possible uses than any folding or stacking chair on the market.

Features, Triple Tree Folding Stool, Green Color
Folding Position, Triple Tree Folding Stool, Green Color

As we said, it’s not going to be ideal for everyone, but for the right user, this would make an excellent alternative choice to our top pick.


Best High Weight Capacity Folding Chairs Roundup Review 2023 Conclusion

While there aren’t a ton of folding chairs with high weight capacity on the market, we found many great options to consider. All four that we mentioned here are attractive in their own way. Still, we absolutely stand by the Flash Furniture Hercules Plastic Folding chair as the best of the best. We consider it to be the final word in high weight capacity folding chairs, offering superb value for the money.

We understand, however, that opinions will vary, which is why we included the other options we compared our winner against. Here, in our view, is why you might select one of the alternatives mentioned in this roundup of the best high weight capacity folding chairs as your chair of choice:

  • If you’re looking for something with a bit more elegance and refinement that’s optimized for outdoor use, then Flash Furniture’s Resin Folding chairs are an exceptional choice.
  • If you’re looking for something optimized for indoor use with extras aplenty and even a well-implemented ergonomic feature, the Fabric Church Stacking Chair is unquestionably the way to go.
  • And if you’re looking for something you can take with you just about anywhere and use in settings that folding chairs would be impractical, then Triple Tree’s awesome folding stool is the one you want.

At the end of the day, the real question is: Which of these options is right for you?


RELATED ARTICLES

REFERENCES & RESOURCES

HomeEvent ChairsBest High Weight Capacity Folding Chairs Review 2022

Best High Weight Capacity Folding Chairs Review 2022

Leave a Reply 0 comments

Leave a Reply: