Best Office Chair for Neck Pain 2024

*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 or office 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.

Is chronic neck and shoulder pain slowing you down at work and making you less productive?

We can relate, which is exactly why this roundup review exists. We’ve conducted a thorough search, sifting through scores of office chairs in an attempt to find the best office chair for neck pain. The search wasn’t easy, and the competition was fierce, but we’ve found and declared a winner.

While it’s true that none of the chairs presented here represent a magic cure for chronic neck and shoulder pain, every chair you read about in this roundup review will help to alleviate the pain you’re struggling against and ensure you can have a productive workday. If that sounds good to you, let’s take a closer look at our finalists!

Our Selection Criteria

Finding ergonomic chairs for neck and shoulder pain can be tricky because there’s no “one feature” that serves as a magic bullet when it comes to managing or mitigating that type of pain. If you want to address the root causes of the pain you’re feeling, you’re better off looking for a massage chair rather than an office chair, but of course, it’s virtually impossible to use a full-sized massage chair for work.

While desk chairs don’t do anything to treat the pain, a well-designed chair can certainly mitigate it, and that fact drove and defined our quest for the best office chair for neck pain. In drilling down to particulars, we identified several features that were key in terms of helping people who suffer from chronic neck and shoulder pain mitigate their pain and stay productive. These are:

Head and Neck Support

Obviously, a computer chair with neck support is an excellent place to start. This usually takes one of two forms where office chairs are concerned: An ergonomically designed, articulated headrest or a head and neck support pillow built into the chair. Of the two approaches, we found the articulated headrest to be best for pain mitigation, but chairs that feature well-padded support pillows tend to be more comfortable, even though they’re somewhat less valuable from an ergonomic perspective.

Lumbar/Whole Back Support

Neck and shoulder pain seldom exist in isolation, and because of that, pain elsewhere in your back can cause or contribute to pain higher on your body. As such, we tended to favor chairs that not only specifically featured some means of supporting the neck and shoulders directly but augmented this with well-implemented ergonomic back supports.

Adjustable Armrests

Armrests are surprisingly important when it comes to mitigating shoulder pain. If the armrests of the chair you’re using are too low, it’s going to change the way you sit, which will tend to put more pressure on the muscles of your shoulders. That, in turn, tends to make neck and shoulder pain worse. We regarded adjustable armrests as being an important consideration as we evaluated our finalists for the best office chair for neck and shoulder pain.

Other Ergonomic or Adjustable Features & Overall Comfort

The features mentioned above were weighted most heavily as we reviewed the various options available, but of course, there’s really no such thing as a chair with too many ergonomic features, and every little bit helps. With that in mind, even if a given chair didn’t have all of the main features we were looking for, if it had enough of everything else (a waterfall-edge style seat, luxurious padding, or other ergonomic features) we certainly factored all of that in!

With all of that in mind, let’s take a closer look at all the chairs on our list of finalists, starting with our overall winner!

Our Pick: Steelcase Leap with Headrest

In our view, the Steelcase Leap is the best office chair on the market today, and as such, it has earned top honors in a number of our roundup reviews. It’s conventionally designed, so it blends in easily with a wide range of home or office décor schemes and is honestly the closest thing to a perfect all-around office chair we’ve ever seen.

The first thing to note here is that there is no one “Leap Chair.” Steelcase actually has a whole line of products that use the name. Here, we’re specifically looking at the Leap variant with an included headrest, but you should also be aware that the Leap Plus can also be ordered with a headrest, so if you need a chair with a bigger weight limit, Steelcase has you covered.

Since the Leap and the Leap Plus are functionally similar (with the main difference being an extra 200 pounds of supported user weight), we’ll focus on the standard Leap with headrest for these purposes.

Chair Specifications

To begin, let’s take a quick look at the stats that define the model:

As you can see, one of the things that makes the Leap such a remarkable chair is the fact that virtually every feature on it can be tweaked and adjusted to taste. That gives you, the owner, unparalleled freedom to customize the chair, which ensures a perfect fit.

That’s fantastic, but it does mean that it will take some time and experimentation to optimize the Leap to you. Until and unless you take that time, your experience sitting in it won’t be optimal. That’s not to say it will be bad or uncomfortable, but the more time you spend playing with the settings until it fits you like a glove, the more you’ll like the chair and the more it will help in terms of mitigating your pain.

Remember, if you suffer from chronic neck and shoulder pain, it could be because of a problem with your neck and shoulders, or it could be something farther down your spine working to exacerbate your neck and shoulder pain. Whatever the root cause though, the Leap has you covered because you can adjust to your heart’s content!

Overall, we regard this as not just the best chair for neck pain, but the best office chair on the market today. It’s an engineering marvel that will serve you well for years to come.

Upholstery Options

If you decide you want one, you can order your chair with one of the following upholstery options:

And you can choose from a modest selection of colors, including:

You can also choose between the following finishes:

The headrest itself is an optional addition, but of course, for these purposes, we’re considering it standard. If you like, though, you can also order a Steelcase ottoman to accompany your chair. Not everyone will want or need one, but it’s a good addition that gives you even more seating options and the ottoman itself was designed in such a way that it can pull double duty as an impromptu workspace if you need it to.

An Ergonomic Powerhouse

We can’t talk further about the Leap chair without mentioning the design principles it was built around. Great care went into the design of the chair, and every feature it includes was added based on the following four guiding principles:

The Leap chair brings several powerful ergonomic features to the table, but again, for the purposes of this roundup review, the most compelling is the articulated, ergonomic headrest, which provides good support and a comfortable cushion for your head and neck.

LiveBack Technology

In addition to that, the Leap features a highly innovative, proprietary technology Steelcase calls “LiveBack,” which helps provide exceptional, dynamic, whole-back support. The shape of the seatback shifts and changes subtly as you change your seating position in the chair, always providing exactly the support you need, exactly when you need it.

You can even adjust the amount of support you get from the seatback via two separate dials, one for the lower half of the seatback and one for the upper. 

This is further supported by the company’s excellent lumbar support, which is not only height but also tension adjustable. If you want more lumbar support, you can easily get it. If you want less, you can get that too.

Again, this isn’t something you’re going to know the first time you sit in the chair, so experimentation on this front will be required until you zero in on the optimal settings for you. 

Oh, and did we mention that you can make all of these adjustments on the fly while you’re sitting in the chair? You can! Steelcase did a really great job on this front. We were impressed, and we think you will be too.

It gets better because the Leap allows you to recline back to a maximum angle of 120 degrees. Just dial in the position you want, settle back into the chair and get on with the business of your day.

Put all of these elements together, and you get a chair that is very hard to beat. There are a lot of office chair reviews on this site, and there are a lot of great models on the market today. None of them can top the Leap. 

Whether you’re looking for a chair to help mitigate your neck and shoulder pain, or a cervical spine support chair, or just a versatile, multi-functional office chair, the Leap is going to be one of the best, if not the absolute best option. It’s an amazing piece of office furniture.

Runner-Up: Freedom Chair by Humanscale

Humanscale isn’t one of the dominant companies in the office furniture market, but they’ve got stellar design talent and make an incredible range of products. Their Freedom Chair, designed by Niels Diffrient, is a case in point.

Although it boasts many impressive features, from a perspective of design philosophy, it couldn’t be more different than our overall winner. Where the Leap focuses primarily on the science of ergonomic excellence, the Freedom Chair focuses on the soul.

Here, you’ll find a chair that does just about everything for you. You don’t have to manually adjust the recline angle. You don’t have to fiddle with knobs and controls. The chair just “knows,” and it changes and adapts to your every movement.

In addition to that, the lines on Niels Diffrient’s chair are stunning. The Leap is a conventional design. It looks exactly like what it is. It’s an office chair. A great office chair, to be sure, but you can’t look at it and reach any other conclusion.

The Freedom Chair is almost a work of art. It’s lightweight and boasts sleek lines and subtle curves. Where your eye tends to pass right over the Leap, the Freedom Chair demands attention. It’s elegant, stylish, and gorgeous.

Even better, it’s proudly made in the US of A, so if you’re looking for a lovingly crafted American product, then it won’t matter to you that the Leap beats this one out marginally on technical merits, this is the chair for you.

Sure, it’s pricey. Then again, so is the Leap. This chair, though, was designed in a totally modular fashion, and it comes with an impressive fifteen-year warranty, so when and if components begin showing their age, it’s a simple matter to swap that individual component out. Truly, this is the last office chair you’ll ever need, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. 

Chair Specifications

Before we go further, let’s press pause and take a look at the core stats that define the model:

In comparing this model to our overall winner, one thing that jumps out at you is the fact that this one isn’t nearly as adjustable as the Leap. As we said at the start, though, that’s because there’s no need to make manual adjustments. The chair handles all that for you as you move.

Granted, it’s not perfect, and it does take a bit of getting used to. In fact, one of the more common complaints the company gets from the people who buy this chair is that it’s not very adjustable. It is; it’s just that the means of adjustment are very different and honestly more natural than what you find on your average office chair.

Upholstery Options

The company also offers a wide range of upholstery and finishing options, so you can order yours in just about any color you like. You can even get leather upholstery if that’s where your preferences run. Note that we’re talking about high-quality grain leather here, too. You won’t find any bonded leather or PU on this model. Only the best will do, and that’s fitting. It would be jarring to see bonded leather on a chair of this quality, so we’re glad to see that it’s not even an option.

Assembly

If you decide you want to buy one of these, it will arrive in a few major pieces in a large box, but because the production quality is so high and the instructions very clear, putting it together is a snap, made even easier thanks to the chair’s lightweight construction. While some office chairs cry out for having an assistant on hand for the assembly itself, this is one you can put together solo and in a matter of minutes.

Ergonomic Features

Comfort-wise, the chair offers the following, exceptionally well-implemented ergonomic features:

Although the armrests aren’t manually adjustable, they adjust dynamically with the rest of the chair. Lean back, and you’ll find that the armrests shift their position, following you back to continue providing optimal support.

All of these features are paired with delightful padding, not made of anything as ordinary as block foam or even cold-cured foam, but rather, a high-tech liquid called Technogel, which is comparable to memory foam in terms of comfort.

While all of this is magnificent, what completes the model are the little details and flourishes. There’s a handle on the back of the chair that makes it easy and convenient to move.

If you want to take your coat off before you sit down, you’ll find a built-in hanger thoughtfully located on the back of the chair. The default casters that come with the chair auto-lock when you sit down preventing the chair from moving, and if you don’t think you’ll like this particular feature, you can swap the casters out for standard ones when you place your order.

The designer seems to have thought of everything here, and you can tell that designing the Freedom Chair was a labor of love. For the right user, this chair could easily be seen as the best office chair for upper back and neck pain because you don’t have to waste time fiddling with the controls or trying to optimize it to you. The chair does that for you, which is fantastic.

We absolutely love it, and we think you will too. Even if you ultimately decide this model isn’t for you, we think you’ll agree; there’s nothing else quite like it on the market today.

Value Pick: Ergohuman High Back

So far, over the course of this review, we’ve introduced you to a workhorse design and a thoughtful work of art. Our third-place winner is different from either of those, but before we get into what makes the Ergohuman such a unique chair, let’s start as we’ve been doing; with a quick review of the chair’s basic stats.

Chair Specifications

With a maximum weight limit of 350 pounds and a height adjustment range that makes the chair useful to people ranging from about 5’2” to 6’6” the Ergohuman chair is a good fit for the vast bulk of the market. 

Upholstery 

It is a mesh chair, however, which may be off-putting to some but note that Ergohuman does make fabric-upholstered chairs too, so if you absolutely don’t want a mesh chair but wind up falling in love with the key strength of the Ergohuman brand, you can find a chair from their product catalog that you’ll like better.

As it is, this is an amazingly versatile piece of office furniture and is even available in a modest selection of colors, which include:

Ergonomic Features

As a mesh chair, the Ergohuman lacks any sort of padding, which detracts some from its comfort. On the other hand, comfort is about more than padding, and mesh is incredibly durable and highly breathable, making it well-suited to heavy daily usage. That and the chair’s overall comfort is further enhanced by a quartet of powerful ergonomic features. These are:

In addition, the chair offers a three-position tilt and lock mechanism that allows you to recline to 90 degrees (default setting), 110 degrees, or 135 degrees, at your preference. All that to say, even without padding then, this is a surprisingly comfortable chair!

Taken together, the collection of features we’ve talked about so far would make the chair a solid value at the price the company is selling it for, but none of those are the real reason most people end up gravitating to this model in particular. 

Customizable

The thing people love most about this model is the fact that it’s the most customizable chair on the market today. Do you want to add a cup holder to your trusty chair? You can do that. Do you want to add an ergonomic ottoman that also doubles as a workspace when you need it? You can do that. 

Do you want to add an articulated arm to your chair that’s strong enough to hold a laptop, giving you the freedom to work from your chair in an entirely new way? You can do that too!

Ergohuman has a better collection of extras and add-ons for the chairs they sell than any other company doing business in the office furniture market today. 

If you have a strong DIY streak and love the thought of tinkering with, adding to, and customizing your chair to your heart’s content, the Ergohuman hands-down the chair you want. 

For that type of user, it can easily be seen as the best office chair for back and neck support because it offers many enhanced customization options. Not only do you gain the benefits of powerful, hard-hitting ergonomic features, but you also gain the flexibility to mod the chair and make it a truly one-of-a-kind creation.

Like Humanscale, Ergohuman offers a lifetime warranty on every chair they sell, so if you decide you like the design and the extras the company offers, this may very well be the last office chair you’ll ever need or buy.

Assembly is Required (But It’s Super Easy!)

While the Ergohuman won’t arrive at your doorstep assembled, it does come mostly assembled, so once you unbox the pieces, you’ll only be a few steps away from getting them ready for first use. Overall, getting the pieces out of the box will probably take longer than assembling it. Kudos to the folks at Ergohuman for that!

If you decide you’re interested in buying an Ergohuman, we recommend buying the stock chair first and using it for a while; maybe a month or so. Then, once you get it tweaked and optimized for you, check out the company’s website and take a look at the selection of extras on offer, thinking about how you’re currently using the chair and what “extras” might enhance it and make it even more versatile and useful to you.

That way, you’re getting the best of both worlds. The full plate of options is available, but you’re not spending money on add-ons you might not ultimately use.

It’s a superb chair by any reckoning, but the simple truth is that not everybody has a strong DIY streak, and some people don’t like mesh chairs. Even so, if this model fires your imagination, it’s a fantastic option to serve you well.

Also Great

Ergolux by GM Seating

The Ergolux, by GM Seating, is a handsome chair by any reckoning. It doesn’t quite match the Freedom Chair in terms of stylishness, but it’s close, and it also has the advantage of being somewhat less expensive than the chair offered by Humanscale, which is a definite nod in its favor.

Chair Specifications

Before we dig deeper than that, though, let’s do a quick review of the basic stats that define this model:

The first thing that jumps out at you is that this is a delightfully adjustable chair, and even better, some of the adjustments on offer (seat depth!) are only typically found on chairs that cost a lot more money.

Unfortunately, this model does suffer from a rather serious limitation in that its maximum supported weight limit is quite low. In fact, the Ergolux supports the least amount of weight of any chair on our list of finalists which means that although its core stats are impressive, it’s going to have a more limited market appeal.

That’s a pity because, given its height adjustment range, this could be a fantastic option for big and tall folks, and worse, it wouldn’t be hard to ruggedize the frame to allow the chair to support more user weight. We regard this as a huge missed opportunity by GM Seating, and we hope that one day, they’ll address that weak spot in the chair’s design.

Ergonomic Features

Even so, if you’re inside the bounds of the chair’s weight limit, you’ll find a lot to like. The Ergolux sports three strongly implemented ergonomic features. These are:

Armrests

We mentioned in the selection criteria section of this review about the importance of adjustable armrests in terms of mitigating neck and shoulder pain, and here, we feel the need to call special attention to the armrests on the Ergolux.

While they’re not ergonomically designed, they are well padded and both height and angle adjustable, allowing you to turn them either inward or outwards by up to 45 degrees.

Obviously, it would be even better if they were ergonomically sculpted too, but this is a powerful feature in its own right, especially when it comes to mitigating neck and shoulder pain.

Upholstery

Unfortunately, the Ergolux suffers two flaws in addition to its modest weight limit that will turn at least some people away from the chair. First, it’s upholstered in leather. 

Granted, it’s good quality leather, but if you’re looking for a chair for heavy daily use, leather is a poor choice for upholstery. It’s not breathable, so if you spend more than a few hours at a stretch sitting in it, you’re bound to get uncomfortably hot and sweaty. On the other hand, if you’re specifically looking for a chair for light to moderate daily use and prefer leather, that fact won’t limit you at all.

Posture Correction

Second, one of the biggest user complaints about this chair is the fact that it’s very unforgiving. 

If you’re willing to commit to sitting correctly and letting the chair’s ergonomic features guide you to that goal, you’ll find it surprisingly comfortable after a short adjustment period. While the padding isn’t extravagant, there’s enough present that, when coupled with the Ergolux’s excellent ergonomic features, it’s a delight to sit in and will definitely help chronic pain sufferers be more productive.

If you slouch though or try to fight against the chair’s ergonomic features and sit how you want, you’ll find sitting in this chair for any length of time to be a punishing experience.

The question, then, is: How serious are you about improving your posture? If you’re willing to commit to that goal, then this is a great chair. If you want the freedom and flexibility to slack off sometimes, slouch, and sit incorrectly, consider this fair warning and give this model a pass.

Assembly Required, of Course

It probably won’t come as a surprise, but if you decide to order this chair, it will arrive at your door in a large box and several pieces. The good news is that there are only six pieces to contend with, the assembly instructions are clear (and located in a pocket under the seat, by the way), and the production quality is quite high, so the assembly process is easy. You’ll have it ready for first use in twenty minutes or so, even if you don’t have a trusty assistant standing by to lend a hand when the chair arrives.

Our Conclusion and Recommendation

Make no mistake, this is an excellent chair filled with powerful features, and for the right user, it’s a great choice and an excellent ergonomic office chair for neck pain. It does have its limitations, though, and we regard it as being more of a niche product than something for the mainstream. This is the chair you want if you:

If that sounds like you, you’re going to love the Ergolux. If it doesn’t, this is not the chair you’re looking for.

Hbada High Back

Every chair we’ve talked about so far has brought something exciting and unique to the table, above and beyond just being a great office chair, and the Hbada High Back is no different. 

This is the best office chair for back and neck pain in the budget segment of the market and will be of special interest to anyone who’s looking for a new office chair with a variety of ergonomic features and a good amount of adjustability but who doesn’t have a big pile of money to spend.

Aesthetically, it’s a mix of mesh and fabric, which makes it a better fit for those who tend to shy away from pure mesh chairs. Even better, it’s offered by a respected European company, so it features a rather unconventional, minimalist styling that many people find themselves drawn to, even if they’re not normally fans of mesh-based office chairs.

Chair Specifications

As ever, before we take a more in-depth look at what this model has to offer, we’ll begin with a quick overview of its core stats. Here they are:

A couple of points of interest here. First, despite being a sizeable piece of office furniture, it’s surprisingly lightweight and capable of supporting an impressive amount of user weight. That, combined with its seat height adjustment range, makes it a great choice for bigger, taller users.

While that’s great for taller folk, shorter people may find the chair hard to use effectively, even at the lowest seat height setting. It’s important to take careful measurements before buying since you’re unlikely to find this chair in big box stores in the US, so you won’t have an opportunity to have a seat in one and test it out firsthand.

Ergonomic Features

Not surprisingly, since this chair is significantly less expensive than the others we’ve talked about to this point, while it does sport an array of ergonomic features, they’re not quite as well implemented as those you’ll find on more expensive models, and there aren’t as many of them. Even so, this chair offers:

The armrests are a bit of a weak spot in the overall design. They’re short and stubby, and although padded, they’re covered with PU, which isn’t all that durable and will start showing its age after a year or two of heavy daily use. Having said that, the armrests are height adjustable, which is a nod in this model’s favor when mitigating neck and shoulder pain. 

On top of all that, the Hbada high back reclines back to an impressive 150 degrees. It doesn’t come with a pull-out footrest, but Hbada does make a model like that if you’re interested in an office chair that can pull double duty as a makeshift recliner.

Even without a footrest, though, it’s easy enough to rig up a DIY ottoman you can use at your desk for those times when you want to kick back and relax to change positions, which definitely has value in terms of keeping the pain at bay and staying productive.

Assembly

Although this chair does not come assembled, the production quality is high, and the instructions are clear. Those things, combined with the chair’s lightweight, make assembly a simple matter, even if you’re doing that entirely on your own. Expect to spend no more than twenty minutes getting the chair ready for first use, and you’re all set.

Our Recommendation

This chair lags behind its more expensive cousins in terms of overall adjustability and in the implementation of its ergonomic features. We’d love to see an update to this model that extended the length of the armrests, padded them with fabric and sculpted them ergonomically as well as implementing adjustable lumbar support and a true waterfall-edge style seat.

Doing all of those things, however, would dramatically increase the price of the chair, and as it stands, its main selling point is that it costs a fraction of what the other models we’ve talked about so far cost.

It’s very good at what it does; it just doesn’t do quite as much (or do it quite as well) as the other chairs on our list of finalists of best ergonomic chairs for neck pain. Even so, if you’re looking for a new office chair with unconventional styling, offered by a well-respected company and featuring the most important ergonomic features in terms of dealing with neck and shoulder pain and helping you stay productive, this is an awesome choice and is well worth considering for anybody on a budget.

Our Roundup of the Best Office Chairs for Neck Pain 2024 Conclusion

So, what’s the best office chair for neck pain overall? We absolutely stand by the Steelcase Leap with the headrest attachment, but we also understand that individual needs and tastes will vary. With that in mind, here’s a quick overview of some of the reasons you might find yourself gravitating toward one of the other models on our list of finalists.

The simple truth is that any of the office chairs for back and neck pain presented in this roundup review will serve you well. Our search revealed several exceptional models, each bringing something unique to the table over and above their basic ergonomic features. Ultimately, the question comes down to this: “Which of these is the best office chair for you?”

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References & Resources

• Humanscale Freedom Chair User Manual.
• Steelcase, Official Brand Website.
• GM Seating, Official Brand Website.
• Ergohuman, Official Brand Website.
• Humanscale, Official Brand Website.
• How to Avoid Neck and Shoulder Pain at Work?, Wise Step.
• Neck and Shoulder Pain Related to Computer Use, Science Direct.