BestMassage High Back Executive Massager Review 2024

Do you suffer from chronic pain? Do you find yourself regularly using your trusty heating pad as you try to stay productive during the day? Have you found yourself wishing there was a better and more effective solution?

It turns out there is, and if you’ve found yourself asking any of the questions above, you’ll enjoy this review. We’ll quickly admit that the BestMassage High Back Executive Massager isn’t the perfect chair, and it isn’t for everyone. For the right user, though, this could be a game changer.

Haven’t you heard of BestMassage? We’d be surprised if you had. It’s one of countless smaller, off-brands that manufacture their chairs in China and import them for sale. 

Setting your expectations is important if you buy from one of these off-brands. While Chinese manufacturing has improved in recent years, it’s still not on par with European or American manufacturing, so you won’t get the same production quality from a chair or a brand like this.

Also, don’t expect much in customer service and support. We’re not saying that getting support is impossible, but it will be more of a process than if you purchased something from a well-established brand. On the other hand, given the fairly modest price, buying something new is easy enough when this one gives up the proverbial ghost.

In the following sections, we’ll go over everything this model can do, and we won’t pull any punches when describing where it comes up short. That way, you’ll have all the information you need to decide if this is the model you’ve been looking to replace your current office chair.

If that sounds good to you, let’s jump in and see what this model offers!

Key Features of the BestMassage High Back Heated Massage Office Chair

The design team took no chances regarding the BestMassage High Back Executive Massager. By all outward appearances, it is a conventional office chair and a fairly unobtrusive one. That’s not a knock against the chair at all; it makes it incredibly easy for this model to blend seamlessly into just about any home or office décor scheme.

Chair Specifications

Before we dig deeper into the features this model brings, let’s start by looking at the core stats that drive and define the model. Here are a few:

The big thing that jumps out at us here is that most of these stats paint a picture of this chair being a good fit for bigger, taller folks. Unfortunately, the maximum supported weight limit doesn’t align with that.

As such, it’s a good fit for average-sized people and taller folk with average builds, but that does make it a good bit more narrowly focused than it could be. This chair could appeal to most of the market with little additional effort to ruggedize the frame. It’s a shame the company didn’t take the time to do that.

Adjustability

The BestMassage High Back Heated Massage Office Chair has a trio of adjustable features: It reclines back to a maximum of 130 degrees, it’s height adjustable, and the armrests are genuinely amazing on this chair. Not only are they height adjustable, but you can also slide them back and forth and pivot them marginally, allowing you complete freedom to put them exactly where you want and need them.

You seldom find that kind of adjustability on a chair offered at this price range. In fact, the armrests are so impressive that they almost feel out of place in this model. 

That’s a huge win for anyone who decides to buy one of these, but in our view, the company would have been better served to even out its feature implementations. Nothing else on the chair comes close to the armrests, making them the chair’s best feature, but they are also curious.

Ergonomic Features

In terms of comfort, the chair offers a trio of reasonably well-implemented, non-adjustable ergonomic features. These are:

All of these fall short of excellence in implementation, but they get the job done and help improve the chair’s overall comfort. Unfortunately, it needs help on that front because the chair’s designers decided to skimp on padding to maximize the effectiveness of the massage heads, which we’ll talk about in the next section.

If you’re specifically in need of a desk chair for hip-related pains, check out our roundup review.

Padding

The padding is conventional block foam with PU stretched over it. These two facts, more than anything else, limit the BestMassage High Back Executive Massager, defining it as a model suitable for light or moderate daily use only. 

First, while the padding is adequate for short stints of sitting and working, the longer you’re in the chair, the less comfortable it will become because block foam doesn’t offer much support unless it’s in generous amounts. It also doesn’t keep its shape well over the longer term, either, so you can expect it to start permanently sagging after about a year of heavy use or two if you only use it a few hours a day.

Second, PU is not a breathable material, so if you spend extended periods in the chair, you will get hot and sweaty, especially if you use the included heat function. We do not understand many companies’ fascination with pairing PU or leather with a heating element. The combination is guaranteed to make you uncomfortably hot in short order, but that’s the designer’s decision, so that’s what you get.

Footrest

What’s interesting about this is that the chair comes with a pull-out footrest, which allows it to pinch-hit as a recliner if you want or need to take a short break from work, shifting your position to ease the tension in your back.

We love the recline function, and it’s a welcome surprise on this or any chair. It adds a great deal of value and versatility to the design. Even better, reclining in the chair enhances this model’s massage (or heated massage) experience.

Having said that, adding a footrest to this model, in particular, isn’t an optimal fit for two reasons. One, the modest padding and upholstery work together to ensure you won’t be comfortable spending endless hours of every day in this chair, which is when you’d need the recline function the most. Two, the chair only reclines back to a maximum angle of 135 degrees, which is quite modest for a recliner.

Ultimately, it depends on what you want in an office chair. If you plan to use it for only a few hours daily, this is a great option, but power users will not be impressed. The features don’t blend together as well or as seamlessly as we’d expect, given that BestMassage has been in the office furniture market for long enough to know better.

The Massage Function

It’s important to set expectations before we talk about the massage function. After all, this is not a true massage chair; it’s an office chair offering a basic massage function. There’s a tremendous difference!

That said, this chair’s massage is significantly better than most of its competitors. The company has made fantastic use of older technology, creating something surprisingly close to a genuine massage chair experience.

Most chairs of this type render their massages with a series of stationary heads that vibrate, but this chair has an actual track along which the massage heads move up and down.

Yes, they indeed vibrate along this track, so it’s not like you’re getting a genuine massage technique. Still, the fact that they can move around a bit gives them much more flexibility and dramatically improves the overall massage experience.

Even better, you can custom tailor your massage via the simple wired remote, directing the massage heads to focus on your upper back, lower back, or entire back.

The company doesn’t try to get fancy here. You won’t find any pre-programmed routines or means of adjusting the massage intensity, but even without that, the massage is much better than we expected. Of course, it still falls short of what you’d get from a proper massage chair with quad rollers, but it definitely qualifies as a high-value addition to the design.

Best of all, though, is that the chair comes with heat! Heat always makes massage better and gives this chair some genuine therapeutic value, especially for those who suffer from chronic pain or arthritis. In our view, the surprising quality of the massage and the addition of heat more than makeup for the chair’s other shortcomings. We were impressed.

Does Not Come Assembled

As with most office furniture sold today, this model does not come assembled. Putting it together is not a complicated process, and overall, it should take you no more than twenty minutes, even if you’re doing it solo. However, the production quality isn’t high, and the instructions aren’t clear. 

It won’t take very long because it has less to do with the chair itself and more to do with the fact that it’s not hard to figure out where the various pieces go and how they fit together.

Pros and Cons of BestMassage High Back Executive Massager

Make no mistake; this chair has its share of negatives. It’s built with lower-quality materials that won’t last. It has relatively low production quality, and many of its features clash, almost fighting each other. The biggest examples of this clash are:

Those are serious issues, but even given their existence, the chair got a relatively high rating from us. In our opinion, this model succeeds despite itself. There’s just enough padding to make it a great option for someone who only needs a chair for a few hours daily.

While not great, the recline function is sufficient to allow a chronic pain sufferer to change his or her position, kick back and relax for a few minutes, and enjoy a heated massage. The heat and massage functions are much better than you’d expect to find on a chair offered at this price range.

Plus, it’s got those crazy-good adjustable armrests!

BestMassage High Back Executive Massager Review Conclusion

This was a surprisingly hard review to write because the BestMassage High Back Executive Massager has an odd collection of really good and really bad points. It seems inexcusable to us that a company with even a modest amount of experience in the office furniture world would build a chair with so many clashing features. 

On the other hand, though, the things this chair gets right, it really gets right, which is proof positive that BestMassage does know how to build good office furniture. Given the feature mashup, we provisionally recommend this model for people who:

If the three bullet points above describe you, this chair belongs on your shortlist. If they don’t, this chair is destined to underwhelm you.

Recommended Reading

Official Manufacturer Support

REFERENCES & RESOURCES

• Ways to Improve Your Office Safety, EHS Daily Advisor.
• What to Look For in an Office Chair, Small Business Brief.
• Five More Tips for Reducing Back Pain at the Office, Spine-Health.
• How to Sit Ergonomically Without Expensive Equipment, Popular Science.
• Sitting Ti​​me and All-Cause Mortality Risk in 222 497 Australian Adults, JAMA Network.