iComfort Massage Chair IC1022 Review 2024

Are you on a budget and looking for a decent massage chair, with a good mix of features?

If so, then you’re going to love our detailed iComfort massage chair IC1022 review. It exists in a strange place on the market. More expensive than most entry-level chairs, but not quite expensive enough to be considered a mid-range one.

At this price point, you can expect that it will have its share of limitations, and that’s certainly true. Nonetheless, as you’ll soon see, for the right user, this could be a solid purchase that will serve you well.

We’ll cover every feature that the 1022 has to offer and be sure to fill you in one some of the things it either doesn’t do well or can’t do at all, so you’ll have everything you need to make an informed purchasing decision. Let’s get right to it!

An Overview of The iComfort Massage Chair IC1022

S-Track Design & Quad Rollers

The iComfort IC1022 utilizes an industry-standard S-Track with a relatively short 30” stroke. For users of average height, that’s enough to reach from your shoulders to the top of your tailbone. If you’re looking for a chair that comes close to a full body experience, this one isn’t it.

Even so, it does utilize quad rollers, which closely mimic the feeling of human hands, so the massage you get is extremely high quality.

3D Body Scan

This is a great feature that may as well be an industry standard, given how commonly we see it these days. It enhances the overall quality of your experience by taking a scan of your body and making adjustments to the position of the rollers to ensure they hit all your pressure points.

If the technology doesn’t quite get it right, you’ll also find buttons on the remote that allow you to make manual adjustments to the roller positions and the width of the massage field.

This two-pronged approach is also becoming increasingly common, and ensures that the rollers always hit just where you need them to.

A Fair Number of Options

This is the area where most lower-priced chairs come up short. The IC1022 is no different in this regard, offering a number of massage combinations about on par with the chairs it competes with.

Massage Techniques

That covers the basics and gives you one advanced technique to work with, which is more than sufficient for most users. In addition to that, this model also features five pre-programmed or automatic massage options.

Pre-Programmed Massages

Based on the names, you can tell that the manufacturer wants to position this model as having therapeutic value. Sadly, it comes up short in this regard.

While it’s true that there is some restorative value in any massage, it lacks the features that provide the most benefit to chronic pain sufferers.

Another limitation to make a note of here is the fact that while you can adjust the speed of the rollers through five different levels, there’s only one intensity setting, so you get what you get.

That’s not uncommon in chairs at this price point, but it does limit the total number of combinations available.

You may have read some other iComfort massage chair IC1022 review online that indicates this model does allow for intensity adjustments, but this is incorrect. While there are three levels of intensity in Air Massage Mode, there’s no such adjustment for the rollers.

Air Massage Mode

The user manual is fairly confusing on this point, and makes it sound as though this model has 69 airbags, which would be an insanely high number for such a modestly priced chair.

The reality is that it has a total of 36 airbags, which is quite good. More in line with chairs at its price point, and slightly higher in many cases, which is to say that the quality of the air massage you get is quite good, and made even better by the fact that you can customize it via the remote through three levels of intensity.

You can also select a partial air massage by the following body regions:

One thing you can’t do, however, is you can’t select multiple regions at once. For example, you cannot get a back, waist, neck and shoulder air massage simultaneously. You can choose from their pre-defined regions, or you can select full-body mode.

That limits your options slightly, but isn’t a deal breaker, by any means.

Vibration Massage Mode

This is one feature offered by the iComfort IC1022 massage chair that does have some therapeutic value, but in our view, it’s one of the weakest of the set.

In order of importance, we rate therapeutic features thus:

So really, any of the above would be better than this but iComfort put some effort into the implementation, offering it with three levels of intensity adjustment.

If you’re a fan of a vibration style massage, you’ll find this implementation better than most other chairs that provide it, which has to be counted as a positive. Unfortunately, opinions are sharply divided over it, with large segments of the market not liking it at all.

Here, you’ll need to experiment to see if it’s something you find helpful.

Handheld Heat

Our iComfort IC1022 massage chair review wouldn’t be complete without calling particular attention to this feature. Heat is always a good addition, but we find the implementation to be lacking in this instance.

On the plus side, since the heating element is external, you can place it anywhere you want heat. If you want heat on your shoulders, you can have it. Small of your back? You can have that too… but of course, only one area at a time.

On the surface of it, that’s fantastic, but there’s a catch: The handheld heating unit is quite small. So wherever place it, the first thought you’ll have is “Ahhh, that feels great!” followed almost immediately by “I wish the unit was bigger!”

Having said that, the company did a great job by offering fine grained temperature controls, allowing you to adjust the temperature to taste between 40-70° Celsius, or 104-158° Fahrenheit, via seven adjustment levels in five-degree increments.

This left us conflicted. We wanted to like the implementation, and we honestly loved the heat control, but the small size of the unit just left us feeling that it could have been so much better.

Partial and Fixed Massage Modes

This is iComfort’s take on “Spot” and “Partial” massage modes. However, it winds up not being as effective as most implementations we’ve seen because the partial and fixed modes are pre-defined. The user is unable to focus the rollers where they want and have them work on that particular spot.

If the pre-defined spots happen to align with where you’re hurting, this feature will have some therapeutic value. If not, then you’re not likely to use this often.

Adjustable Timer

The massage times vary from one massage program to the next, running in a range from 8 to 30 minutes. These times can be adjusted to 15, 20, or 30 minutes from the remote.

Curiously, the manual indicates that it is not recommended to use the chair for more than twenty minutes at a time, even though some of their pre-programmed options default to a duration longer than this, and the remote allows you to extend the time to thirty minutes.

As of the time this review was written, no one has complained of problems associated with using the chair for the longest duration that the timer allows for, so we have to assume this was a misprint in the user manual.

Foot & Calf Massage

The foot and calf massage are acceptable, but not extraordinary. Both are rendered entirely by airbags, as the chair has no rollers at the bottom of the foot wells, which would provide for a more robust foot massage and make this attractive to users who spend several hours a day on their feet.

It’s important to note that the foot massage is not bad by any stretch – simply that you can find other chairs in the 1022’s price range that do a better job on this front.

MP3 Support

We were very glad to see MP3 support featured. Although again, their implementation leaves something to be desired.

There are basically three ways which this feature is implemented. In order of convenience to the user, these are:

iComfort has chosen to go with the SSD card. This is workable, but if you’re like most people, it just adds extra steps and is cumbersome to enjoy.

It’s still better than not having music support, so we have to count it as a win, but it should be noted that this is a relatively weak implementation.

Some Confusion About Body Stretching

We’ve seen at least one iComfort IC1022 review on the internet that indicates this model incorporates a body stretch feature. It would be great if that were the case, but there are no controls for such a feature on the remote, and the manual never mentions it. If it exists, then it is extremely well hidden.

That’s unfortunate, because its presence here would move the 1022 away from being a pure hobbyist chair, and position it as one with genuine therapeutic value. It’s certainly something we’d love to see in a future model upgrade.

Slightly Cumbersome Remote

Turning our attention to the remote, we have to say this could have been done better.

It feels like the company wanted to make sure there were no nested menus, and to accomplish that, they tried to throw every button they could on the remote itself.

What that leaves you with is a maze of sometimes cryptic symbols that you’ll have to puzzle out meanings for. This isn’t a complicated process, but it does give the chair more of a learning curve than you’d expect. We feel the company could have done a better job with layout and design.

A Few Words About The iComfort IC1022 Manual

If you run into a problem with the 1022, don’t rely on the user manual to solve whatever mystery you encounter.

While there is some helpful content, it is filled with faux helpful hints like “Do not stab the airbag with needles or other sharp objects.” And in case you think we’re kidding, that’s a direct quote, pulled from page fifteen.

​Pros & Cons of the iComfort ic1022 Massage Chair

We’re not expecting perfection from a chair at this price range. It is understood that sacrifices have to be made to control costs and that the iComfort IC1022 just won’t have as much to offer as a top-end chair.

Nonetheless, there’s plenty of room for improvement here. The first thing we’d like to see is a greater focus on one feature, so that would could name it as a standout. If it were up to us, we’d pick heat.

The idea of the mobile (external) heat option is a good one. If it was about 2.5 times bigger than it is, we’d name that as the defining feature of the chair, and a reason to recommend it highly.

Other improvements we’d love to see are:

If it had those things, it would become an exceptional hobbyist-level chair.

iComfort Massage Chair IC1022 Review Conclusion

This is a decent massage chair. It covers all the basics, gives you an advanced massage technique, and offers a few convenience features like MP3 support to make it attractive, and for what you’re getting, it’s pretty well-priced.

We cannot, however, say that this is a great or exceptional chair. Too many of its features are weakly implemented and it doesn’t have a single superbly-implemented aspect that we can name as its “standout feature.”

It’ll give you a good, basic massage. If that’s all you’re looking for, this chair’s a good fit (provided you’re no taller than 6’1”). If you want more than that, then we’d advise to continue your search, because better options are available.

---

Official Manufacturer Support

References & Resources

• iComfort, Official Brand Website.
• ​Techniques, Back n’ Balance Massage.
• ​Research on Health Benefits of Massage, AMTA.
• Stretches and massage reduce pain, Hesperian Health Guides.