In a Nutshell:
A superb therapeutic chair that may also appeal to some hobbyist users. The Synca Wellness Kagra is a masterful piece of engineering. Recommended for anyone weighing up to 300 pounds who can afford it, but it’s of particular interest to people who suffer from chronic pain in their back, legs, or feet.
Overall Massage Quality
Customization options
Ease of Use
Value for the Money
Overall Rating
4.4/5
Benefits
Drawbacks
Recommended For: Anyone weighing up to 300 pounds who can afford it, but it’s of particular interest to people who suffer from chronic pain in their back, legs, or feet.
Do you suffer from chronic pain in your back, legs, or feet? Does that fact see you spending tons of time and money making trips to your local chiropractor’s office, seeking relief?
If you answered yes to either of those questions, then you’ll love what you read in this—our Kagra massage chair review.
We’ll be the first to admit that this massage chair won’t be for everyone.
While it’s certainly not the most expensive massage chair on the market today (not even close), it’s offered at a price that puts it well beyond the value segment of the market. So if you’re on a budget, no matter how much you may love this chair, it’s probably going to be a struggle to make it work—financially.
Still, if you’re willing to save up, this chair offers a lot.
If your interest is piqued and you want to learn more, read on, and let’s take a closer look.
Overview of the Synca Kagra 4D Premium Massage Chair
Let’s get the obvious thing out of the way first. If you’ve spent any time at all exploring the massage chair market, then you probably already know all the big-name players in the industry—Human Touch, Kahuna, Osaki, and a few others. These giants dominate the massage chair landscape.
A little farther out, you’ll find a constellation of smaller brands. They make and sell good products, but their footprint is notably smaller, and they have a limited ability to offer post-sales support.
Synca Wellness probably hasn’t ever cropped up on your radar before, so who are these guys?
As it turns out, that’s an interesting story that has a bearing on this massage chair.
Synca Wellness is a subsidiary owned by Johnson Health Tech, formerly called Johnson Metals.
If you’re unfamiliar with the name, Johnson Metals might sound like a steel manufacturer, but actually, they make a popular line of exercise equipment, which is how and where they got their stellar reputation.
They really know exercise equipment, and as a consequence, they really know the human musculoskeletal system.
That matters because they share that expertise with chiropractors, and massage chairs seek to emulate the massage and adjustment experience you get when you pay a visit to your local chiropractor.
All that to say, the design team behind this chair has a ton of experience where the human body is concerned, which gives them a huge leg up in terms of designing a world-class massage chair—even if it’s an industry they’re not well known in.
As you’ll see, they put their expertise to good use because this is an amazing chair from top to bottom.
Before we talk about the massage features that make it so good, let’s start by taking a step back and talking about the chair itself.
After all, it’s probably either going to replace your living room recliner, or it’s going to be sitting right next to it. So as a chair, it needs to hit all the right notes, just as it also needs to be able to deliver a world-class massage.
Aesthetically, the Synca Wellness Kagra looks a bit futuristic. But unlike most of the massage chairs on the market today, the design team here took pains to create a chair that would blend in relatively easily with the rest of the furniture in your living room.
Upholstered in PU (which is what almost every massage chair sold today is clad in), the Kagra is offered in three different color options: white, black, or brown.
While that’s not a lot to choose from, it covers the basics and makes color matching with the rest of your furniture a fairly simple proposition.
Even better, the Kagra is designed such that when you’re not using the chair to get a massage, the leg ports fold in and under the chair, which goes a long way toward making the chair look like a futuristic recliner—and that’s pretty cool.
It should be noted, however, that this is a sizeable piece of furniture, measuring 35” W x 53.1” L x 48.4” H when the chair is fully upright and 35” W x 73.6” L x 36.6” H when reclined. It weighs in at 211.6 pounds, so this isn’t a piece of furniture you can just scoot around your living room on a whim. If you decide to move it, you’ll probably need a second pair of hands.
The good news is that unlike a fair percentage of chairs on the market today, this one is capable of supporting users weighing up to 300 pounds and up to 6’3” tall—both of which are superb. Taken together, those facts make this chair useful to some 90% of the massage chair market.
The Synca Kagra 4D Massage Chair Has Good Bones
This will be a short section but a powerful component of our Kagra massage chair review because the design team didn’t cut many corners when building the framework of their chair.
With one exception, it utilizes state-of-the-art technology, incorporating quad rollers into a 3D massage track.
The one point of weakness we find in this segment of our review is the fact that the track only extends to the lumbar region of your back, which makes it an “S-Track” chair.
We would have preferred an L-Track design that allowed the rollers to travel under the seat to massage your glutes and thighs. But given that the airbags we’ll talk more about later cover hips and thighs, we can certainly look past the limitation.
One thing that makes it even easier to overlook the fact that the designers opted for an S-track rather than an L-track is the fact that the design team went above and beyond where the rollers are concerned.
To explain, we have to talk about the different roller configurations you can find on the market.
There are three: 2D, 3D, and 4D, with 4D being a fairly recent addition and capable of delivering the best overall massage.
A 2D track allows the rollers to move up and down and left and right. In other words, the rollers can move along the X- and Y-axis.
In a 3D design, the rollers can also move along the Z-axis, which is how some massage chairs are able to render amazing deep tissue massages.
And then, there are 4D chairs. In addition to being able to move along the X-, Y-, and Z-axis, the rollers spin as they move, orbiting each other to create another dimension to the motion and coming even closer to replicating the feel of human hands.
That’s what this chair offers, and the massage you get from it is absolutely amazing.
Do we wish it also had an L-track? Sure.
Absolutely, but we’ll take the S-track, no problem!
Dual-Layer Body Scanning Tech
This is another powerful component of our Kagra massage chair review because, once again, the folks at Synca Wellness went the extra mile.
Most massage chairs sold today offer body scanning tech, but this one goes further. The dual-layer approach means that the scan will almost always put the rollers in exactly the right spot. In practice, the scan will get it right and deliver the perfect massage 99.9% of the time.
You may literally wear the chair out before you experience it putting the rollers in suboptimal positions.
Even if that happens, you’ll find buttons on the control panel attached to the chair that allows you to tweak the rollers into the perfect position, so you’ll never get a bad massage from this chair.
Fewer Massage Options Than Advertised (And We’re Still Impressed!)
Sometimes, companies really stretch the definitions of established industry terms for marketing purposes.
Take, for example, Synca’s claim that the Synca Kagra 4D offers 78 different massage techniques.
Sounds amazing, right?
Well…it doesn’t. Not even close. Here are the massage techniques you’ll find on offer:
By our count, that’s seven techniques, which is a far cry from 78. We’ll get to how the company arrived at 78 in just a minute, but before we do, let’s talk about the actual techniques on offer.
The basics are what you’d expect, but we count THREE advanced techniques (and one variation of the same advanced technique).
Most of the massage chairs sold today offer one advanced technique, and it’s almost always Shiatsu because, honestly, it’s the easiest technique to get right on a machine.
A handful offer two advanced techniques. Very few models (you can count them on one hand!) offer three, and the Synca Kagra is one of those few. All by itself, that’s amazing. The company didn’t need to artificially inflate the number—three advanced techniques are huge, and it’s one of the major selling points of this design.
In addition to those techniques, you’ll find the following auto-programs available:
And on top of that, you’ll find the following targeted stretch routines (the “Stretch” above is for the full-body stretch):
And manual functions for:
So now that we know what this chair does and what it offers, let’s get back to the claim of 78 different techniques.
Well, as it turns out, and depending on exactly how you count, if you multiply the various settings by 5 for the roller-based stuff and 3 for the airbag-based stuff (which represents the number of intensity settings for each type of massage), you get a range of numbers in the neighborhood of 78.
The point is, yes, this chair offers a TON of different customization options, including five roller intensity levels on top of all the stuff we just listed. But no, that doesn’t mean there are 78 different massage techniques.
We’re not exactly sure why the company opted to inflate the number for marketing purposes. They didn’t need to. The list above is impressive on its own. It doesn’t need any help. This chair really brings the goods when it comes to massage techniques and pre-programmed routines. There’s a lot to like here, and marketing ploy aside, we’re impressed.
A Good Air Massage
The Synca Kagra massage chair features 31 airbags that can be used independently to give you a good airbag-based massage or, in some instances (the stretching routines in particular), be used in conjunction with the chair’s rollers to render a different sort of massage.
Here, you can order a full-body air massage (all airbags activated at once), or you can selectively activate bags by body region, including:
Additionally, as mentioned in the last section, you can modify your airbag-based massage via the remote through three different intensity levels, allowing you to customize the experience to taste.
Where airbag massage is concerned, more airbags generally result in a better overall massage, and at the price this machine is offered, 31 airbags are a little on the light side. So the massage isn’t quite as good as what you get from the rollers, but it’s still incredibly enjoyable.
You definitely won’t be disappointed; it’s just that we wouldn’t rate this as one of the keystone features of the design.
Zero-G Seating
This will be another short section, but it’s definitely worth drawing your attention to. NASA-Inspired Zero-G seating is a superb addition to any massage chair, and we were thrilled to see it included here.
It’s more than just a name or a marketing gimmick. It provides a raft of powerful therapeutic benefits, including the fact that it helps take pressure off of your spine, improves blood flow, and facilitates faster healing if you’ve recently had surgery of some kind.
We would love to have seen two or even three Zero-G seating options available, but alas, this model only offers one. Even so, we’ll take it! That, combined with the deep tissue massage this chair can give you, represents two incredibly powerful therapeutic features, and there’s more yet to talk about!
Heat, Glorious Heat
In our view, this is the hands-down best feature of the Kagra Synca Wellness chair and one of the main reasons to consider this model over some others. It’s got heat like you wouldn’t believe.
The chair comes with what can best be described as a “heated vest” that normally lays on the seatback.
Leave it in that position and turn on the heat function, and your whole back will get toasty while you’re enjoying a massage.
Alternatively, you can “put the vest on” while seated in the chair and enjoy heat over the front of your torso. The “vest” even comes with heated pockets!
We love it, and it really takes the massage this chair can deliver to a whole new level of awesome, adding another powerful therapeutic feature to the mix in a way we’ve not seen replicated by any other company. Kudos to Synca Wellness!
A Next-Level Good Calf And Foot Massage
The heated vest contraption is very cool, but there’s more heat to be found in this chair. The leg massage ports are heated too, both in the calf region and down at the soles of your feet.
The calf and foot massage was already good, with the calf massage being rendered by airbags and the foot massage being handled by acupressure rollers at the bottom of the footwells. But adding heat on top of that makes this feature one of the best on the chair and, honestly, one of the best implementations in the entire massage chair industry.
If you are looking for a chair that specifically goes the extra mile where the calf and foot massage is concerned, then this one belongs on your shortlist of options to consider.
High-Value Finishing Touches Too!
In addition to all of the above, we were thrilled to see that Synca Wellness didn’t skimp on extras.
This chair has a number of them, including:
All of the chair’s massages default to 19 minutes, which is an unusual number. If you prefer, you can modify the duration of the massage routine you’re running to either 10 or 16 minutes—at your preference.
Despite the unusual massage time numbers, these are all excellent features and really serve to round out the design.
Pros & Cons of Synca Wellness Kagra
It’s hard to even know where to start in terms of listing this chair’s best features. In no particular order, here are some of the ones that stand out to us:
We don’t have any major negatives to report, but a couple of nits would be things like:
Given how many positives this chair has going for it, though, those are minor complaints indeed.
Kagra Massage Chair Review Conclusion
If you suffer from chronic pain, this chair could be a game-changer. It’s a masterful design, and we recommend it without reservation. Even if you don’t suffer from chronic pain, if your budget can support it, this one belongs on your shortlist. It’s fantastic, and you won’t be disappointed.
Other Options To Consider
If, for one reason or another, this model isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, here are a couple of other options to consider:
Sporting a longer massage track and an impressive six-roller array in the place of the Synca’s quad rollers, this chair, offered by one of the biggest and most respected names in the industry, is not to be missed.
It’s packed with features you’ll love and features arguably the best body stretch in the industry (though you do give up the stretching variants that Synca brings to the table).
Even so, this one is less expensive than the chair we just reviewed and is well worth considering.
Recommended For: Anyone who can afford it. Exceptional therapeutic chair, made in the USA, packed with high-value features.
This model has been around for a while now but is still one of the best therapeutic massage chairs in the industry. If you’re a chronic pain sufferer and want a different mix of features to compare and contrast with those found in the Synca Wellness chair, give this one a look!
References & Resources:
- SYNCA, Official Brand Website.
- SYNCA Kagra Massage Chair User Manual
- 8 Relaxing Full Body Stretches, Very Well Fit.
- Muscle Rolling, IvyRose Holistic.
- The 5 Techniques of Swedish Massage, Elements Massage.
