Kyota E330 Kofuku Massage Chair Review 2024

Does your back hurt all the time? What about your legs and feet? Has that pain sent you on a quest to find a good, well-priced massage chair so you can get many, if not most, of the benefits of a visit to your local chiropractor without ever having to leave the house?

If you answered yes to the questions above, then your search may have led you to consider the Kyota E330. 

If that’s the case, we’re glad you’re here because, as we’ll explain in this⁠—our Kyota E330 review⁠—although this chair has some good features, overall, we cannot recommend this model, and in the sections that follow, we’ll tell you exactly why. Then, at the end of this piece, we’ll tell you about a couple of options we do recommend.

If that sounds good to you, read on, and let’s take a closer look.

An Overview Of The Kyota E330 Kofuku Massage Chair

The first thing we need to do is introduce you to the Kyota brand. If you’re like many, you probably haven’t heard much about them. They don’t have a huge footprint, and you may have concluded that they’re a smaller off-brand.

They’re actually not! 

Kyota is a subsidiary of Infinity, which is one of the big names in the massage chair world. That means that Kyota has all the advantages of Infinity’s vast experience when it comes to designing massage chairs, which you can read about in our Kyota massage chair reviews, and it shows. 

We like a number of the features we see in this chair, though, as you’ll see, it also has its share of limitations.

Before we get to specific massage-oriented features, though, let’s take a closer look at the basic design of the chair. Here, we see that the design team stuck to convention.

They didn’t take any chances, and they made no real effort to hide the true nature or function of the Kyota Kofuko, which means that it looks a lot like most of the other massage chairs on the market today.

That’s not a bad thing. 

It’s not an ugly chair, but it does have the classic, slightly futuristic look that massage chairs are known for. Assuming you’re fine with that, you won’t have any particular problem with the overall look of the chair.

The other important thing to mention at this point is that as massage chairs go, this one isn’t particularly large compared to its peers. It has a footprint that measures 53″ L x 32″ W x 45″ H when sitting upright and 58″ L x 32″ W x 33.5″ H when fully reclined and weighs in at 185 pounds. 

Make no mistake, it’s still a sizeable piece of furniture, but unless you live in a tiny house, you’re probably not going to have much—if any—trouble finding a permanent home for the chair. Even better, this model incorporates a wall-hugging design, so you’ll only need about 2″ of clearance between the back of the seat and whatever wall you decide to place it near.

Best of all, if you decide you want one of these, you’ll be able to order yours in either black, brown, or cream.

The last thing to talk about before we leave this section is the fact that the design team engineered this chair so it would accommodate users ranging in height from 4’8″ and 6’2″ and weighing up to 305 pounds.

That’s very slightly above the average for the massage chair market, and it means that this chair is of use for the vast majority of the potential market for it, which is a good thing.

The Kyota E330 Kofuko Is A Mixed Bag Of Technology (But Mostly Good)

Unfortunately, this isn’t as strong a component of our Kyota E330 review as we like it to be, even though the chair utilizes mostly state-of-the-art massage chair technology.

Starting with the basics, the Kofuko boasts an impressive 43″ L-shaped massage track, which allows the quad rollers mounted to it to give you a massage that starts at your neck and shoulders and extends all the way down to your glutes and the backs of your thighs.

In addition to that, the Kofuko utilizes Infinity’s excellent body-scanning tech. When you order a massage from the chair, it will quickly scan your body and make subtle adjustments to the position of the rollers so that they hit your body’s pressure points precisely, ensuring that you get the best massage the chair is capable of giving. Here’s the rub, though:

This chair only has a 2D massage track, so its rollers can only move along the X- and Y-axis. There is no Z-axis motion, which means that this chair cannot give you a true deep tissue massage.

Granted, the massage still feels good, but there is no way to adjust the massage intensity. Well, that’s not quite true, there is one way to incrementally increase massage intensity, and we’ll talk about that a little later in this review.

The big takeaway here, though, is that if you suffer from chronic pain and you’re looking for a chair to help make you feel better, one of the big ways to do that is to get a chair that can render a deep tissue massage, which this model is simply incapable of.

That’s a serious limitation in our view, and worse, it’s not hard to find a good 3D massage chair for the same price or even less money than this one.

The Kyota Kofuko Massage Chair Offers An Average Number Of Options

We’d rate this as an average component of our Kyota E330 review for two reasons. First, for the money, it really doesn’t offer as many massage options as many comparably priced chairs. And second, it’s hampered by the fact that the chair is built around a 2D massage track.

What that means specifically is that there’s no way to add intensity adjustments for the rollers, so all you’ll find here are speed adjustments, and there are only three of these.

In terms of techniques, the Kofuko is also strictly average, offering five in all. These are:

This is a standard array of massage techniques. You find the same options on just about every massage chair on the market today, so there’s nothing remarkable about these options.

In addition to that, you’ll find a total of nine pre-programmed massage techniques, but here, we have some issues with the way Kyota counts them. The pre-programmed options on offer are:

If you just checked the count, you’re not crazy. There are only eight massage options listed there. The ninth is the “Quick” massage, which is a demo mode that gives you a small taste of all of the massage options on offer and has a separate button to access it.

We can quibble about whether or not Quick is a proper pre-programmed technique but whatever. 

The company calls it one, so we’ll go with that. Here’s the thing, though: 

There are controls on the remote that allow you to order an “Upper Body” and “Lower Body” massage in partial/manual mode, so those aren’t actually pre-programmed massage options. They just recycled those programs and made them accessible from two different buttons (note that this chair also offers spot massage mode, which is a nice addition).

Same thing with the air massage. That’s not really a proper pre-programmed massage routine; it’s just an alternate way of activating the chair’s air massage function. 

So really, if you strip those out (and we feel that you should if you want to get a proper accounting of the true number of pre-programmed options), you’ll only find five, which is pretty underwhelming for a chair offered at this price point.

Of the five that remain, all of them are quite good, with the hallmark of the lot being the body stretch, but we feel that Kyota oversold their product here by claiming nine pre-programmed massage options and wanted to draw particular attention to that.

The body stretch almost makes up for it, though, because although Kyota doesn’t have the industry’s best body stretch, it is quite good and offers solid therapeutic value. We feel it would be even better paired with a deep tissue massage, but that would have required the company to upgrade to a 3D massage track. 

Even without that, though, the body stretch is a good feature and well implemented.

The Kofuko Massage Chair Offers Three Different Zero-G Seating Options

This is probably the single strongest component of our Kyota E330 review. Only about half (or slightly less) of the massage chairs on the market today offer Zero-G seating, and about half of those only offer a single seating position. Here, you get three, and that’s amazing.

Zero-G seating is both a helper feature that augments other capabilities offered by the chair and a powerful therapeutic feature in its own right.

Earlier, we mentioned that there was a ‘trick’ you could use to marginally increase the intensity of the massage you get from this chair, even though it doesn’t actually have intensity settings.

You can do this by setting the chair in one of the three offered Zero-G positions before you select a massage option. When you do, your body’s weight will press you more firmly against the rollers, which will give you a nominal increase in intensity.

Clearly, that’s not as good as having a 3D massage track and genuine intensity settings, but it’s something and underscores the strength of Zero-G’s inclusion here.

In addition to being a ‘helper app’ though, Zero-G offers therapeutic benefits all by itself. If you have recently had any kind of surgery, spending time each day sitting in a Zero-G position will help to facilitate faster healing.

In addition to that, studies have shown that it helps to lower blood pressure and improves your circulation in general. These are not trivial things, making this one of the best features the Kofuko has to offer.

The only thing we take issue with here is the fact that the implementation is a little on the weak side. 

There’s a single Zero-G button, and you press it repeatedly to cycle through the three possible positions.

It would have been easy to engineer a better implementation. Three separate buttons would have worked or a menu that made use of the small LCD screen built into the remote. Even though the implementation isn’t particularly strong, the feature itself is outstanding, and we’re thrilled to see it here.

Lumbar Heat Is Available

Initially, we were super excited about this feature because we were under the impression that it boasted heating coils in the leg massage ports. Sadly, this is not the case.

The Kofuko does offer heat, but it is limited to the lumbar region of the seat, supplied by twin heating coils located in the lower portion of the seatback.

The controls are simple and intuitive. There’s a heat button on the remote. Press it when you want heat, and press it again to turn it off.

Sure, we would love to have seen multiple temperature settings or more expansive heat, but even in its current form, this is a very good feature, and it gives the chair another powerful therapeutic benefit, which is superb.

An Uninspiring Air Massage

The Kofuko boasts a total of 14 airbags, which give it 24 air cells strategically located throughout the chair. Users can selectively activate the airbags by body regions if they wish, choosing from Foot and Calf, Arms, Shoulders, or Full Air. Users can also choose from one of three different intensity settings, which allows for some customization.

The problem here is that there’s nothing exceptional or remarkable about any of the above. Our sense of it is that the airbags mostly exist to support the stretch feature, and as a side effect, you can also get a decent air massage from it.

The Kofuko Has a Good Calf And Foot Massage

This is another competently implemented feature, but like many of the others we’ve talked about, there’s nothing particularly noteworthy about it. The Kofuko’s design team implemented it the same way most calf and foot massages are implemented: airbags rendering the calf massage, with airbags and rollers attending to the soles of your feet.

There was a day when most massage chairs used sole rollers only for your feet, but the configuration we see here is increasingly becoming the new informal standard.

It feels great, and again, it’s quite competently implemented; it’s just that there’s nothing remarkable about it. Even so, if you spend several hours of each day on your feet, this may wind up being your favorite feature.

One Good Extra

The Kofuko skimps on extras, but this chair does offer one: a massage timer. All massages on the chair default to a 20-minute duration, which can be adjusted in five-minute increments to a minimum of five minutes and an absolute maximum of thirty minutes.

Many of the Kofuko’s peers offer more on this front, but most people don’t buy a massage chair for these kinds of finishing touches, so by itself, this isn’t going to be enough to prompt many potential buyers away from this particular model.

Kyota E330 Kofuku Massage Chair Variants

Pros & Cons of Kyota E330 Kofuku Massage Chair

If you’ve read to this point, as you can see, many⁠—if not most of the chair’s features⁠—are competently implemented, but few of them offer anything special or extraordinary. That’s the major recurring theme with this chair.

There’s not much outright wrong with it, but also, there’s nothing special about it.

We see two major points of weakness in the design that deviate from that standard. First, the use of a 2D track really weakens the design. 

Not only does it rob it of a good therapeutic feature (deep tissue massage), but it also limits the number of massage options that can be made available. Without a 3D track, there can be no intensity adjustment, so all you’re left with is speed.

The second thing is that the Kofuko’s designers played a little too fast and loose with the definition of a “pre-programmed massage option.” By our count, there are really only five such options, but by stretching the definition a bit, the company manages to list nine.

The problem is that it doesn’t do anything to actually strengthen the design, and once you see what they’ve done, you can’t unsee it.

Kyota E330 Kofuko Conclusion

We regard this chair as being one of Kyota’s weaker models. Even though it has a fair number of competently implemented features, overall, it just doesn’t provide a solid level of value for the money, and it’s not at all difficult to find a comparably priced (or cheaper) chair that offers more. Given that, we cannot, in good conscience, recommend this model.

Other Options to Consider

If you find yourself agreeing with our assessment, here are a couple of other models you may want to consider:

This chair is a wonder. Offered by one of the finest companies in the industry, it’s packed with features you’ll love, including a 3D massage track and the industry’s best body stretch. It’s also capable of supporting slightly more user weight, making it useful to an even larger swath of the market.

The Paragon is a more expensive chair, but the reason we’re mentioning it here is that Osaki often offers this model at deep discounts, and if you can catch it on sale, you’ll end up with a significantly better chair for about the same money. 

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Official Manufacturer Support

Reference & Resources

• Kyota Massage Chair, Official Brand Website.
• Kyota E330 Kofuko Massage Chair User Manual
• Massage Reduces Inflammation and Promotes Growth of New Mitochondria Following Strenuous Exercise, Study Finds, Science Daily. 
• Massage Therapy Has Short-Term Benefits for People With Common Musculoskeletal Disorders Compared to No Treatment, Science Direct. 
• Positive Massage for Couples’ Wellbeing and Relationships: The Bridge Between Positive Psychology and Massage, Scientific Research Publishing.