Kyota Yosei M868 4D Massage Chair Review 2024

Are you in the market for a good, high-quality massage chair? Do you have the budget to get one of the super deluxe high-end models?

If you answered yes to the questions above, then your search for the “right” chair may have led you to the Yosei. In this detailed Kyota Yosei M868 review, we’ll tell you all about this chair and what it has to offer, and then we’ll tell you why we ultimately don’t recommend this model.

If you’re on the fence and not sure whether you should spend your money on this model, in particular, read on, and let’s take a closer look at it.

An Overview Of The Kyota M868 Yosei 4D Massage Chair

Starting with the basics, we will say that the design team behind the Yosei made some subtle improvements to what we consider the “standard” massage chair aesthetic. This one winds up looking a bit sleeker and more refined when placed next to its peers. It literally looks like the command chair of a starship, which is pretty cool.

Of course, some people may balk at having something like that in their living rooms, and if you want a massage chair that looks more like a conventional recliner, they do make those, but this isn’t that chair. If that’s what you’re after, your best bet is to look at the excellent options offered by Human Touch.

While other companies make “disguised” massage chairs, nobody does it better than Human Touch, in our view.

Assuming you’re okay with the sci-fi aesthetic, the next thing to mention is size. This is a big piece of furniture, with a footprint that measures 60” L x 33” W x 45” H when the chair is sitting upright and 70” L x 33” W x 32” H when it is fully reclined, and it tips the scales at an impressive 285 pounds.

Part of the reason it’s such a burly piece of furniture is that it’s designed to accommodate users ranging in height from 5’ to 6’6” and weighing up to 300 pounds.

Unfortunately, there’s a tradeoff involved with that, and if you plan on placing it in a smaller room, that may be challenging unless you move some furniture out first.

One saving grace, however, is the fact that this design incorporates space-saving technology. 

Kyota can’t seem to make up their minds about how much clearance is required between the seatback and the wall, with some of their materials claiming as little as 1” and others claiming as much as 4”, but suffice it to say that you won’t need much space between the wall and the seatback, which will make your life a little easier.

Assuming you’re not put off by the chair’s aesthetic, and you’ve got space for it, if you decide to buy one of these, you’ll be able to choose from either black or dark brown—two fairly standard furniture colors, so you may be able to color-match fairly easily.

The Kyota Yosei Sports All The Latest Technology

We’ve seen other Kyota Yosei M868 4D massage chair reviews that spend what we feel to be an inordinate amount of time raving about this, but honestly, at the price point this chair is being sold at, our feeling is that it had absolutely better be bristling with state-of-the-art technology.

To its credit, the Yosei is, but we don’t regard that as a special accomplishment. It’s more like the minimum necessary standard for a high-end chair.

Whether you’re impressed by it or not, the Yosei does have a delightfully long 49” L-Track that allows its quad rollers to give you a massage that starts at your neck and shoulders and extends all the way to your glutes and the backs of your thighs.

This is billed as a 4D massage chair, so not only can the rollers move along the X-, Y-, and Z-axis, but the chair also boasts a 4D mode in which the roller speed and intensity vary, depending on where the rollers are on your body.

In addition to that, the Yosei offers very good body-scanning tech. This is no surprise because Kyota is a subsidiary of Infinity, a well-known and well-respected brand in the industry.

In practice, the body scanning tech dynamically adjusts the roller position and gets it right about 95% of the time.

But in the event that something is a little off, the Yosei’s design team included controls on the remote that allows the user to tweak the position of the rollers manually, so you’ll always get the best massage that this chair is capable of delivering (which is very good indeed!).

A Disappointing Number of Massage Options

We would rate this as an almost shockingly weak component of our Kyota Yosei M868 review. The main point of a massage chair is, after all, massage. Given the high price the company is demanding for this model, we expected at least two advanced techniques, a couple of dozen pre-programmed massage options, and all kinds of customization options.

You just don’t get this here. The Yosei doesn’t deliver the way we feel it should.

In terms of techniques, you’ll find the following:

Functionally, there’s ZERO difference between music sync and rhythm, so there should be one less technique on this list.

Overall, this is pretty disappointing. It’s not hard to find chairs that cost less than two thousand dollars that feature the same basic list above. If you’re going to charge more than ten thousand dollars for a chair, it needs to do more. That’s our view.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t get any better when looking at pre-programmed massage options. The Yosei offers the following:

These are good programs, and there are three therapeutic features on offer here. The “Extension” program is a body stretch routine, “Waist and Spine” is a body twist routine, and Deep Shiatsu is a deep tissue massage.

The problem is, it’s not hard to find much cheaper massage chairs that offer all of those features, plus two dozen or so pre-programmed massage routines. This list just doesn’t deliver enough value for the money.

In addition to the above, there are a decent number of customization options on offer, but nothing we regard as special or spectacular.

For instance, you’ll find six speed options and spot and partial massage modes. Notably absent, however, is a means of adjusting massage intensity (except for in 4D mode).

Unless you’re using the massage chair in 4D mode, the company recommends putting a blanket down if you want to reduce massage intensity. Seriously. On a super expensive chair.

Now, if you are using one of the 4D modes, you have five intensity levels you can choose from, but that only applies to three of the pre-programmed massage routines. Anything else, and you’re basically out of luck.

Finally, you can activate the rollers by specific body region if you don’t want a full-body massage.

These regions are:

This may look like a lot, but it’s substandard for a chair at this price point. We were underwhelmed, and we think you would be too.

Only One Zero-G Seating Position

This is a genuine disappointment and a real point of weakness in the design of this chair. It’s standard practice for chairs offered at this price point to have three different Zero-G seating options. There’s only one here, and that’s a pity.

If there’s a silver lining to be found, it lies in the fact that it is implemented competently, although again, we’re less than thrilled by the absence of the other two seating positions we’re expecting to see.

In any case, it’s a good addition to the design, giving the Yosei a fourth therapeutic feature to talk about.

From a therapeutic standpoint, Zero-G seating offers the following benefits:

All that to say, we love the feature and are thrilled it was included here, but also, it’s what we’re expecting to see on a top-end chair.

The Yosei Offers Decent Heat

We’d rate this as a below-average component of our Kyota Yosei M868 review.

Only about half of the massage chairs on the market today offer heat, and most of those offer heat in the lumbar region of the chair.

That’s exactly what the Yosei does. It’s another competently implemented feature, but for the money, we wanted more. We wanted either heated rollers or heating coils in both the seatback and the footwells. Barring that, we wanted multiple heat settings so you could control the temperature.

Exactly none of that is on offer here, which is a genuine disappointment.

An Underwhelming Airbag-Based Massage

This is yet another disappointing component of our Kyota Yosei review. The Yosei sports a total of 26 airbags and 50 air cells.

That’s not very many. You can find chairs that are 50% cheaper with that many or more airbags incorporated into the design.

The upshot is that there are enough airbags present to give a pretty good air-based massage, and you can customize it via five intensity levels from the remote. If you don’t want the full-body airbag massage experience, you can also selectively activate airbags by body region, with the following options available:

There’s nothing wrong with this feature. It’s good and a nice addition to the feature set, but for the money, we’re expecting a lot more here.

The Yosei Has A Very Good Calf And Foot Massage

This is probably our favorite feature of the whole design. Most massage chairs that offer a calf and foot massage (and some don’t) use airbags for the calf massage and rollers for the soles of your feet.

Here, you’ll find both airbags and rollers attending to your calves and airbags and rollers also attending to your feet.

It’s a cut above average, which is excellent, and if you come home at the end of a long day with aching legs or feet, you’ll probably fall in love with this feature. Is it worth the price of the chair? No, but to give credit where credit is due, this is an excellent feature addition and a very strong implementation.

The Yosei Has A Number Of Extras

One thing you can fairly say about this model: it’s packed with extras. Most are good, and a few are, well…present.

The USB charging port and Bluetooth speakers are awesome and a natural pairing. You can keep your phone charged and listen to your favorite music while getting a massage. That’s fantastic.

The chromotherapy lights—well, mood lighting is fine, but it’s not one of those “must-have” extras.

The same is true of ionized air. Neat, and it may help you relax, but few will mark this down as one of the “must-haves.”

Our favorite extra takes the form of memory slots. There are two of these, and you can create your own highly customized massage, saving it for one-touch recall later.

That’s awesome, but this is a super easy feature to add, and two memory slots seem a bit on the stingy side. We’ve seen chairs with up to five; honestly, the more, the merrier. We’d love to see this expanded in some future model update.

Rounding out the extras is the massage timer. All of the massages this chair offers default to a twenty-minute timer, but you can select either 10 minutes or 30 minutes if you prefer. Again, this is good, but we wanted more—specifically, up to sixty minutes on the clock would have been ideal.

Even so, we were pleased to see this feature woven into the design!

Pros & Cons of Kyota M868 Yosei 4D Massage Chair

Overall, this is a good chair, and we like the design. All of the features are competently implemented, and there really aren’t any glaring weaknesses except for the price. Unfortunately, that’s going to be a dealbreaker for many prospective buyers.

Kyota Yosei M868 Review Conclusion

If this chair was priced in the mid-range, it would be one of our top picks, and we could easily recommend it. As it stands, it’s just too expensive, and we cannot, in good conscience, recommend it.

It’s far too easy to find chairs that cost much less and offer the same or better functionality.

Other Options To Consider

Since we’re unable to recommend this model, here are a couple of other options you may want to consider:

It feels like the Paragon is the chair that the Yosei is trying to be, except the Paragon costs a whole lot less money and is frequently found on sale. Even better, the discounts are deep indeed, and if you can pick this model up on sale, it’s one of the best values on the massage chair market today.

Kahuna is an amazing company that consistently makes great chairs. The Kappa is an excellent example of their work. It’s brimming with features you’ll love, loaded with extras, and sports the best body stretch in the industry. This one is not to be missed!

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Official Manufacturer Support

References & Resources

• Kyota Massage Chair, Official Brand Website.
• Kyota Yosei M868 4D Massage Chair User Manual.
• Effectiveness of Massage Therapy on Postoperative Outcomes Among Patients Undergoing Cardiac Surgery: A Systematic Review, Science Direct. 
• How Massage Therapy Enhances Work Performance And Career Success, Forbes Magazine. 
• How Massage Can Relieve Workplace Pain And Stress, SWHelper.