In a Nutshell:
A well-designed little office chair, optimized for shorter users! NBF Petite Ergonomic Chair is recommended For: Shorter users who weigh 250 pounds or less, looking for a good chair for light to moderate daily use.
Value for the Money
Comfort
Brand Reliability*
Aesthetic Flexibility**
Overall Rating
4.3/5
Benefits
Drawbacks
Recommended For: Shorter users who weigh 250 pounds or less, looking for a good chair for light to moderate daily use.
Are you a shorter person?
Has that fact made it notoriously difficult for you to find a decent office chair that fits you?
If so, you’re not alone. It can be frustrating to find office chairs designed specifically for shorter people.
The good news is that they exist, and the NBF Petite Ergonomic Chair is a good choice for the right user.
While this chair isn’t a great choice if you’re looking for something designed to withstand the rigors of heavy daily use, if you’re looking for something comfortable that’s optimized for light to moderate daily use, you’ll find a lot to like about this model.
In the following sections, we’ll go over every aspect of this chair’s design so you can decide if this is the model you’ve been looking for. If that sounds good to you, let’s jump in and see what the NBF Petite offers!
Key Features of the NBF Petite Ergonomic Chair
The NBF Petite Ergonomic Chair is surprisingly big for a chair optimized for smaller people. It certainly looks comfy and inviting, though!
Those are the first things likely to enter your mind when you see the chair for the first time, and it is kind of a big piece of furniture, but as you’ll see, it lives up to its reputation as being well-suited for shorter people.
Chair Specifications
Here are the basic stats that define the model:
With a smaller-than-average seat depth and a low seat height setting under 17”, this chair is a great fit for users as short as about 5’ tall.
Normally, we’d complain about the chair’s modest weight limit, but given that most shorter users weigh under 250 pounds, this chair is a good fit for the vast majority of that market.
Note, though, that the base of this chair is ruggedized plastic, so if you weigh a little more, you’ll definitely want to give this model a pass. No worries, though—there are other office chairs out there that are optimized for shorter people and support more weight!
Aesthetics & Design
It boasts a stylish, modern design, too, and we detect just a hint of a racing-style seat in the inspiration for this chair. Granted, it’s definitely not a racing-style seat, but you can see some faint echoes of that aesthetic in this chair, which we like very much. It might not be for everyone, but we give the chair high marks for its looks and feel, and it will blend fairly easily into most home or office décor schemes.
Color Options
Even better, the company offers the NBF Petite in black and tan variants, which gives you more options for ensuring the chair is a good fit for your home.
Memory Foam
The NBF Petite Office Chair is a cut above standard in terms of comfort. Instead of sporting the unofficial industry standard block foam padding, this model utilizes memory foam, which makes it a pure delight to sit in.
While we were thrilled to see the inclusion of memory foam, it is a bit of a curiosity. Memory foam is typically used on chairs designed for power users—people who sit in their office chairs for 8 to 10 hours a day or longer.
PU Leather
You don’t want to do that in this chair. It’s not breathable, and because it’s clad in PU, it’s not very comfortable, which is why we conclude that this chair is optimized for light to moderate daily use.
If you spend all day in this model, you’ll be a hot, sweaty mess by the end, to say nothing of the fact that the upholstery wasn’t designed to withstand the rigors of heavy daily use in the first place.
In any case, however long you plan on spending in the chair, one thing is for certain: Although the upholstery may make you hot and sweaty, you’ll certainly have a pleasant cushion to sit on!
Even better, the NBF Petite offers a variety of well-implemented ergonomic features that help further improve the chair’s comfort —three and a half in all.
Lumbar Support
The first is the NBF Petite’s lumbar support system, which offers adjustable tension, allowing you to precisely set the amount of support you get. Not only is this feature expertly implemented, making it one of the highlights of the chair, but it’s also quite a rarity for chairs offered at this price range.
Head & Neck Support + Sculpted Armrests
The chair also offers outstanding head and neck support, and the ergonomically sculpted armrests are height and width adjustable, giving you another way to tweak and personalize your seating experience.
Sculpted Seat
Although the seat isn’t a waterfall-edge design, it is sculpted. As such, it provides some ergonomic benefits and enhances the overall comfort level of the person sitting in the chair. We rate this as a “half feature” in the count above.
Adjustability
In addition to the pleasant surprise of highly adjustable armrests and a tension adjustment for the lumbar support, this chair has all the usual features you’d expect in a good-quality office chair: 360-swivel, a tilt-and-lock feature and of course, the height adjustment lever.
This one comes close to being best in class regarding its overall adjustability.
Assembly is Required
As with most office furniture sold today, the Petite Ergonomic Chair by NBF Signature Series does not come assembled. The instructions are clear, though, and the production quality is high enough that you won’t have much trouble getting the various pieces to fit together as they should. However, if you are a shorter person, you may struggle to get the seatback attached to the seat without an extra pair of hands.
Overall, the assembly process should take about 30 minutes, and you can knock another ten off of that if you have an assistant standing by on the day the chair arrives at your doorstep.
If you’d prefer a totally hands-free approach, you can do that too, as this chair is offered with expert assembly for an additional fee. We’re on the fence about this one. The cost is fairly hefty and amounts to about 25% of the total price of the chair. That’s verging on being too rich for our blood, but if someone is dead set against the idea of putting the chair together themselves, it could easily be seen as being worth the premium.
Pros and Cons of the NBF Petite Ergonomic Chair
Here are the things we think you’ll like best about this chair:
And here are the things we view as the major weak points of the design:
Overall, we feel that this chair’s strengths far outweigh its weaknesses, and we’re pretty sure that most people will agree with that assessment.
Final Thoughts on NBF Petite Ergonomic Chair Review
The NBF Petite Ergonomic Chair is a very good chair that verges on greatness. It’s a comfortable, great-looking piece of office furniture and more than that; it has some superbly implemented, highly adjustable ergonomic features, which is a pleasant surprise, given its relatively modest price.
Granted, it’s not a budget chair, but we were still impressed at the sheer amount of adjustability on offer and the quality of implementing the various ergonomic features.
We recommend this chair for shorter users weighing 250 pounds or less. It’s a great chair for light to moderate daily use.
Recommended Reading
Serta Style Hannah I & II Office Chair Review
Check our thorough review of Serta Style Hannah Office Chairs and determine how their two models compare.
Flash Furniture Microfiber High-Back Chair Review
Our assessment of the Flash Furniture Microfiber High-Back Chair reveals an ergonomic chair for heavy daily use.
REFERENCES & RESOURCES
- National Business Furniture, Official Brand Website.
- Ergonomics: You and Your Chair, Career Step.
- What is Upholstered Furniture?, Homedit.
- If the Chair Fits: Sexism in American Office Furniture Design, Journal of Design History.