Osaki Paragon 4D Massage Chair Review 2024

Are you in the market for a high-quality massage chair offered by a great company? Do you suffer from chronic pain that sees you making regular visits to your local chiropractor?

If you answered yes to those questions, then you’re going to like what you read in this—our Osaki Paragon review.

Osaki is one of the big names in the massage chair industry, and while they do have a few weaker models in their lineup, the Paragon isn’t one of them.  

Even better, although the Paragon is a fairly pricey model, it’s also one that Osaki regularly offers deep discounts on. It offers solid value at full price, but if you can catch it on sale, it’s one of the best values on the market today.

In the sections that follow, we’ll step you through everything this chair brings to the table, and we won’t be bashful when it comes to pointing out the (relatively few) limitations and shortcomings of the design.

Even if you ultimately decide that this isn’t the chair for you, we think you’ll agree—this is a tremendously good chair and well worth a closer look!

An Overview of The Osaki Paragon Massage Chair

The first thing to draw your attention to is the fact that the design team behind the Paragon didn’t take any chances when it came to the overall aesthetic of the chair, which is to say that it looks pretty much like most of the other massage chairs you’ll find on the market today.

That’s not a bad thing; it’s simply an acknowledgment that the Paragon makes no attempt to disguise its true nature.  

Massage chairs tend to look a bit like they belong on the set of a science fiction movie, and unless your house is decorated with a sci-fi theme, it’s probably going to stand out in whatever room you place it in

On the other hand, if you decide you want one of these, you can order yours in either black, brown, grey, or beige—neutral colors that make it relatively easy to blend the chair with whatever prevailing color scheme you use in decorating the room that will be home to the chair.

Note too that it’s a fairly big, burly piece of furniture, measuring 63.8” L x 35.2” W x 49.2” H when sitting upright and 77” L x 35.2” W x 38.8” H when reclined and weighing in at a hefty 328.5 pounds.

If you live in a smaller home or an efficiency apartment, you may struggle to find a permanent home for it, but this is helped along a little bit by virtue of the fact that the Paragon features a wall-hugging design, so you’ll only need 3.15” of clearance between the seatback and whatever wall you decide to place it near.

One slight limitation to be mindful of is the fact that the recommended weight limit for the Paragon is 280 pounds. That’s not an issue at all if you weigh less than that, but if you happen to weigh more, it’s an absolute deal-breaker.

We’re not really sure we understand why Osaki didn’t go ahead and ruggedize the frame, allowing the chair to support more weight. It wouldn’t have added significantly to the total price and would have made this model even more universally useful. 

In any case, as it stands, it will serve a solid majority of the market well, but do be mindful of the weight limit if you’re at or near the maximum recommended weight limit.

The Osaki Paragon 4D Is Built Around State-Of-The-Art Technology

This didn’t really surprise us, given that Osaki has a solid reputation in the industry. We would have expected nothing less.

The massage track begins near the top of the seatback, travels down its length, and then turns, continuing under the seat, allowing the rollers to render a massage that begins at your neck and shoulders, all the way to your glutes and the backs of your thighs.

That, paired with the leg massage ports, gives you something pretty close to a full body massage, which is superb.

Even better, the track is designed such that it allows the rollers to move along the X-, Y-, and Z-axis, so this model is capable of delivering a true deep tissue massage, which is a powerful therapeutic feature that will help make you feel better if you suffer from chronic pain.

Note that the company advertises this as a “4D” chair.

We’re not completely sold on that designation, but Osaki does offer a special “4D” mode (only applicable to manual massages, not the pre-programmed ones), which varies the speed and intensity of the rollers based on where it’s massaging on your back. 

The maximum intensity can be adjusted via the remote through four different intensity levels.

Speaking of the remote, it’s pretty standard fare for massage chairs. Outwardly, it looks a bit like the remote for your television but with a small LCD screen added to it that gives you a visual indication of where the rollers are, what speed and intensity the chair is operating at, and the like.

While this is certainly not bad, the LCD screen is quite small. 

We prefer Kahuna’s approach here. The company offers a touchpad with their chairs that boasts a 7” display, which makes it much easier to see what’s going on. Still, Osaki’s approach is the current industry standard, and as long as your eyesight is okay, you shouldn’t have any particular difficulty with the smallish screen.

If you do, be aware that Osaki has also made an app that can be used to control the chair from your phone, so if you prefer to have a slightly larger display screen, you can download the app on your phone and use it to control the chair in place of the remote.

It’s a decent solution that gives you the best of both worlds.

One thing that is really cool about the Paragon is the fact that it’s a “smart” chair that understands a few basic voice commands, so you actually don’t even need the remote to use the basic functions of the chair. It understands the following commands:

As you can see, you can’t use the voice commands to do anything that requires fine-grained control, but you can access several of the pre-programmed massage routines and perform a couple of other basic functions. We don’t consider this one of the hallmarks of the design, and the list of commands the chair understands is fairly limited, but it is a nice touch.

As is the case with most of the chairs Osaki offers, this one comes equipped with body scanning technology.  

When you order a massage, the first thing that will happen is that the chair will quickly scan your body and adjust the position of the rollers so that they align with your body’s pressure points.

Osaki’s body scan is pretty accurate, and in practice, you’ll find that it gets it right about 95% of the time. On those rare occasions where it doesn’t put the rollers exactly where you want them, you’ll find controls on the remote that allow you to fine-tune their positioning, so you’ll never have to worry about getting a substandard massage from this chair. Kudos to Osaki for that!

The Osaki Pro Paragon Offers A Solid Number Of Massage Options

This is a fairly strong component of our Osaki Paragon review, but we will admit to grading on a bit of a curve here.

If you consider this chair’s capabilities when you buy at full price, we’ll rate them as strictly average, but remember, you can frequently find the Paragon deeply discounted. And if you buy it on sale, then the number of options here is actually quite good.

Let’s start with basic massage techniques. Here’s what the Paragon has on offer:

That’s a bit below average. 

Most chairs offer at least a “combination” technique that combines kneading and tapping or something similar.

Here, you don’t get that.

It’s a bit of a disappointment, but we didn’t deduct any points from the Paragon for that because you can so often get the chair at a deeply discounted price. And even without the “Combination” technique, it’s still got the basics well covered and provides you with one advanced massage technique, which is excellent.

In addition to the above, you’ll find a dozen auto-programs available. These are:

• Recover
• Relief
• Stretch
• Soft
• Renew
• Calming
• Special, which contains a number of other options, including:
  • Refresh
  • Energy
  • Revive
  • Relax
  • Active
  • Healing

By our count, that’s only 12 auto programs because “Special” doesn’t actually do anything but point you to the other pre-programmed options under that category, but Osaki is counting “Special,” which brings their count to 13.

Our sense of it is that there’s nothing nefarious going on here. It seemed like an honest mistake, but we felt it was important to clarify so you know exactly what you’re getting if you decide to buy one of these. You’ll see 13 auto programs referenced in Osaki’s marketing materials, and this is the reason why.

These are good options, and there’s something for everyone on this list. You’ll definitely want to experiment, trying them all to see which ones are your favorites.

The big thing to talk about here, though, is the “Stretch” routine.

Body stretching isn’t something you find on every massage chair on the market, and some companies do it better than others. Kahuna, for instance, is known for its body stretching routines.

Osaki’s body stretch may not be best in class, but it’s still very good and offers genuine therapeutic value (which makes this the second therapeutic feature we’ve revealed).

If your favorite part of going to the chiropractor is getting an “adjustment,” then this is probably going to be one of your favorite aspects of the design of the Paragon.

In addition to the pre-programmed options, you’ll find an impressive number of customization options available, including both spot and partial massage modes and the ability to adjust the speed of the rollers (five levels)—and don’t forget the 4D mode, which offers speed and intensity adjustments on top of all these!

Zero-G Seating Is Included

This is a genuine point of weakness in the design, in our view, and, as such, is a relatively weak component of our Osaki Paragon review. 

While the chair technically includes three Zero-G modes, the implementation is weak in that you have to repeatedly press the button to cycle through them, and the third mode is called “sleeping mode.” 

There’s nothing that says you can’t use “sleeping mode” to get a massage, but the expectation seems clear.

Ideally, we’d love to see each Zero-G option with its own button, or at the very least, a nested menu allowing you to select which one you want. Multiple button presses make it somewhat “fiddly,” and on a chair offered at this price point, there shouldn’t be any features like that.

Having said that, the Zero-G seating position is competently implemented and easy to access on the remote, giving the Paragon a third therapeutic feature because Zero-G seating has been shown to help lower blood pressure, improve circulation, and facilitate faster post-surgical healing, making it a powerful feature addition to any design.

Superb Full Body Heat

If the Zero-G section was a little uninspiring, this, in our view, more than makes up for it. We regard the heat implementation to be the single strongest point of our Osaki Paragon review and the signature feature of the chair.

Less than half of the massage chairs on the market today offer heat, and of the ones that do, the majority only feature heat in the lumbar region.

This chair gives you full-body heat because it doesn’t rely on heating coils in the chair. Instead, the rollers themselves are (or can be, at the touch of a button) heated.

It’s absolutely incredible.

A competently rendered massage always feels good, but massage paired with heat takes it to the next level, and here, you get heat everywhere, which is absolutely fantastic, and this implementation gives the Osaki Paragon a fourth powerful therapeutic feature.

A Very Good Air Massage

While this isn’t one of the signature features of the design, the Paragon also offers a well-implemented airbag massage.

There’s not much to say here except that you can customize your air massage via the remote, choosing from five different intensity levels, and if you don’t want a full-body air massage, you can selectively activate airbags via the following body regions:

As we said, it’s a well-implemented feature, but we don’t think any prospective buyers will purchase the Paragon over some other model on the strength of its air massage alone.

The Calf and Foot Massage Is Next-Level Good

This is another exceptionally well-implemented feature, in large part because the calf rollers and the reflexology rollers in the footwells are heated, just like the rollers in the rest of the chair.

In addition to that, your calves and feet are also tended to by airbags located in the footwells, giving you a combination of airbag squeezing and rolling to knead the tension from your calves and feet, further augmented by the addition of glorious heat!

If you spend several hours of each day on your feet and they’re tired and sore by the time you get home, this will probably wind up being your favorite feature of the chair.

This is one of the best calf and foot massage implementations we’ve ever seen, and if you suffer from chronic leg and/or foot pain, this feature alone will make the Paragon well worth buying.

High-Value Extras, Too

Given Osaki’s reputation in the market, we were not at all surprised to see some high-value extras built into the chair.

First, you’ll find a pair of high-quality Bluetooth speakers that allow you to sync your phone with the speakers in the chair and listen to your favorite music, audiobooks, podcasts, etc. while enjoying a massage.

Second is the massage timer. 

All of the massages offered by the chair default to a 20-minute duration, but you can adjust this to either 10 or 30 minutes at your preference.

Here, the implementation is a little on the weak side. We would love to have seen the massage timer allow for massages up to sixty minutes. But it’s easy enough to simply order another massage when the first one ends, so this is not a deal-breaking limitation by any means.

Pros & Cons

The Osaki Paragon is an almost ridiculously good design. We like almost everything about it, but in our view, the two strongest features are the “heat everywhere”—thanks to the heated massage rollers—and the exquisite calf and foot massage.

While the design does have a few weaknesses—such as having a substandard number of massage techniques available and a somewhat disappointing weight limit—only one of these (weight limit) counts as a deal-breaking limitation, and the chair’s weaknesses are more than compensated for in other ways.

Osaki Paragon Review Conclusion

The Osaki Paragon is a rock-solid design and a good value even when it’s not on sale. If you can catch it on sale, it offers incredible value.

We absolutely recommend this one, but given how often Osaki puts the model on sale, we advise waiting for a sale to maximize the bang for your buck.

Other Options To Consider

If, having reached the end of this review, you’re not sold on the Paragon, here are a couple of other options you may want to consider:

Offered by another fantastic company in the industry, the Arete isn’t offered on sale nearly as often as the Paragon, so you’ll likely have to pay full price for it.  

It offers a superior body stretch (several variants, actually) and more therapeutic features, but you do give up the total body heat. Still, if you’re looking for a greater number of therapeutic features, then this one is well worth taking a look at.

If you’re a value shopper and you’re struck by the tremendous value that the chair we just reviewed brings to the table, then you owe it to yourself to check out the mighty LM-6800, offered by Kahuna.

This, in our view, is the hands-down best value on the massage chair market today. It’s not as feature-rich as the chair we just talked about, but it’s also less expensive. It’s well worth your time and attention and stands as an excellent alternative to consider.

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Official Manufacturer Support

Reference & Resources

• Osaki Paragon 4D Massage Chair, Official Brand Website. 
• Osaki Paragon 4D Massage Chair User Manual
• How Massage May Help Lower High Blood Pressure, Very Well Health. 
• Massage for Pain: An Evidence Map, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Publishers.
• Ten Minutes of Massage or Rest Will Help Your Body Fight Stress, Science Daily.