In a Nutshell:
The Space Seating Professional AirGrid is a sturdy hybrid mesh/PU office chair. Not glamorous or exciting, but has all the basics well covered. Recommended for taller users who weight 250 pounds or less, looking for a chair for light to moderate daily use.
Value for the Money
Comfort
Brand Reliability*
Aesthetic Flexibility**
Overall Rating
3.6/5
Benefits
Drawbacks
Recommended For: Taller users who weigh 250 pounds or less, looking for a chair for light to moderate daily use.
Is your current office chair ready for retirement? Are you on a budget and looking for something simple and reasonably comfortable that covers the basics? If you answered yes to either of those questions, then the AirGrid Petite, offered by Space Seating, might be the chair you’re looking for.
It’s far from perfect, and it’s offered by a brand that doesn’t have a lot of market heft, but it’s a sturdy and capable little performer, and as long as you don’t need something optimized for heavy daily use, it’s a good option.
If you’re on the fence about it but curious to know more, in the sections in our Space Seating Professional AirGrid review, we’ll tell you everything the designers got right, and we won’t be shy about pointing out the chair’s shortcomings and limitations. Fair warning: it’s a hybrid mesh/upholstered chair, so if you’re not a huge fan of mesh, it’s probably safe to give this one a pass and look at other Office Star chairs, but if you like mesh chairs, this one warrants a second look at the very least. Let’s take a closer look at the design now.
Key Features of the Space Seating Professional AirGrid Chair
It’s…an office chair. The design team didn’t put much effort into aesthetics, preferring to focus on function over form. That’s not to say it’s an ugly piece of furniture, though it won’t win any beauty contests as a mesh chair. It’s functional. It’s got a job to do, and it’s designed to do it.
It is fairly unobtrusive, though, and offered in black. It will politely blend into the background with just about any home or office décor scheme. If that’s all you’re looking for in an office chair, that’s a definite nod in the AirGrid Petite’s favor.
Chair Specifications
Before we go any further in our Space Seating Professional AirGrid review, let’s take a quick look at the chair’s basic stats. Here they are:
Okay, so the first thing to say is this: Although this chair has the word “petite” in its name, it is not designed for tiny people. The stats, though, are curious, which makes this model fairly narrowly targeted.
Here’s what we mean:
First, the weight limit is a modest 250 pounds. That makes it a good fit for the small to medium-sized market segment but a non-starter for big and tall folks. The seat width and depth support this. The seat is not deep at all, and it’s not too wide either, which marks this chair as a good fit for small to average-sized people, but there’s a catch.
Look at the seat height adjustment range: 18” to 22”. This model starts higher than that and goes well above the usual big and tall height range, which is a jarring contrast to the other dimensions we talked about.
So what does that mean?
In a nutshell, this one is a great fit for:
If any of those describe you, you’ve just found the proverbial needle in a haystack, and this chair will probably fit you like a glove.
Unfortunately, that description doesn’t apply to a huge swath of the market, so this chair is a bit narrowly focused. You can find comparable office chairs for short people in our roundup review.
Adjustable Features
Let’s begin by talking about adjustability. The Space Seating Professional AirGrid chair has the basics well covered but doesn’t try to do too much, a mistake many off-brand chairs make.
It offers the typical 360-swivel, tilt, and lock function and seat height adjustment. Moreover, you’ll find independently height adjustable (though non-ergonomic) armrests.
Of those, the only feature we find to be underwhelming is the tilt and lock. Although the chair leans back and rocks slightly, it’s almost not worth devoting an entire feature. The chair reclines no more than fifteen degrees, so if you want something to lean back in and kick your feet up, this isn’t the chair you want.
Mesh Back
The durable and breathable mesh seatback serves the model well in terms of comfort. The sculpted seat provides some ergonomic benefits, but we would have preferred a waterfall-edge style seat employed here.
PU Leather Seat
Unfortunately, the seat is upholstered in PU, which we regard as a spectacularly bad pairing with the mesh seatback. Mesh is everything that PU isn’t—breathable and durable. While the seatback will allow you to sit for extended periods in the chair, the fragile PU will leave you increasingly hot and sweaty the longer you spend in it.
Worse, since the seat is the part of the chair that gets the most punishment, the upholstery will start showing its age very quickly, even if you only use the chair lightly or moderately. It’ll begin peeling and cracking after no more than a year. Not good.
Durable Frame
The upshot is that the frame is durable and will far outlast the upholstery. Since the seat is the only place where the upholstery exists, re-covering when the original upholstery wears out is a viable option that will greatly extend the chair’s useful life.
Foam Padding
Beneath the padding, you’ll find generous amounts of conventional block foam, enough to provide a comfortable seating experience for light to moderate daily use, plus the sculpted shape and the presence of surprisingly well-implemented (though non-adjustable) lumbar support help.
By our count, this chair has one and a half ergonomic features (counting the sculpted seat as the half), which isn’t bad for the money.
Assembly is Super Easy
As you might expect, the Space Seating Professional Dark AirGrid Managers office chair won’t arrive fully assembled and ready to use if you decide to order one. Fortunately, the assembly process is about as simple as it gets.
Not only are all the pieces relatively small and easy to work with, but the production quality is fairly high for a budget-priced chair. Putting the chair together by yourself will probably only take about 10-15 minutes, and adding an extra pair of hands is unlikely to shave much time off. Kudos to the company on that front!
Note: The production quality is a cut above others because this chair is manufactured in Taiwan, not China. In our experience, Taiwan has a stronger and more mature manufacturing base and tends to produce products of higher quality, and this model is no exception.
Pros & Cons of the Space Seating Professional AirGrid
Here are the things we like best about the Space Seating 5700E Professional Dark Air Grid” Back Managers chair:
In addition, its stats precisely target a certain segment of the market that doesn’t get a lot of attention, and if you fall into that category, you’ll feel like you struck gold with this chair.
On the other hand, it does have some shortcomings:
As we said, the chair is made in Taiwan and will last much longer than the seat upholstery, so that’s not necessarily the kiss of death. Overall, we regard the positives as outweighing the negatives—perhaps not by a huge margin, but by enough of one to make this chair worth considering.
Space Seating Professional AirGrid Review Conclusion
If you fall into the market segment that this model targets, finding any chair that fits you properly can be a real challenge; in that case, we recommend this chair without reservation. More generally, we regard this model as almost a niche product. As such, we can’t give it any higher than a provisional recommendation here in our Space Seating Professional AirGrid review.
Recommended Reading
Alera Etros Series Petite ALEET4017 Mesh Chair Review
We examined the Alera Etros Series Petite chair, which is surprisingly comfortable and highly adjustable for most users.
Aurora Petite Mesh Office Chair Review
We evaluated the Aurora Petite Mesh Office Chair, a comfortable and versatile option for shorter individuals on a budget.
REFERENCES & RESOURCES