Via Seating Genie Mesh Task Chair Review 2025

Are you in the market for a new office chair? Are you a fan of mixed materials chairs, say, a mesh seatback and a vinyl or fabric seat? And most importantly, are you buying a chair for your personal use (as opposed to a chair that several members of your household will use)?

If you answered yes to those three questions, then you’ll love what you read in this—our Via Genie chair review.

While Via Seating may not be a household name, they are a highly respected office chair company, making unquestionably great products, which you can read about in our Via Seating office chair reviews.

As you’ll see in the following review, the Genie is one of the most versatile, customizable chairs the company offers.

That’s a bit of a two-edged sword, though. On the plus side, the fact that you can customize so many of the chair’s features when you order directly from the company is fantastic, and it means that you can create a chair that’s perfect for you and fits you like a glove.

The downside is that if you’ve got a bustling household and several people will wind up using the chair, the chair you order may be a relatively poor fit for the other members of your family. These chairs are amazing, but we’d rate the Genie as a “one-person chair.”  

Note that while you can order this chair from various vendors on Amazon, doing so will dramatically limit your choices to whatever configurations the vendors have decided to offer. 

If you want maximum customizability, you’ll want to order directly from the manufacturer’s website. If you want one of these, we’ll walk you through the process later in this review.

If you’re interested and curious, read on, and let’s take a closer look!

VIA Seating Genie Chair Key Features

Sleek and modern—that’s the phrase most likely to pop into most people’s minds when they see the Genie for the first time.

Modern Design

It’s a sharp-looking chair, no doubt, but if you’re specifically in the market for something that evokes an Old World feel, you’ll probably be put off by this chair’s modern appearance.

It’s attractive, and assuming the modern styling is a good fit with the rest of your office décor, you’ll probably have no issues with its overall look and feel.

Mixed Materials and Upholstery Options

From the start, one thing to be aware of is that this chair leans heavily on the notion of mixed materials. The seatback is mesh, and the seat can be ordered with either vinyl or fabric upholstery.

Ultimately, this comes down to personal preference. Some people like—or at least don’t mind—chairs that utilize mixed materials, and others can’t stand them. If you fall into that second category, no matter how impressive you find the Genie’s feature set, you probably won’t want to spend your hard-earned money on this chair.

While we’re not huge fans of mixed materials, the company made a good choice overall. Mesh is the ideal material for the seatback because it’s delightfully breathable, which will help keep you cool and comfortable even if you spend several hours a day in it.

We’re not overly fond of the vinyl seat upholstery option. Still, it is undeniably attractive, and as long as you’re not planning to spend extended periods each day in the chair (say, longer than four hours at a stretch), the lack of breathability in the vinyl seat option shouldn’t be an issue.

In our view, fabric seat upholstery is the superior option, providing a good mix of durability, breathability, and comfort—even if you spend eight hours or more a day in your chair.

Highly Customizable

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of this design, we should draw your attention to one more thing. The Genie is, in a very real sense, not a single model but a collection of features you can combine in a mindboggling number of ways to create exactly the seating experience you want.

Six Size Options

If you decide to buy one of these, you must first decide what size seat you want. The Genie offers six seat size options labeled AA (petite), BB, A, B, C, and D (extra-large), with the seat sizes growing larger as you move through the list.  

Heavy Duty Frame

The default frame can support up to 300 pounds of user weight, the informal average if you look at many chairs across the industry. Note, though, that if you order the extra-large seat, you’ll get a chair with a ruggedized frame capable of supporting up to 400 pounds of user weight.

We can’t say much more than this without getting into the actual ordering process and the various customization options you’ll have available if you order from the company’s website, so we’ll close this section and use the next section to walk you through the ordering process and the various decisions you’ll be asked to make.

How to Order A Genie Office Chair

If you’re buying a Genie for your personal use, we will rate this as the single strongest component of our Via Genie chair review. While there are many options to choose from and several decisions to make, the company makes finding your perfect chair surprisingly easy.

On the other hand, if you’re in the market for a more general-purpose chair that anybody in your family can use, you may find all the hoops presented here to be a bit cumbersome.

When ordering from the manufacturer’s website, the first choice you’ll be presented with is the seat size, which defines the chassis around which your chair will be built.

Although there are six different seat size options, you’ll only see four choices mentioned here: A, B, C, and D. Adding a petite seat to the A or B versions of the chairs comes a bit later in the process.

Seat Size

Since this is the first choice you have to make, let’s talk about the dimensions of the various seat sizes on offer. In order, they are:

Note that there are some slight variations from this based on the controls you order with your chair. Also, note that one of the options you’ll get to pick later is a chair with an adjustable seat depth. This will add a bit to the price of your chair, but it does make it more versatile if multiple people in your home will be using it.

Frame Color

In any case, once you’ve settled on the seat size for your new chair, the next question you’ll have to answer is about the frame color. 

There are just two options here, black or white, and while the white framed chair has a striking appearance, it’s also a bit more expensive, so the question becomes how much that’s worth to you. Either way, make your selection, and it’s on to the next decision!

Control Mechanism

Next up, you’ll find a question about which control mechanism you prefer. The differences are subtle here; most people will be happy with either. But if you have a clear preference, you can choose the Auto-Adjust Body Balance or the Quick-Adjust Advanced Synchro mechanism.

The first choice offers a basic seat height adjustment, with a 4.8” height range and a three-position back lock adjustment. Those are the basics that most people are looking for in an office chair.

If you want more, the other option adds a back tension adjustment and a single rotation back tilt lock adjustment with five positions instead of just three. This addition only adds four bucks to the chair’s price and is definitely worth getting, but if it’s not something you particularly care about, you can save a few bucks by going with the other option.

Adjustable Seat Depth Option

Then, there’s the question about the optional seat depth adjustment. If you get this, you’ll have 2” of play in the seat depth, which can make all the difference if multiple people in your family will use the chair. If nobody else in your family will be using your Genie, you can probably skip this extra.

Armrest Configurations

After that, you’ll be asked about the armrests, and here, you’ve got some interesting choices. You can select an armless chair, black arms with 8-way adjustability, polished arms with 8-way adjustability, or a chair with rollback arms.

The armless variant is the standard and won’t add to the price of the chair. Everything else will, but if you’re going to spend extra on any one thing, spend it on the arms.

Even if you’re unsure you want arms, we recommend getting the rollback arms. That way, you’ve got them when you want them; if you don’t want them, you can roll them down to get them out of your way. It’s better to have a thing and not need it than to buy an expensive chair and regret that you didn’t get armrests six months later!

The best feature here is the two 8-way adjustable arm options. These are amazing and give you virtually unlimited freedom to tweak the chair so that it fits you perfectly. We regard the armrest’s amazing adjustability as the best aspect of our Via Genie chair review.

You can adjust them for height, width, and angle and move them backward and forward—it’s amazing. The Genie offers one of the most highly configurable armrests in the office chair industry, and we absolutely recommend getting this add-on. Totally worth it, in our view, but at the end of the day, you know your needs better than we do!

The next option is an interesting one. The Genie is one of the only office chairs on the market with a choice of something other than casters.

Casters

Yes, you can order your Genie with casters. You can choose between black carpet casters or two-toned casters with soft rubber treads that won’t tear up your hardwood floors. Or, you can order your chair with black all-floor glides instead of wheels.

It’s a nice touch and something we’ve never seen offered on any other office chair. It may not fit you well, but we love that the non-caster option is available here!

Optional Safety Brake

Then there’s an optional safety brake, which is great if you have kids or small pets that like to get under your chair and could be a lifesaver if you have mobility issues. However, unless one of those applies, you’re likely to skip this.

Lumbar Support

Lumbar is next, and honestly, we can’t imagine ordering a chair without adjustable lumbar support. If you spend any amount of time in your chair, you’re going to want this. This addition is probably even more important than the super-adjustable armrests!

Stitch Pattern

After you’ve decided whether or not you want lumbar support, you’ll be asked a small but aesthetically important detail about the stitch pattern for the seat. You can either order your seat with visible stitching or seamless.

There’s no right answer here. Ultimately, it comes down to which one you prefer.

Mesh Seatback Color Options

From there, you’ll have the option to pick the color of the mesh seatback. Lots of choices on offer here. You can pick from:

Then, you’ll be asked about the material and color you want for the seat. There are dozens of choices here so that we won’t list them all. But first, you’ll select either vinyl, leather, or fabric, and then you can choose the selected material’s grade, color, and pattern.  

You will be blown away by the options available here and may even suffer from some analysis paralysis trying to decide.

While this section is a little overwhelming, we have to say we love it. It gives you tons of flexibility to get a chair that looks exactly how you want it to and blends perfectly with your office’s prevailing color scheme. Kudos to Via Seating for that!

Finally, you’ll be able to order your chair—either blanket-wrapped or not- fully or partially assembled.

Honestly, we recommend the partially assembled option because when Via Seating says “partially assembled,” they really mean 95% assembled. It will probably take you longer to get the parts out of the box than to put them together. This will be the easiest office chair assembly you’ve ever performed. Via did a great job here.

And that’s it. Well, okay, that was actually a fairly involved process, but if you follow it, you’ll wind up with a chair that looks amazing, has all the features you want, and has as much or as little adjustability as you think you’ll need.

Pros and Cons of The Genie Mesh Task Chair

Given that there are so many customization options here and that you can literally order the exact chair you want, it’s hard to find a negative to talk about. Price is an obvious one. These chairs aren’t cheap, so if you’re on a budget, the Via Genie task chair may simply be out of your reach, no matter how much you love it.

It’s also a matter of getting what you pay for. Most value-priced chairs have a warranty of just one year. This one has a 12-year warranty on the amazing, proprietary cold-cured foam and a five-year warranty on everything else. While that’s not the best in the industry, it’s at the top end, and that speaks to the Genie’s overall quality.

Another potential negative is that, as we mentioned before, this chair is really meant for one owner. That person can go to the website and customize to their heart’s content to get a chair that fits them perfectly.

And that’s great if you’re buying a chair just for you, but again, if you have a busy household with lots of people sitting down at your computer, then your perfect chair might not be such a great fit for them and all the customization work can wind up working against you.

Those two potential wrinkles aside, we love it and think you will too.

Via Genie Chair Review Conclusion

This chair will spoil you. It’s surprisingly comfortable, durable, and great looking, and it offers an amazing level of customization and personalization on top of that.  

While we won’t rate it as being one of the all-time greats of the industry (so not quite in the same category as the Steelcase Leap, for example), it is an extremely good office chair that will provide you with years of reliable service if you decide to get one, and that’s compelling.  

On that basis, we absolutely recommend it for anyone buying a chair for their own individual use and provisionally recommend it for anyone interested in a chair that multiple people will be using—if you opt for the seat depth adjustment and everyone is reasonably close to the same size, it can work in that context too!

Other Options to Consider

If, after reading to the end, you’ve decided that the Genie isn’t the office chair you’re looking for, here are a couple of other options you may want to consider:

While Via Seating isn’t a household name, pretty much everybody has heard of La-Z-Boy, and the Delano is an excellent example of the company’s work.

This surprisingly modestly priced chair is a study in opposites compared to the Genie. While it’s not nearly as adjustable or customizable, it does have the basics well covered, and the Delano just oozes with Old World charm.

It’s a gorgeous design that will look great in any classically styled office where a more modern chair like the Genie may clash a bit.

Far from being an off-brand, SIDIZ is one of the largest B2B office furniture manufacturers in the world, and their T-50 offers tremendous value for the money. You’ll find this all-mesh chair somewhat less expensive than the model we just discussed (depending on the options you select).

While it’s not as good-looking, it’s an amazingly full-featured, highly adjustable office chair that will serve you well. The T-50 definitely belongs on your shortlist of options to consider.

Official Manufacturer Support

REFERENCES & RESOURCES

• Via Seating, Official Brand Website.
• Via Seating Genie Mesh Task Chair User Manuals
• Workstation Ergonomics: Take a Break!, Spine Universe.
• Low Back Pain and Its Relationship With Sitting Behaviour Among Sedentary Office Workers, Science Direct.
• Prolonged Static Sitting at Work: Health Effects and Good Practice Advice, European Agency for Safety and Health at Work.