Windaze Massage Recliner Chair Review 2024

Are you on a budget and looking for a relatively inexpensive way to get a massage experience from the comfort of home, any time you like?

If you don’t have a lot of money in your budget to spare for extravagances, you know how frustrating it can be to find a decent massage chair, offered at a reasonable price. There are options out there, and some of them will pleasantly surprise, but you have to sift through a lot of garbage to find the few gems.

In our view, the Windaze massage recliner is one such gem. It’s priced under $500, and while it falls well short of being a perfect massage chair, it does a surprisingly good job and has more to offer than you might expect.

We’ll be quick to say that this is not the chair you want if you have any kind of therapeutic need. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a way to unwind after a hectic day, this might be the perfect chair for you.

In the sections that follow, we’ll take a closer look at everything the Windaze can do, and give you full details on its various shortcomings so you’ll have all the information you need to make an informed purchasing decision. If that sounds good to you, let’s take a closer look at what the Windaze has to offer.

An Overview of the Windaze Massage Chair

The design team took no chances where the chair’s aesthetic was concerned, crafting it along purely conventional lines. It’s not an unattractive chair; it’s just…unobtrusive. If you’re looking for something flashy or showy, this is not the chair you want. On the other hand, because the Windaze Massage Recliner is unobtrusive, it blends easily with just about every home décor scheme, which we regard as a point in the chair’s favor.

Let’s start by taking a look at the massager’s basic stats:

There are a couple of things to talk about here. First, this chair is very lightly made, which is at odds with its seat width. The seat width makes it suitable for bigger, taller users, but the rest of the chair doesn’t support that, especially the recommended maximum user weight which is far less than we’d expect to see, given the seat width.

On the flip side, the chair is upholstered with gloriously soft microfiber, and it’s got enough padding that it makes a wonderful lounging chair.

Many of the chairs offered in this price range use bonded leather or PU leather. While these look nice the day you take the chair out of the box, they start showing their age quickly, and that type of upholstery does not stand up well to the rigors of heavy daily use, not to mention the fact that sitting in a leather chair for any length of time will make you sweat.

When a company uses fabric upholstery on a low-priced chair, it’s usually some type of polyester or poly blend, which is more breathable than leather but still not optimal. The presence of microfiber here is a pleasant surprise indeed, and one of the chair’s stronger points. It looks decent and feels great to sit in.

That’s a good start, but of course, a decent massage chair needs more than just those things, so let’s take a closer look at its massage capabilities.

Features of the Windaze Recliner & Massage Chair

This Chair Does Not Have a Massage Track

The mainstream massage chairs on the market today utilize either an S-Track or an L-Track with rollers mounted on them that render the actual massage.

The S-Track begins at the base of your neck and extends to your tailbone, following the natural curve of your body’s spine, which is where the track gets its name.

The L-Track is essentially an extension of the S-Track, bending to travel under the seat, allowing the rollers to also massage your glutes and the backs of your thighs.

Stationary massage heads do an adequate job, but they don’t hold a candle to quad rollers moving along a massage track.

The biggest drawback you’ll see here is that since the massage heads can’t move, they’ll either hit the sore spots on your back or they won’t. If they do, you’ll enjoy the experience. If they don’t, you’ll have to shift around in the chair to try and make them hit where you need them to, which is far less than optimal.

Worse, stationary heads don’t lend themselves to multiple massage techniques. In a few cases, you’ll find stationary heads that are able to render a decent Shiatsu massage, but Windaze opted not to use these, so what you get is a basic vibration-style massage, which limits its therapeutic value.

Granted, massage of any kind feels better than no massage at all, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that this chair is going to render a massage that will be on par with a massage experience you’ll get from a higher priced chair or a professional therapist. It’s decent but falls short of greatness.

More Options Than You Might Think

In reading the section above here in our Windaze Massage Recliner Chair review, you may be inclined to write this chair off as being unacceptable for your purposes. In our view, that would be a mistake because the company has taken some pains to provide a surprising number of options that work to improve the overall massage experience, and these are mostly successful.

For starters, although the stationary heads aren’t capable of replicating an actual massage technique, there are options on the remote that allow you to control both the intensity of the massage you get (five different levels to choose from) and the waveform, which changes the character of the vibration in a variety of ways, rendering different massage experiences. Here, you can select from:

Again, these fall short of being actual massage techniques, but you’ll notice a definite difference when switching from one vibration style to the next. Kudos to the folks at Windaze for going the extra mile in what we regard as a successful attempt to milk some extra mileage out of what is essentially obsolete technology. We’re impressed!

In addition to that, there is some ability to customize your massage experience with the zone control buttons. These allow you to selectively activate or de-activate select massage heads. You can order a massage that centers on your:

Understand then, that thanks to the placement of the massage heads (4 in the seat back, two in the seat itself and two more in the footrest), the chair does a better than average job at approximating a massage track. Again, impressive work by Windaze.

It gets even better: The chair also gives you the ability to activate heat in the lumbar region of the chair and manually tweak the massage timer.

Both of these are excellent, unexpected features. Heat is a welcome addition in any massage chair and something that offers a genuine therapeutic benefit, and the massage timer is simply an unexpected perk. You don’t see that feature often, even on chairs costing five to seven times as much as the little Windaze!

All of these are excellent additions, and they do significantly improve the overall quality of the massage the chair is capable of delivering. Having said that, the best massage this chair is capable of still falls short of what you’d get from a chair utilizing a massage track and moving rollers. Of course, you’ll pay more for a chair like that, so it comes down to what’s more important to you.

Space Saving Technology Too!

Another surprise feature the Windaze Recliner and Massager brings to the table is the fact that it’s built using space saving technology. Essentially, that means that when you recline, the chair pivots on its base, so you don’t need as much wall clearance, which makes it easy to find a permanent home for the chair, even if you have a smaller home or apartment.

It Also Has a Lift Feature, but…

Here’s where things begin to go off the rails a bit.

In our view, if the company had excluded the space-saving technology and the “lift” feature, and put those resource into further improving the massage experience, this chair would have ranked higher.

There are two basic approaches low priced chairs take where features are concerned. One group focuses on one or two things and does a good job with them, leaving every other feature off. This gives you a basic but well-functioning chair offered for a song.

The other approach is to save money using low-quality materials and throw a ton of features into the chair, hoping that the sheer number of them and adequate feature implementation will be enough to woo buyers.

Windaze has chosen this latter option, and some of the chair’s features just aren’t well implemented. The power lift feature is a perfect example of that.

The motor is noisy, and the lift the chair provides is on the weak side, meaning that if you’re close to the upper weight limit supported by the chair, it may not give you a sufficient boost to be helpful.

Worse, the reliance on lower quality materials in construction means that stuff will start breaking down on this chair sooner, rather than later, and when that happens, Windaze doesn’t have the customer service chops to fix the problems you’ll invariably have.

If you’re a committed do-it-yourselfer, of course, you can make incremental repairs as needed and get more life out of the chair but understand that if you decide to get this one, it’s going to have a shorter useful life than you’d probably like.

On the other hand, given the shockingly low price of the chair, when it dies, it’s easy enough to get a replacement.

The Remote Is Super Simple and Easy to Use

You’ll find the wired remote to be easy to use and understand, thanks to the presence of integrated graphics and clearly labeled buttons, which means it won’t take but a few minutes to get comfortable with the basic controls. Honestly, it will probably take you longer to unbox it and get it ready for first use than it will be to master the controls.

Speaking of unboxing, the chair will arrive at your door in two boxes and a handful of major pieces. The instructions are reasonably clear and well-written, and everything you need to complete the assembly is included. Expect the process to take about fifteen minutes solo, or ten minutes if you have an extra pair of hands.

Windaze Massage Chair Color Variants

Windaze Recliner Chair Pros & Cons

So where does that leave us?

On the other hand, the chair tries to do too much, and it leaves the model feeling a bit unfocused.

If Windaze had been satisfied to release a chair with fewer features but stronger implementation, this chair would have ranked more highly than it did, despite the fact that the company isn’t known for stellar aftermarket support.

Windaze Massage Recliner Chair Review Conclusion

We have reservations about the Windaze Massage Recliner, but we do provisionally recommend it. This is not the chair you want if you’re looking for something flashy, or if you have a therapeutic reason for wanting to get a massage chair. Although the presence of heat does give the Windaze some nominal therapeutic value, it’s not enough to overcome the limitations of the fixed-position massage heads.

We also would not recommend this chair for anyone with a severe mobility issue who’s looking for a massage/lift chair. The lift function is substandard and poorly suited for that purpose.

On the other hand, if you’re a casual user and you’re looking for something that’s capable of delivering a decent massage from your shoulders to your calves, and you want heat, this is a surprisingly good option. If you fall into that group, we recommend it.

Recommended Reading

Relaxzen Deluxe Leisure Recliner Chair Review

Our review of the Relaxzen Deluxe Leisure recliner chair explores how it caters to budget-conscious casual users.

T&D Massaging Black Leather Recliner Review

We’ve analyzed a recliner by T&D (Flash Furniture), which is a great find for people looking for basic massage capabilities.

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Official Manufacturer Support

References & Resources:

• Health Benefits of Massage Chairs, Ezine Articles. 
• Chair Massage, My Time.
• How to Care for Your Rise and Recliner Chair, ageUK.
• 6 Ways to Clean a Recliner Chair at Home, The Contracts Engineer.