Are you on a budget? Are you seeking a decent, well-priced office chair that won’t break the bank?
If you answered yes to either of those questions, you will be interested in our review of the Yamasoro brand.
We’ll quickly point out that we’re reviewing an off-brand product line of value-priced furniture, so these chairs are far from perfect. Then again, they don’t have to be. Everybody in the market for value-priced furniture knows the game. Many office chair makers deliver the desired features and use low-end materials to reduce costs. Yamasoro is no different in that regard.
Having said that, we found these chairs to be a cut above what you typically find in the world of budget furniture, and that alone makes them worth taking a closer look at. The company’s former “flagship” product was featured in a recent roundup review on the best office chairs under $100.
In the following sections, we’ll examine the brand’s products more closely, although we note that they’ve pulled several models for redesign. We expect them to return soon, but for now, we’ll focus on the “core four” they’ve already finished revising, as these are the only products the company is offering as of this review.
Before we dive into the particulars of each model here in our Yamasoro Office Chairs review, let’s take a top-level view of what we’re dealing with:
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Our Pick
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Primary Rating:
3.3
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Primary Rating:
3.7
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Primary Rating:
3.6
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Primary Rating:
3.1
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Value:
4.0
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Value:
4.4
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Value:
5.0
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Value:
4.5
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Comfort:
4.3
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Comfort:
4.5
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Comfort:
4.3
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Comfort:
3.8
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Aesthetic Flexibility*:
3.8
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Aesthetic Flexibility*:
4.5
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Aesthetic Flexibility*:
4.3
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Aesthetic Flexibility*:
3.0
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Brand Reliability:
1.0
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Brand Reliability:
1.0
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Brand Reliability:
1.0
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Brand Reliability:
1.0
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Summary:
Generously padded basic office chair with basic ergonomic features, but an aesthetic that leaves something to be desired.
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Summary:
Better looking than the model it was designed to replace, but not quite as well padded. Retains basic ergonomic supports.
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Summary:
Generously padded basic office chair with a full suite of basic ergonomic supports.
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Summary:
A very basic task chair. Functional and with limited ergonomic supports.
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Recommended for:
Plenty of padding, but the pillowed upholstery won’t appeal to everyone (nor will the black and white leather). Provisionally recommended. You’ll either love it or give it a pass on sight.
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Recommended for:
A solid, well-priced design. Beautiful chair that will blend in well with most home décor schemes. Recommended for anyone.
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Recommended for:
Extra padding and good seat height adjustment range makes it ideal for heavier users.
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Recommended for:
If you need a chair right now and don’t have much to spend, we (provisionally) recommend it.
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Overall Dimensions:
28.4” x 25.7” x 42.9” to 46.9”
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Overall Dimensions:
28.3” x 26” x 42.1” to 45.3”
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Overall Dimensions:
27” x 25” x 42.2” to 46.1”
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Overall Dimensions:
20.1” x 20.1” x 34.2” to 38.2”
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Chair Weight:
37 pounds
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Chair Weight:
47.4 pounds
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Chair Weight:
38 pounds
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Chair Weight:
24.9 pounds
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Max. Supported Weight:
300 pounds
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Max. Supported Weight:
350 pounds
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Max. Supported Weight:
280 pounds
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Max. Supported Weight:
265 pounds
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Recline Range:
90 to 120 degrees
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Recline Range:
90 to 135 degrees
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Recline Range:
90 to 135 degrees
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Recline Range:
NA, but it does rock back
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Seat Width:
18.7”
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Seat Width:
20.5”
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Seat Width:
20.9”
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Seat Width:
17.7”
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Seat Height:
20.8” to 24.8”
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Seat Height:
19.7” to 22.9”
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Seat Height:
18.1” to 22”
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Seat Height:
14.2” to 18.1”
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Seat Depth:
19.5”
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Seat Depth:
19.7”
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Seat Depth:
20.5”
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Seat Depth:
17.5”
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Pros:
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Pros:
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Pros:
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Pros:
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Cons:
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Cons:
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Cons:
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Cons:
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Our Verdict:
A decent choice for heavier users on a budget. Lighter users will enjoy the extra padding but may find it difficult to sit comfortably in the chair, so compare your measurements with the chairs before committing to a purchase. Provisionally recommended.
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Our Verdict:
Solves for most of the problems we had with the company’s former flagship model. Recommended for anyone, but especially bigger, taller users.
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Our Verdict:
A surprisingly good, versatile chair. Recommended.
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Our Verdict:
If you’re desperate for something to sit in, or need a cheap backup chair, we provisionally recommend this one.
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- Generous padding and a full suite of basic ergonomic features.
- No adjustable ergonomic features. Limited warranty.
- Got the basics covered, Ergonomically
- comfortable.
- More rugged than first meets the eye. Reasonably adjustable.
- No adjustable ergonomic features. Limited warranty.
- Generous padding and a full suite of basic ergonomic features.
- No adjustable ergonomic features. Limited warranty.
- It’s cheap and functional. has Two-year warranty
- Not for heavy daily use
*While aesthetics is a matter of taste, Aesthetic Flexibility measures how easily a given design would fit into a wide range of home or office décor schemes.
**Brand Reliability measures the strength and longevity of the brand, which, by extension, measures the level of support you can expect.
Yamasoro Office Chairs Key Features
Seat Adjustment Range for Big and Tall
One significant thing to mention in our Yamasoro Office Chairs review is the seat adjustment ranges on these chairs. As things stand now, the remaining chairs in the Yamasoro lineup skew heavily toward bigger, taller users, and their two strongest designs are unmistakably big and tall chairs.
If you’re an average-sized or short user, you should probably keep looking because the brand’s best designs tend to swallow you whole and won’t provide anything close to an optimal seating experience. That may change as Yamasoro completes the redesign of the other chairs in its lineup and starts bringing them back onto the market, but based on the models currently offered, the trend is unmistakable.
Assembly Required
Again, this will probably come as no surprise to people interested in buying office furniture at this price point, but what you get when your chair arrives at your door isn’t in a ready-to-use state.
You’ll get a box filled with pieces and parts and a moderately helpful instruction sheet. Fortunately, crystal-clear instructions aren’t critical. Everybody who’s ever sat in a chair knows more-or-less where everything goes.
Assembly time will vary slightly depending on the specific model you get, but expect it to take about half an hour. If you’ve got an assistant to help you, you can shave about ten minutes off. After that, you’re good to go.
Now, let’s look at the individual models on offer.
Yamasoro Office Chairs In More Detail
Yamasoro High Back Executive Office Chair – Top Pick
Recommended For: Heavier users on a budget. Lighter users will enjoy the extra padding but may find it difficult to sit comfortably in the chair.
This model was mentioned as a possible alternative in one of our recent roundup reviews in the under $150 ergonomic office chair category.
When the model was introduced in early 2018, the idea was that it would become the company’s new flagship model. That didn’t work out so well, and we’ll discuss that in more detail when we discuss the next model—the company’s “once and future flagship model.”
This Yamasoro Executive Office Chair is decent but not outstanding, with comfort being its main selling point. Here are the features we think you’ll like best about it:
All of that sounds pretty good, right? This may lead you to wonder why it earned a relatively modest ranking from us. Unfortunately, paired with the good, this model has some drawbacks you may not be thrilled about. These include:
In addition, if you’re shorter, this chair won’t work for you. Check out the seat height range!
The bottom line is that we wanted to like this chair more than we did, but given the above, its modest overall ranking is justified. As we said at the start, it’s decent but falls short of greatness.
Yamasoro Ergonomic Executive Office Chair – Best Value
Recommended For: Anyone, but especially bigger, taller users.
The story of this model is interesting and convoluted. We’ll spare you the details and give you the summary. This model was the company’s original “Flagship.” About a year after its introduction, Yamasoro released the chair we discussed, apparently having high hopes that it would be well-received.
It was not, so the company returned to the drawing board, tweaked its original flagship offering, and reintroduced it. That’s what this model is.
The good news is that it’s a significant improvement over the “Zebra on Wheels” we discussed above. It’s well-padded and comfortable, with a basic suite of ergonomic features. We were especially impressed with the seat padding. It’s conventional block foam, but the seat pad is an astonishing 5.9″ thick, so there’s much of it.
In addition, the chair sports an S-shaped seat back that follows the natural curvature of your body’s spine, further augmented by a lumbar support system, an ergonomic headrest, and ergonomically designed (and well padded!) armrests, which also flip up.
The chair reclines to a maximum of 135 degrees. So, if you engineer your ottoman using applied creativity, you can lounge in both style and comfort.
Finally, the chair supports 350 pounds, and even better, the base is aluminum rather than nylon, so it can better withstand the weight and the rigors of heavier daily usage.
That, plus the height adjustment range (19.7″ to 22.9″), gears this model more toward the big and tall segment of the market. Shorter, slimmer people may not fit well into it, a recurring theme with the chairs remaining in the brand.
As always, the big drawback is that the upholstery is bonded leather, which will start showing its age sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, this chair is only offered in one color: brown.
It’s small, but we’d love to see this model in black or brown. Given its more conventional styling than the “Zebra chair” we mentioned above, offering even one other color would make this chair more appealing. As it stands, it’s the brand’s strongest design and most comfortable chair.
This is proof that Yamasoro can get it done when they want to. This chair’s existence, combined with the company’s recent decision to yank most of its poor-performing models for redesigns, gives us hope for a bright future for Yamasoro.
Yamasoro Leather Office & Gaming Chair
Recommended For: Anyone looking for a surprisingly good, versatile chair.
This is a really good chair for the money. If Amazon Basics or some other big-name brand were offering this model, it would easily rank as one of the best, if not the best, office chairs under a hundred bucks, and that’s saying something.
It’s billed as both an office chair and a gaming chair, and while it doesn’t feature the classic racing-style seat that most gaming chairs are known for, it is easy to see why it would be popular with the gaming set. It’s comfortable and doesn’t cost much, meaning more funds left over to buy games!
In addition to its generous padding, this model also sports a waterfall-style seat, an ergonomic headrest, and ergonomically designed, though non-adjustable armrests.
With a maximum supported weight of 280 pounds and a seat height adjustment range of 18.1″ to 22,” it’s a good fit for a broader swath of the market than the company’s big and tall designs, although some taller users could also find a good fit here.
This model can be ordered in black or brown, giving you at least some color flexibility. The generous maximum recline angle (135 degrees) means that you can put your feet up while you’re gaming—provided you rig up your own ottoman, that is.
The two downsides are exactly what you’d expect. The upholstery is bonded leather, which won’t age well, and the base is nylon, so this model isn’t likely to hold up well for years on end. Then again, given its modest price, you won’t need it. When it starts to fail you, it’s easy enough to get another one.
The bottom line is that this is a surprisingly strong choice if you’re on a tight budget but don’t want to sacrifice comfort for a decent chair.
Yamasoro Mid Back Mesh Task Chair
If you need a chair right now and don’t have much to spend, we (provisionally) recommend it.
This chair is about as basic as it gets. Upholstered with two-tone breathable mesh and limited padding (the seat and seatback padding are less than 2″ thick), it gets the job done but is more functional over form.
It’s a mid-back design and the only chair Yamasoro offers for sale that regular-sized or smaller folks could reasonably fit into. That’s a nod in the model’s favor, but honestly, there’s not a lot to recommend this model.
It’s above average but falls well short of greatness. Its only ergonomic feature is lumbar support, which is well-implemented, so if that’s enough for you, this might be a good choice.
It has one potentially strong selling point, but even that is a little strange.
This is the only chair in the Yamasoro lineup to offer a staggering two-year warranty, which is crazy given its modest price.
For one thing, this little model isn’t built to withstand the rigors of heavy daily use. For another, offering a two-year warranty on a chair at the extremely low end of the price range leaves us scratching our heads.
This was designed to be “disposable furniture.” We can’t imagine many people would take the company up on its two-year warranty, which may be why they felt safe offering it.
In any case, if you decide this chair does it for you and it falls apart after a year of intensive use, you may get another one from the company via the warranty.
Or maybe not. Yamasoro isn’t known for its sterling customer service and support, so you may get so frustrated trying to get a live person on the phone to use your warranty that you would give up.
The thing is, though, we’re not sure why many people would want to. For just a few more dollars, you can get a significantly better chair than this.
We provisionally recommend it for people who need something right this second and aren’t picky about what they’re sitting in, but honestly, it’s not hard to do better than this chair. It’s not a failed design (not by any means); it’s just that nothing is outstanding about it—except for that crazy warranty, which seems entirely out of place for this particular chair.
Pros & Cons of Yamasoro Office Chair
We consider Yamasoro a slightly above-average brand with two outstanding models. This proves the company has what it takes to carve out a larger niche. Given that they’ve pulled many of their models off the market to redesign them, we hope that when those models are reintroduced, they’ll all be significantly improved.
That was the case with their flagship model, which proves that the brand is moving in the right direction. The best models Yamasoro offers have two things going for them: They’re cheap and comfortable.
They’ve also got the usual array of negatives associated with nearly all furniture sold at the budget end of the market: cheaper, lower-quality materials that start to show their age quickly and don’t stand up well to the rigors of heavy daily use.
You won’t be disappointed if you keep those limitations in mind.
Yamasoro Office Chairs Review Conclusion
We give the brand a provisional recommendation, with a solid recommendation for their new high-backed Executive chair and their (bonded) leather gaming and office chair.
The main thing to remember here is that except for their little task chair, all of the Yamasoro Office Chairs skew toward the big and tall segment of the market. If that doesn’t describe you, then this brand is unlikely to have anything to offer you.
Recommended Reading
LCH High Back Leather Office Chair Review
Our review delves into the LCH High Back Leather Office Chair, a low-cost executive chair with lumbar support.
BestOffice Ergonomic Office Chair Review
Our review delved into the BestOffice Ergonomic Office Chair, which offers decent back support and adjustability at a low price.
REFERENCES & RESOURCES
- Yamasoro, Official Brand Website.
- Office Chairs: An Overview of Ergonomic Standards, Ewiworks.
- Why Do Ergonomic Chairs Have So Many Adjustments?, Posturite.
- Choosing an Office Chair: An Informed Decision for Comfort and Health, Construction.