Robert is a 61-year-old software engineer who works fully remote and spends seven-plus hours a day in his chair. Nine months into an original LiberNovo Omni, he says it has fixed the shoulder-banging, end-of-day hunch his old budget chair never could.

Overview

Robert tends to sit down at 9 am and stay put until well past lunch. At 6'0", he spent years in a £250 "24-hour operator" chair built for someone a couple of inches shorter. The backrest caught his shoulder blades, and by the end of most days he was hunched over the keyboard. He found LiberNovo through a YouTube comparison video and went in thinking OmniStretch was a gimmick. What sold him was the back curvature and the room it leaves around his shoulders. Nine months into the original LiberNovo Omni, he scores it a 9 out of 10, with a short wishlist. Most of the time, he says, he forgets the chair is there.

The Person Behind the Setup

Can you introduce yourself and describe a typical day?

I'm a software engineer by profession, working 100% remotely at the moment. I'm quite old, I'm 61, so all the usual creaks and aches and pains that come with that. I work from home in a comfortable chair.

How much of your day is focused work versus meetings and communication?

It's a mix. Probably seventy percent of the time is actual fingers-to-keyboard work, and the rest is communication and meetings, that sort of thing. I spend a lot of time on Slack and a lot of time on Zoom.

What's the longest stretch you've noticed yourself sitting?

For a working day, I'm absolutely sat in this chair for seven, maybe longer hours. Because of the way my desk is set up, I can kind of watch the TV from the desk too, so I tend to sit down and stay here. I have a tendency to sit down at nine in the morning and it's one in the afternoon before I've moved. I used to get up on a regular basis; now I don't get around to it. Maybe that's good for the chair, maybe that's good for me.

Before the Change

What were you using before this?

I had a chair from a company called Office Chairs Online, a twenty-four-hour operator chair. A padded, supportive chair that does all the things you'd expect a quality office chair to do, but not quite in the same league, let's be honest. It was around £250 new, so budget to mid-range.

Where did you feel the discomfort?

Mainly the back. The curvature of the back support wasn't flexible, it was quite rigid. You could adjust the springiness of the back, but it didn't have lockable positions, so you sat however it put you. On top of that, I'm six foot tall, and I think most chairs are built for someone closer to five foot ten. The result was it banged into my shoulder blades a bit, and I ended up with a slight hunch. It's astonishing how much that adjustment matters over a long day.

Why LiberNovo

Were you already familiar with ergonomic chairs before this?

Completely familiar with the idea. Before I bought the LiberNovo, I looked at a top-quality Herman Miller, and a brand called Hbada. I contemplated the Hbada one, but largely because of their customer reviews being pretty awful, I decided the long-run reliability left something to be desired. Their leg-support mechanism didn't appeal to me either.

How did you first hear about LiberNovo?

I think I caught a YouTube video, a comparison of various ergonomic chairs. It wasn't entirely complimentary about LiberNovo, to tell you the truth, but I looked at it and thought, I don't care about most of what he's flagging, but I do like the look of this.

Did the newness of the brand, or the price, give you pause?

All of the above, to be fair. The price is outrageous, I won't pretend otherwise. I think it was somewhere around £1,100 to £1,200. But I spend maybe ten hours a day in this chair, and at some point, if you can afford it, you stop caring about the price and just want the chair that fits you.

As for the brand being new, I'm a bit of an early adopter by nature, and if you're going to do something disruptive and innovative, you're probably going to do it under a new name rather than under an old, established one. So that didn't bother me. I did do a fair amount of research into reputation, and I couldn't really find anyone slagging the product off, whereas I could find plenty of that for Hbada, and pretty mixed reviews for Herman Miller too.

And warranty?

Yes, that's a fair concern, especially with a chair that has electronics and moving parts. If something goes wrong, am I really going to ship it back to wherever I got it? I'm not sure what a reasonable lifespan is on these things. If you get two years out of it, that's okay. Four years, you're doing well. Beyond that, nobody's warranty is realistically going to stretch that far. Mechanical things wear out, so I think there's some onus on users to be reasonable about what to expect.

What appealed to you once you actually looked at the chair?

Before I tried it, I'll admit I thought the massage feature was a bit of a gimmick. Nice, but a gimmick. What really got me was just looking at how the back curves. I could get solid lumbar support and still a fairly reclined upper back. And the back panel narrows toward the top, so my shoulder blades actually sit outside of it, which lets me do a full shoulder rotation without banging into anything. I haven't come across another chair built like that. When I actually got it, I wasn't disappointed.

A New Way to Sit

What was your first impression sitting in it?

The recline and the back curvature were exactly what I expected from looking at it. A few of the more minor criticisms I'd seen in other reviews are true without mattering that much to me personally: the seat could be a touch more padded, another inch of support at the front might be nice, and the arms have a slight floppiness that could probably be stiffened. None of that's a major issue for me, though a bigger or heavier person might feel it more.

The one thing I do notice is that I have the original Omni, and later editions moved to five recline positions instead of four, with a slightly bigger seat. That's a real improvement, and if it had been around when I bought, I'd have gone for it. I've since tried one of the newer versions at a trade show in London, and it is without doubt better.

How do you actually use the recline day to day?

I mostly stay clustered toward the upright end, two or three positions there. My screen sits quite high above me, so my reclined position is really more about leaning back to watch the screen, almost like watching TV, while I'm still working. I don't get much use out of the middle range of recline; the real use cases seem to be either upright work or fully lying back.

How often do you use OmniStretch?

When I first got the chair, probably once every two or three days. I haven't used it in a couple of weeks now, if I'm honest, though it's lovely when I do. If you wanted to improve it, I'd say maybe twenty percent more intensity on the stretch itself. It gently works into your back, and there's a point where you just want a little bit more. I only ever use it while I'm reclined and flat, never while sitting upright; using it upright feels more like an interruption than anything.

Built to Fit

Would you ever go for the manual version, like the Omni SE?

I understand the thinking, addressing concerns that people have about the electronics or hydraulics affecting the chair's lifespan, but having to reach down and twist a knob just isn't for me. I don't think I'd go for that manual adjuster.

Any thoughts on the seat-cooling feature on the Airflow models?

That one completely misses me, if I'm honest. I'm not entirely sure why you'd want your backside cooled down. Generally speaking you want that area warm rather than chilled, but each to their own. I can see why it appeals to bigger users, or people somewhere hot like Texas.

Their Words

How would you sum up the score you gave it?

I gave it a 9. I have trouble giving anyone a perfect mark on anything, if I'm honest. For a 10, I'd want the five recline positions, a slightly bigger seat, and stiffer arms, which, from what I've tried, the newer version already gets close to.

"After using LiberNovo, I realized the state of chair technology has moved on. And I realized the manner in which all my previous chairs had been failing me."

Fast facts: Software engineer, 61, 100% remote · 7+ hours a day in his chair, 6'0" · Previous chair: a ~£250 budget "24-hour operator" chair · Also considered: Herman Miller, Hbada · Found LiberNovo through a YouTube comparison video · Owns the original LiberNovo Omni, which predates the five-position recline update · Scored it 9/10 · Purchased it himself for roughly £1,100 to £1,200, about nine months of daily use at the time of the interview.