I own a Herman Miller Aeron (size C, the biggest one), and an Embody (which comes in one size), and both are excellent.
There isn’t much I can say about the Aeron; it’s an iconic office chair design and if you walk into just about any VC-funded startup you are likely to see an Aeron somewhere. All around, it’s excellent. It’s sturdy (and offers a ten-year warranty to back that sturdiness), comfortable to sit on for long periods, and is available with a number of different adjustment options.
If you’re used to buying $100-ish office chairs from Target, the $1000-ish price tag might send you running, but assuming you sit in the chair full time, you’ll spend 20,000 hours in this chair in a decade, so once you stretch out the cost it’s quite good. Your office chair is an area where you don’t want to skimp on cost; cheap office chairs will either have suboptimal comfort, or lack durability (or both). A company I worked for outfitted our office with some Aeron knock-offs from Office Max. They were admittedly really nice chairs, but the controls and gas lift started acting up after a couple of years, and the chairs are probably all sitting in a landfill well within a decade.
The Embody is a similar story in terms of price (one can be had for around $1500 depending on your color choice and configuration) but it similarly is an excellent chair with a unique design. Its brochures and web site are full of marketing fluff (including a claim that it’s the only chair where your heart rate actually will drop when you sit in it, which I’ve never bothered to test), but the back of the chair is a fascinating characteristic: it has a spine!
The spine is the defining visual and functional feature of the Embody; when you sit down in it, your back feels beautifully accommodated because the spine of the chair conforms to the curvature of your own spine. It feels really good to stretch your back and also feel the spine of the chair adjusting right with it.
I’ve owned both chairs for about the same period of time, and the Embody chair has aged worse. The cloth it’s upholstered with more easily shows signs of wear, and I get squeaks out of the Embody (though in the chair’s total defense, I am a big dude and I’m pushing the limits of the chair’s weight limit). If the Embody were to fall apart on me, I’d probably buy another though, because it’s a great chair.
As an aside, I appreciate that Herman Miller’s chairs are American-made.
But chairs are a highly personal choice. Whatever you choose, get it from a reputable chair maker (ideally it’s got a 10 year warranty), and try out as many as you can. You’ll be spending a grand or more, but you’ll be glad you did.
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