The Herman Miller x Logitech Embody is the chair that supported me through lockdown in 2020, and almost six years later it still feels nearly brand-new. That’s a rarity for the gaming chairs I’ve used in the past, which have all shown visible signs of wear – or even genuine functional misfortune – after similar timeframes. While the design has remained the same ever after, Herman Miller and partners Logitech have produced new colorways over the years, including an eye-catching navy/purple “Nova” combo plus the white/orange “Ignite” shade that recently arrived at my doorstep.
That makes it a great time to mull over exactly why the Embody has remained my go-to option, despite testing a half-dozen other great gaming chairs in as many years – many of which come with much longer feature lists, greater adjustability and more attractive price tags.
Design
The Embody Gaming Chair is a striking chair to look at, especially in some of the wilder colorways available. Each two-tone design highlights the almost skeletal structure at the back of the chair, with segmented soft and stretchy plastic supported by thin plastic ribs that gradually link up into larger assemblies and finally join onto the aluminum frame. Underneath the seat, a denser mesh of similar construction supports your weight.
Meanwhile, arms curve up from the base of the chair, again with a more organic shape compared to the default racing-style bucket seat used by most gaming chair manufacturers. This structure gives the Embody more flexibility than those other designs; as you change position naturally, the chair stretches, supports and realigns.
The front of the chair, aka the bit that will potentially appear in Zoom meetings, is much more anonymous. Black or white polyester fabric covers the back rest and seat, with an extremely subtle color-matched Logitech logo and a few textural ridges being the only design elements of note beyond the overall gently curving shape. The top of the arm rests are made of squidgy foam, and the five-star base holds double-wheel casters of a modest (2.5-inch) size.
All told, the seat measures 29 inches wide, 41 to 52 inches high and 38 to 46 inches deep, while the total height of the chair is 42 to 45 inches. With these dimensions and a maximum weight capacity of 300 pounds, the Embody Gaming Chair is robustly constructed and should suit even the big and/or tall, including my 6’2″, 190 pound frame.
Assembly and Adjustability
I normally need to spend a lot of time detailing the assembly process in chair reviews, but thankfully I don’t have to do that here. That’s because the Embody is shipped fully constructed, so you simply open one face of the massive cardboard cube that arrives, and the chair rolls out, ready to go. You’re left with a huge amount of cardboard to cut down into small enough pieces that it’ll fit into your recycling situation, or you can leave it in place if you want a king-sized box for your kids/cats/enemies to chill in. Still, versus other chairs that come packed in all manner of non-recyclable foam, polystyrene or other assorted guff, the Embody is mercifully easy to clean up after. Not having to spend an hour (or three) on assembly is also a massive plus.
Once you’ve lugged the chair into position, you’re free to set it up, which is again quite straightforward as the Embody’s feature list isn’t miles long. A pull control on the front right side controls the hydraulics, letting you raise or lower the chair, while a dial in the same spot controls the tension of reclining. On the back right, you can adjust the strength of the lumbar support, with the chair moving from being straight-backed to being more s-shaped. A paddle on the left locks or unlocks the recline mechanism, and handles on either side of the front of the seat let you extend the seat depth. Finally, the arm rests have small buttons hidden underneath; pushing them in allows the arms to be raised or lowered. You can also exert a little force to pull the arm rests out wide, or move them closer to your body.
It’s all very straightforward stuff, and yet there’s plenty here that is unique in its execution. The arms, for example, can drop so low that you can move fully underneath most desks; normally, I’d have to completely unbolt the arms and take them off to adopt my favored forearms-on-desk typing position. Likewise, moving the arms in makes me feel more cozy in cold weather, especially if I have a hoodie on, while pushing them wider gives me more room to wriggle in warmer weather. The backrest adjustments seem better suited than most in pushing me into an upright position that’s actually comfortable for hours on end, and being able to extend the seat depth is brilliant for when I’ve got my foot up on the desk’s cross-brace.
There’s also plenty that’s not here compared to most gaming chairs. The arm-rests aren’t “4D”, so they don’t move forward or backwards or rotate side to side. The back of the seat ends at my shoulders, and there’s no head rest. Similarly, there’s no ability to recline at nearly 180 degrees.
I miss absolutely none of these features. In fact, I’m actively glad that they haven’t been included, as their omission makes the Embody a shorter, more mobile chair that’s easier to push from one room to another, or fit under a standing desk in its upright position. The lack of a neck rest means that you actually need to sit upright rather than doing a full-body slouch, and no deep recline means that you must lie down on a bed or something, all of which feel like they’re much better for you. Indeed, I had fairly bad back pain off and on for years before getting the Embody, and it’s been much rarer since.
Still, some of this will come down to personal preference. I know some people that love to rest their arms on their chairs, and the Embody doesn’t offer much adjustability here. Likewise, if you are the sort of person that likes to tilt way back and stare at the ceiling while thinking, the Embody doesn’t allow for it. That doesn’t make it a bad chair by any means, but as with many peripherals, it’s as much a case of individual need as it is of objective measurement of quality.
Comfort and Performance
The Embody, like other adjustable gaming or office chairs, will take some time to get dialed in. While height and arm rest position is likely something you’ll set once and not touch too often again, adjusting the strength of the lumbar support and how the chair reclines may require some experimentation. There are no discrete notches to signify where in a given settings’ adjustment you are, and changing one setting can impact another, so you may have to keep tweaking things for a period of days or weeks before you’re truly happy.
Still, what you’re actually changing is at least easy to understand, and most people that have tried the Embody – including my wife and friends that have stayed with us for a few days or weeks – ended up being quite happy with overall comfort levels after spending a day or two making adjustments.
Once set up, the Embody is a stalwart companion for both working and gaming. I try to mix standing and sitting when working, and having a chair that provides a good amount of lumbar support while also fitting easily under a standing desk makes things a lot easier. Similarly, having arms that drop down low enough to let me slide under a desk and put my face really close to the screen is ideal for Counter-Strike and other games that reward being able to spot changes to just a handful of pixels.
On days where I’m being naughty and not standing up at all, the Embody is supportive and comfortable enough that I can sit down for four hours, type up a bunch of reviews, and get up without feeling in pain. It’s still obviously better to take breaks, stand up, go look at nature and so on, but for days where you need to lock in for whatever reason, the Embody has been excellent.
Best of all, that comfort has persisted. I’m now nearly half-way through the chair’s 12-year warranty period, and my old chair looks and feels nearly identical to one delivered just a few weeks ago. (Having said that, I really do need to vacuum some of the fluff out of the back of the seat.) That experience gives me a unique opportunity to recommend a product based on real long-term use, rather than a necessarily brief initial testing period, and do so with a real measure of confidence.
Will is former deputy tech editor for IGN, specialising in PC hardware, sim racing and display tech. He has been publishing about games and technology since 2001 (age 12). Will was formerly Deputy Editor at Digital Foundry. He is currently playing BattleTech Advanced Universe.
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