The Best Massage Chairs - The New York Times

[massage]

Photo: Osaki
Our pick

Osaki OS-Champ


This massage chair offers good heating and reclining—two must-have features—and our testers gave it top marks for comfort, build quality, and overall experience.

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The Osaki OS-Champ is the champion of massage chairs. Our testers gave it an average rating of 4 out of 5 on its overall performance, matched only by that of our runner-up pick. The OS-Champ swaddles you in buttery-soft upholstery, reclines your body until you can see outer space (or at least the ceiling), and massages you from head to toe—specifically your neck, shoulders, back, arms, thighs, calves, and feet. This massage chair’s heating feature is more effective than that of any model we tested, and it offers a wide array of massage styles and intensity settings. The OS-Champ is also comfortable, sturdy, and well made—if inelegant to look at. And it is one of the least-expensive stationary models we tested. If you’ve decided to go all-in and make a massage chair the centerpiece of your living room, this is the one to get.

The OS-Champ massages muscles with a variety of movements, including kneading, tapping, rolling, compressing, and stretching. Mechanical knobs move on a track to massage the neck, back, thighs, and feet, while airbags inflate and deflate to massage the shoulders, arms, calves, and feet (apparently feet need a double dose of pampering). It has three distinct intensity settings, which our testers said were intuitive to adjust.

“I liked exactly where the variations were. I tend to prefer softer motions, so the lowest setting was perfect,” said deputy editor Jason Chen. On the other end of the spectrum, operations assistant Claudia Pelczarska said the strongest setting felt “super-strong.”

This chair performed the best in our testing in terms of heating. Compared with other stationary massage chairs we tested (which didn’t get quite as warm), the OS-Champ’s heating feature was the perfect temperature, according to most testers (though Jason said it got too warm for him at times).

Unlike other chairs—such as the RelaxOnChair Rio, which only partially reclines—the OS-Champ reclines fully. It’s a “zero-gravity” recliner, which is designed to give your body a feeling of weightlessness while suspended in a supine position. “I felt like it definitely reclined in a way that mimicked zero gravity better than the others,” Jason said of the OS-Champ.

Staff writer Justin Krajeski had thoughts about the zero-gravity feature, too: “OMG, okay, this chair is literally wild. Am I upside down? Okay, I like this chair.”

All of our testers found the OS-Champ to be highly comfortable to sit in and easy to use. “I like the instructions better than the other chairs I’ve tested,” Justin said. “They do a better job of explaining to me what it is that the chair is going to do in each mode.”

No massage chair we’ve seen is very elegant, but our testers thought the OS-Champ’s materials seemed durable, high-quality, well constructed, and luxurious compared with those of others in the lineup.

“It has the feel of an expensive car. It’s Lexus-like leather,” said Jason, though the OS-Champ is upholstered in faux leather. “It seemed like it was extremely sturdy and could last years.” He also noted that it felt roomier and more comfortable than other chairs, adding, “I’m not a huge person, but even the Osaki TI-Prime felt a bit narrow in comparison.” For reference, Jason is 5 feet 9 inches and 155 pounds.

The OS-Champ is backed by a three-year warranty, which should be more than enough time to gauge whether the chair has any flaws or is not working properly. And, depending on the color you choose, at the time of this writing, the OS-Champ was one of the least expensive stationary massage chairs we tested.