When setting up a home office for the first time, it’s really easy to get bogged down with all of the choices you have to make.
Do you want one of the best laptops or would a desktop computer and a monitor be a better fit for your workflow? What about a keyboard and mouse? Do you really need one or is using the keyboard and touchpad on your laptop a better option?
While these are all important questions you need to ask yourself, the furniture in your home office will play a bigger role in your day to day productivity and comfort than you might expect. Unfortunately though, many people go all out on their computer and accessories and picking out a desk and an office chair to go with it becomes an afterthought.
As someone who reviews both the best office chairs and the best standing desks for a living, I know just how important they really are when it comes to working from home. At the office, you may not really have a say in what kind of furniture you get but at home, that’s a different story altogether.
Over the years, I’ve built, tested and compared more than a dozen of the best office chairs you can get. From inexpensive task chairs to premium mesh ones with all of the features you could ask for, there’s a whole lot more that goes into buying an office chair than you’d think. Although I’ve put together a list of five features to look for when shopping for a new office chair, I recently came across a chair from a relatively new company with a unique feature I’ve never seen before. And now after using it for the past few weeks, I wish every office chair would copy this feature.
It’s not the backrest
The OdinLake Ergo Butterfly 753 ($999, OdinLake) is a premium mesh office chair that incorporates many of the same features found in the X-Chair X2 as well as the ErgoTune Supreme V3. It has a mesh seat and backrest, a dynamic lumbar support, 4D armrests and unlike the more expensive Herman Miller Aeron, it comes with a headrest.
This office chair gets its name from its one-of-a-kind backrest frame that — when viewed from behind — resembles a butterfly. However, it’s also a split backrest which, when combined with the frame, helps support your entire back as you shift in your seat throughout the day.
There’s a lot to talk about in regard to the OdinLake Ergo Butterfly 753 which I’ll go into further in my full review. For now though, I want to discuss its most interesting feature — at least in my opinion — the metal bar underneath its headrest. Out of all the office chairs I’ve tested and reviewed, I’ve yet to see another one with this feature and after discovering it for myself, it’s as clever as it is useful.
While OdinLake designed and added this feature, the company has yet to give it a name so from here on out, I’ll be referring to it as the back bar. It’s worth noting that this back bar isn’t exclusive to the Butterfly 753 as you can also find it on the company’s other flagship office chair, the OdinLake Ergo Max 747.
A heavy office chair that’s easy to move
Unlike the Steelcase Karman which comes in at just 28 pounds, the Ergo Butterfly 753 is a much heavier office chair at 75 pounds. The reason being is that its office chair mechanism, base and the backrest’s spine are all made from aluminum alloy. Due to this, moving the Ergo Butterfly 753 around your home office should be more difficult than with other office chairs. However, this is where the back bar comes in.
I do all my work at one of the best standing desks and if you have one yourself or have used one before, you know just how awkward it can be having to pull your chair out to switch from a seated to a standing position. Pulling your chair out and finding a place to put it while you work at your standing desk not only wastes time but it can also be the kind of hassle that might lead you to stay seated instead of standing. This defeats the purpose of having a standing desk in the first place.
With the Ergo Butterfly 753’s back bar though, I found it quite easy to pull my chair out and find a suitable place for it while working from a standing position. Likewise, this unique feature also makes it much easier to move the chair around your home or even your office. Normally, office chairs have a tendency to spin around when you roll them across the floor but with the Ergo Butterfly 753’s heavier weight and back bar, I found moving it to be very easy and not something that I would dread doing.
Sure, most people won’t have to move an office chair all that much once it is where it needs to be. However, as someone who frequently tests and reviews multiple standing desks and chairs at time, I often find myself hot desking at home in order to try them all out while comparing them to one another.
One more trick up its sleeve
Even after putting the Ergo Butterfly 753 together — which was surprisingly easy compared to other chairs I’ve built in the past — the purpose of the back bar hadn’t yet dawned on me. Actually, it wasn’t until I went to pull the chair out from my desk when I sat down to do some writing that I realized just how useful it was.
My curiosity was piqued to say the least, so I reached out to OdinLake to ask one of the company’s representatives about it. It was then that I learned the back bar’s true purpose: for hanging a coat or even a bag. Since I work from home exclusively, I hadn’t even considered the practical implications of the chair’s back bar.
If your company decided to outfit its office with either the Butterfly 753 or the Ergo Max 747, you wouldn’t have to worry about hanging your coat in the office closet or coat rack when you come in each morning. At the same time, you wouldn't have to drape it over the backrest of your chair and feel the sleeves hit you or end up behind your back when you sit down.
It’s a small thing I know but it shows just how much effort went into the Ergo Butterfly 753. In fact, it took OdinLake 21 months from designing the chair to mass production. The Ergo Butterfly 753’s back bar also shows that even with a product like an office chair that’s already really established, there’s still room to innovate.
A feature I wish every office chair would adopt
I’ve really enjoyed my time testing out the Ergo Butterfly 753 so far and I haven’t been this impressed with a mesh office chair since I first reviewed the X-Chair X2 back in 2022. The butterfly-shaped backrest frame may have been what initially drew me to this office chair in particular but now after using it over the past few weeks, the back bar has quickly become my favorite feature.
In all honesty, it’s going to be hard going back to using an office chair without a back bar now that I’ve been spoiled by the Ergo Butterfly 753. It’s really the kind of feature I’d like all office chairs to adopt but as OdinLake thought of it first (at least to my knowledge) this likely won’t be the case. However, I would still like to see a back bar find its way into OdinLake’s budget and mid-range office chairs as it’s truly a killer feature for someone who has tried as many office chairs as I have.
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