X-Chair X-HMT Heat And Massage Therapy Chair Review
- Extremely comfortable for long periods of time
- Available in several colors and configurations
- X-HMT Heat & Massage Therapy Unit is simple and effective
- Extremely robust
- Requires some construction upon delivery
- Price may be prohibitive for most
The folks at X-Chair have an office chair – or gaming chair, or sit-wherever chair, if you like – called the X-HMT. The HMT stands for Heat, Massage, Therapy. This chair is more than what I expected when I first read about its release. It's not just your everyday average super-comfortable long-lasting computer chair. This chair rumbles, heats up, and can be charged by your laptop.
Using this chair
This is the X-Chair X-HMT ATR Mgmt Chair, one of a variety of customize-your-own chairs available from X-Chair. This chair is shockingly comfortable. I've used this chair for multiple hours a day for several weeks, and found it to provide more than adequate support for my back and my bottom throughout our time in testing.
It's usually difficult to tell any major difference between the chairs I've used in the past. I've generally chosen a "gaming" chair by default, finding the aircraft pilot bucket seat form to be at least acceptable most of the time.
This chair delivered something different. The form and the construction of this chair would've been enough to recommend it to anyone I know who sits at a computer for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. It is very, very comfortable, and hasn't shown any signs of deterioration in the time we've had it to review.
The big deal with this particular chair is the form's integration of the "X-HMT Heat & Massage Therapy Unit." This piece of equipment can be purchased with the chair – it'll ship with the unit already ready to go. Or, if you've already purchased one of several sorts of X-Chair in the past, you can buy the X-HMT unit on its own.
The Unit fits in the part of the chair called the "Dynamic Variable Lumbar (DVL) support". There, the unit hides and can be controlled with a set of three tactile buttons.
The buttons provide two different modes of massage, Constant and Variable, as well as Massage Intensity and Heat. I was skeptical at first – how much can a rumbling heater do, really? But I gave it a whirl once... then the next day I tried it again... then I realized that heating my lower back and allowing the massage system to vibrate at a low level for an extended period of time allowed me to relax in the morning, right when I'd otherwise find myself especially tense.
Learning to control the unit without looking took a few tries, but the tactile nature of the buttons made the process feel relatively intuitive. Ideally I'd like the buttons to appear somewhere where I wouldn't need to reach back to access.
Plugging the massage unit in is a little odd, since that, too, is set at the back of the chair. Ideally I'd like all power ports to be USB-C here in 2020, too – but since I've been able to keep track of the power cord provided, it hasn't been a major issue.
The X-HMT Heat & Massage Therapy Unit can also be removed and used independent of the chair. The unit isn't necessarily meant to be used independent of the chair but it certainly CAN be used independent of the chair, if you do so wish.
Wrap-up
There are several different sorts of the X-HMT, each with their own potential colors and abilities. The version we have for review here is the X3-HMT ATR Mgmt Chair, with "Massage Chair" upgrade and Black A.T.R. fabric.
One thing I like about X-Chair is the ability to pick from a variety of builds. The X3 model here comes in "Office Chair" configuration (without heat/massage element), or in Massage Chair configuration. Fabrics include Black, Gray, Blue, and Glacier, and a whole lot of other fabrics in "X2" and "X4" configurations – for a wide variety of prices.
For example the X-Basic DVL Task Chair has basically the same set of backrest elements with very few frills for a fraction of the price of the X3. At the point at which we're set to release this review, the X3-HMT ATR Mgmt Chair with black A.T.R. fabric, headrest, standard width seat, and clear non-locking X-Wheels will cost approximately $1,189.98 USD.
For that kind of cash, you're going to want to know you're getting a chair that's going to stay comfortable and last a long time. In the few weeks we've had the chair, we've sat in, rolled around in, and generally punished the chair in ways your office (or even your home office) is unlikely to match. This chair stood up to adults, tiny children, and cats with great aplomb.
This chair also became a favorite seat of one of our cats, who now refuses to move whenever the chair is not in use by a human. X-Chair makes no specific claims about resistance to animals, but we've found the X3-HMT to be surprisingly resistant to tiny kitty claws in general. I can't say the same about basically any other office chair I've ever had the opportunity to test at home, that's for certain.
This chair is strong and comforting, useful and surprisingly robust. If we're talking about the one and only chair I'll use every single day of the week for several hours a day for the next half-decade or more, this chair is well worth the money.