I was recently asked how important it is to me that products I use are ergonomic. I was thinking a moment about that, and I thought that things that we use many hours in our day should really be comfortable and ergonomic and not only useful. Before the pandemic, I only needed to ensure that my mattress and bed were ergonomic. Still, when I started to work from home on a general basis, my back quickly told me that the office chairs maybe weren’t the prettiest, but for about eight hours in a workday, they made sure that I was sitting properly. As I was sitting on a home chair for hours and hours, day by day, and months going by, I really didn’t feel okay anymore. I had to get a proper chair, and it had to be a chair for working many hours without getting back pain and not just any cheap one without ergonomic aspects.
Let’s rewind a couple of years. When I founded TechAcute, I was writing my articles as I was sitting on the floor. I didn’t have a desk, and I didn’t have a chair. Some years after, I was clearing up space in my flat to add a desk and a chair and called it an office. Now, that furniture was just about the cheapest I could afford at that time and far from fancy. It was really okay to work there for an hour or two per day.
That was okay because during my day job, I had an office chair that was fine, but it wasn’t my own, obviously. It belonged to the company, and when I started doing home office in early 2020, I had only that so-so okayish chair that I originally bought on a budget and only for sitting on it a short time and not the whole day.
The result was, of course, as I mentioned before, that I developed back pain, and over time, the budget chair depreciated more and more. The faux leather was falling apart, and I just tried my best to keep it together. I got an ergonomic retrofit kit for the seat and the back as a gift, and I really appreciated that improvement as well. Still, it just didn’t make it a proper office chair with professional and ergonomic features that every human being deserves.
So, after a year or so into working from home, I asked around for recommendations for companies and brands that make good chairs for people who are in a situation like myself. Obviously, I can’t just pay the kind of money that companies pay for their office chairs, so it should be nice to use, comfortable, as well as ergonomic enough for a whole day of home office, without breaking the bank.
I got a few names and checked a few websites but didn’t get to the point where I wanted to be. Then I understood where I had to look. I had to look for a consumer company that built gaming chairs but also had a professional line of office chairs. This is how I found out about Diablo Chairs.
The company is based in Poland, and I really liked their line-up of chairs and models. Of course, gaming chairs are really cool, but I honestly appreciated the designs for the professional chairs just as much. I thought for the home office, this must be really good, and maybe I can get rid of the back pain because I don’t think I’ll be returning to work on a daily basis anytime soon.
I reached out to them asking a few questions, and after a bit back and forth, they were kind enough to send over the Diablo V-Master office chair for a review on TechAcute. I want to be transparent with you as well. They sent the chair to me for testing as a sample, and I am grateful that I didn’t have to pay for it, but I still think that the chair has a great price when you compare it to similar products of other office furniture vendors. So enough talk about myself and my journey into the home office. I’m sure that many others had a similar experience as well, and this review is for all of you who have not yet found the right office chair for working from home.
Is the Diablo V-Master chair any good for the home office?
When you order the Diablo V-Master office chair, it comes in a bulky, heavy box, so if you’re not living on the ground floor, make sure to lend the delivery person a hand. When you open the box, you can find everything you need to assemble the chair. Okay, the term “assemble” sounds very technical and time-consuming, but actually, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.
You just take out all the parts carefully, but make sure you’re not hurting yourself with anything heavy. They packed everything up very carefully as well, so nothing was damaged or scratched either. I’m not an expert in putting things together, but I found that the V-Master chair was rather simple and quick to “install.” They even gave you some tools and a hand full of screws along with a small manual. I would say that you can finish everything in about 15 minutes if you’re not rushing.
Do you know what the best part was about putting this chair together? I really liked to get a closer look at everything and this way everybody can get a good feeling of the high quality of the parts as well. Everything is solid and neat and just works. When you’re done with setting it up, you can try it out. To me, this was a big experience. Knowing how a cheap chair feels and then sitting on the Diablo V-Master chair is like two different worlds. It’s solid and yet comfortable. It supports your back, and the features are really pleasing as well. Of course, you don’t need to adjust the height or the back all the time, but it’s nice to know that it works nicely.
One thing I also like about this chair is that I can sit on it cross-legged from time to time to relax. You know, sometimes you just want to move and change your position and posture a bit, and later you can return to the normal posture again. I couldn’t do that as nice before. If you’re into relaxing, I got even better information for you. Beneath the V-Master chair from Diablo is a footrest that you can swing out to kick the legs up. Of course, nothing is better than moving the back a bit lower, so it’s almost as if you’re comfortable lying down. In that kind of break-mode, let’s call it that, the headrest almost acts like a pillow, and kudos to you if you’re not falling asleep right away like this. I found that very comfortable.
Of course, these are “just” features that are nice to have, even though they are “very” nice to have. The real question is, how does it perform throughout many days and weeks of office work? How do you feel after a day sitting on the chair? So I took a little while trying the chair before I actually went to write the review for you all. I wanted to make sure that I reflect a long-term experience with the product and not just a quick impression after putting it together and sitting on it only for an hour or so. So after a few weeks sitting in the chair for about eight hours a day, sometimes more, sometimes less, I feel that I managed to find the right product for home office work.
The chair looks very professional, it feels very high-class, the design is lovely, and when you move around, the little wheels are going so smoothly that it’s almost no effort at all to roll around, in case you like doing that kind of thing. I know this might not be relevant for all, but I like being able to roll from the left side of the desk to the right side and to the center as well as sometimes rolling back and getting a bit of distance to the desk.
Because the textiles are rather coarsely meshed, I think this will also help during Summertime and heat. My old faux leather chair became sticky and smelly with sweat, and that wasn’t really enjoyable in the hotter months of the year. It’s not Summer yet, but I’m very confident that this design of the Diablo V-Master is great for hot days as well and that I’ll not have any such trouble.
The Diablo V-Master is available on their website for currently 484.99 EUR, but you can also get it on Amazon if you prefer that. It’s available in two color options, from which both are not too flashy, so they are perfectly suited even if you want to put them into an actual office and not deploy them for working from home. Diablo Chairs offers the V-Master in an all-black version and offers an alternative that comes with black and grey parts.
If you’d ask me, I can certainly recommend this as a home office chair for all my fellow remote workers. If you’re looking for a cheaper chair, you can also have a look at other Diablo office chairs in the V-series. I’m sure they are also of great quality and might only lack some features. Thanks to Diablo for letting me test the V-Master chair. It’s been really a pleasure, and I have a lot less back pain these days.
We also got a gaming chair from Diablo, so make sure you stay tuned and return for the review of that one if you prefer the gaming lifestyle over the home office model.
Photo credit: The product shot with the white background is owned by Diablo Chairs. All other detail photos were taken by Christopher Isak for TechAcute.
Editorial notice: We were not paid for the review but received the office chair free of charge in order to be able to do the review.
