Joshua’s Review of Steelcase Karman

Disclaimer: Steelcase sent me a free Karmen chair in exchange for an interview with one of their seating product managers.  They did not ask me to post about this and have not seen this article before I put it up today.  

Mesh chairs have never really been my favorite. I've made a good bit of livelihood buying and selling Herman Miller Aeron chairs, but it never felt right for me to sit on it.  The problem with mesh chairs is the material is not as supportive of your butt as a solid upholstered chair.  It's a deficiency in the material and the idea that this thin material has to support the weight of a person as well as a traditional foam pad on a sturdy plastic shell.    

Karman takes all of the good design ideas that Steelcase has put into their best ergonomic chairs like leap, gesture, and they take the good ideas from some of their also rant chairs like think and Cobi, and they put it into a really well designed mesh chair.

The biggest innovation with this chair is the cushion just under the seat mesh.  A fully upholstered cushion is going to provide more support to the sitter than even the most technologically advanced supportive mesh. You could call it a compromise, I don't see it that way, I think this is both a fully mesh chair and has most of the support you would normally expect from a chair with a cushion.  It's some more gentle kind of support than you would find on either a more standard Steelcase task chair like a criterion or a leap, but it certainly a better mesh field than you would find with think, Aeron, Generation, or the million me-too RTA pretenders.

One thing I noticed, there is a little bit of give, just less than a 1/4 inch, that feels like it comes from the center where the base of the seat interacts with the gas cylinder.  That give makes the entire chair feel less stable and initially made me think that something is wrong.  In my conversation with a Steelcase Product Manager, I now understand that little 1/4" of 'play' was designed into the chair. for the purpose of encouraging small body movements throughout the day to keep the sitter more active and reduce fatigue.  

Here are my (slightly modified) thoughts when I first tried this 10 weeks ago: 

Whoever designed this chair must have started working in a room with all the great office chairs from the last 25 years and every single Steelcase chair ever made.  

I can see elements of a lot of chairs in this and they took all the good stuff.  I have always been so-so on the Think chair, but I like the springiness of the Think Seat, Karmen got that springiness right.  The plastic ridge from a Cobi back looks like the inspiration for the front lip of the seat.  

This chair can accommodate someone like me who (incorrectly) sits with my foot folded under my butt sometimes just like a Gesture with the slope of the seat and the width of the armrests stem.  You have the beautiful sleeker design of an Eames Aluminum.

The main shape of the back is just a sexier version of the Leap 2 which itself is a sexier version of the leap 1.

Seat is much firmer / more supportive than mesh chairs typically feel and that is because of a small cushion under the mesh seat.  This is similar to the foam piece along the front edge of an Aeron, but here, it runs all the way front to back and side to side.  I think this is an innovation that all mesh chairs should be deploying in the next few years.  I predict at Neocon 2024, there will be a lot of me-too chairs with this design.     

Karman is the best full mesh chair on the market. Full stop.

Back is nice and firm with a lumbar that feels much more substantial than it looks.  a combination of the element and the tension of the mesh back put solid pressure in the lumbar region.

Chair is very light weight, carrying it up 3 flights of stairs is no sweat.  I would guess it's half the weight of a Leap.

Leaning back in the top locked position, you have support right up to your shoulder blades.  In recline 2 or 3 mode, I experience the poly flexing a little.  

Arm adjustments do exactly what you would want it to in terms of height and orientation.  

The back tilt, which operates the same as but slightly more modern version of the Leap handle.  

I am not sure how substantial the chair feels to me.  My bias is towards old tanks like a Leap, Criterion or a Knoll RPM that you can feel will never die. This Karmen is much more like a Humanscle or even a Re-generation in its 'light weightness' which tells me it is probably going to have a shorter lifespan, but that we will not know until they have been in the field for a few years.  Steelcase attaching a 12 year warranty on parts and labor is an indication that they believe in the way they designed and manufactured this product.  

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Why should you listen  to me? Not sure you should, but if you do:

I have about 18 years in the used office furniture industry.  As an office liquidator, I see every type of chair on projects and I've sold them all, and I have tried dozens of chairs at my own desk.  Other than Humanscale, I do not have an open line with any of these manufacturers, so I can share my unvarnished opinions without risk to my work.