I think it's seriously flawed, to the point of being a ripoff (especially considering the price).
Specifically, I think that the two, radical flaws, are not just due to my personal shape:
1. the lower back support is very hard; anything around the waist will push against the pelvis/lower back. It took time to get used to, even using cotton trousers, I can't imagine people wearing a belt ever feeling comfortable.
2. the upper top back is significantly concave; it pushes against the shoulders, leading to a severely bad posture, especially if you have a minimum of muscles in the back.
I think they reason why I originally chose it over the Aeron was that on a short try, the back support was adapting better; turned out to be a bad decision.
I don't complain about the materials (it looks like it will last for years), although I understand why some people would judge them as second class.
I agree. The Embody is a great chair if you have pretty good posture. It is pretty rigid in the center (all the flexibility is on the sides), so that it forces your back into the 'proper' shape like a plastic mold. The problem is, it's a pretty hard chair, so if you have any 'irregularities', like, say, a bit of hunchback (thoracic hyperkyphosis), the hard plastic "pixels" will just dig into your back in all the places that stick out where they shouldn't.
There is a single adjustment knob for the back, but it adjusts the thoracic and the lumbar part at the same time. So if you have a rounded upper back, you'll adjust the knob to make the backrest a more deeply curved S shape to prevent the upper backrest from poking your shoulder blades. But then the lower part of the S gets deeper as well and it starts digging into your lumbar/sacral region. It's not easy to notice -- after 15 minutes in the store, I was in love with the Embody; after 1 hour at home, it felt like my lower back was covered in bruises from the hard plastic.
For this reason, I do not recommend the Embody to people with incorrect posture, or to people who don't like hard chairs.
Other things worth noting are the poor armrests (they have no back movement, so you can't move your chair close to your desk without lowering them) and the fact that you can't really recline very far in this chair because the back tension rises pretty fast after a certain point. Well, you can recline if you adjust the back tension, but it's a continuous knob, so it'll take you ages to go back your regular setting.
I summarize something similar to all this in a deep reply above to the top comment along with some other observations.
I will say that when I was first assigned an Embody at work, I went through a period of comfy->uncomfy->comfy-again, so sometimes sticking it out works. Going through the setup guide (think it came with a DVD even) and putting some work into making it just right helped. Ultimately it became such an important part of my workstation ergos that I dropped a few hundred on one so I could work from home in the same chair as work, and haven't regretted it.
But I totally agree with you--you either fit the profile for it or you don't. I think it's incredibly important that you test the Embody before buying it. If it fits you it's going to be the best chair on the market, hands down, bar none. If it doesn't it's going to be a serious pain.
Regarding reclining, the tilt knob isn't really for active reclining, if I recall their setup guide correctly, more to set the right resistance so you float at an ergonomic 110 degrees while allowing wiggle room to fidget. At the very least, that's how I set mine, and it works pretty well. I feel kind of suspended in the chair that way.
The tilt limiter is set so I don't have much room at all beyond that--that lets me push backwards against the limiter and then arch my (and the chair's) back to stretch.
The arms are crappy. I can't argue there. They sit too far back, and there's too much play in the spread adjuster joint. The height adjustment on them is excellent--they drop well below my elbows so I can use the chair "without" armrests--but the rest of the adjustment is poor.
(To the parent poster, btw, I wear a pretty thick leather belt with mine fine--really does depend on how you're shaped).
I agree that sticking it out can sometimes help. The Embody is very punishing if you slouch (the hard sacral part will just dig into your spine), so the first step would be to make an effort to maintain correct posture. But if you're sitting straight AND still feel discomfort, I'd say the Embody is not for you.
About the reclining, yeah -- Herman Miller would probably say that the chair isn't meant for active reclining, but that's no defense. Sometimes I like to recline at more than 120° to relieve the pressure on my spine (for example, when I'm not typing but for example, watching a YouTube video). I prefer chairs that allow me to do that (e.g. Steelcase Think/Leap/Please, Humanscale Liberty). The fact that the absence of this feature was a design choice by Herman Miller doesn't really change my appraisal of the product.
Funny you should say that the armests sit too far back. I had the opposite problem: they were always bumping on the edge of my desk, so I had to sit further from my desk than I would have liked. And I'm not the only person who had this complaint. I guess everybody is different.
The strange problem that I've experienced, as tszyn mentioned, is that in the shop, after 10/15 minutes, it feels great (to me felt better than the Aeron), then the bad surprise is in the long term.
I've owned the embody for a little over a year now and I haven't experienced any issues with 1 or 2. I absolutely love the chair. That said it is rather expensive and what you can do is wait for their annual summer sale which is what I did.
I've done a bit of research into your #1 and I'm convinced that Herman Miller did not design the Embody's back support with posterior pelvic tilt in mind[0]. I think this is why you see the phenomenon of individual buyers preferring Embody chairs after sitting for a bit in a showroom, using the chair for about a month, and then selling the chair or getting rid of it.
Awhile back I borrowed an Embody for the weekend from a dealer and noticed that after sitting in it for an hour or two my lower back would invariably feel like hell. I tried pretty much everything I could think of, and found two things that helped:
1. Stretching and doing other exercises to change my pelvic tilt from posterior to neutral or anterior.
2. Attaching zipties from the back support to the hole in the bottom middle of the "spine" of the chair. This reduces the pressure of the back support.
I ended up buying a Steelcase Leap v2 due to price, but I'm pretty sure that if I tried hard enough I could get the HM Embody to be the most comfortable chair for my body ergonomically. I think it's just unfortunate that Herman Miller seems to completely ignore this problem since it seems to affect a number of their customers. None of the Herman Miller reps or dealers I've talked to seem to really understand this issue.
Linked is an article about how Herman Miller designed their posturefit system to try to push your hips forward. IIRC the Embody doesn't use the exact same system, but I think that they designed the Embody with similar goals. My theory is that if you have deeply engrained posterior pelvic tilt then the gentle nudging of the back support is completely ineffective at getting you to tilt your hips forward, and only digs into you and causes pain.
I've owned an Aeron, Steelcase Leap (v2), and the Embody. All for multiple years. I prefer the Embody. I can sit comfortably in it the longest without any complaints. I think it's almost the perfect chair.
The Aeron I found extremely uncomfortable, I could never get settled in it. I don't know why, but it felt just wrong (I had the correct size and it was fully loaded with all the configuration options and posture fit). I loved the Leap and only got the Embody because I bought all new office equipment and after sitting in the Embody a while I fell in love with it. Only recently (finally) got rid of the Leap and Aeron.
I can't give any reasons other than it feels the most comfortable and I can easily sit in it longer without issues.
It was, after all, designed to be the successor to the Aeron. I have one and it's a fantastic, if expensive chair. I'd like it if it had slightly plusher padding and a headrest but otherwise no complaints.
Got rid of my Aeron because it was too hard and rigid.
For anyone wanting to try one out, go to your local Design Within Reach and you can have a demo.
http://www.hermanmiller.com/products/seating/performance-wor...