boulies Fit Pro office chair review

REVIEW – For those of us with a home office, the lines can become blurred between sitting down at your desk for a Zoom call, and sitting down at your desk to play Call of Duty.  boulies has come to market with an office-focused chair that looks posh on a Zoom meeting, but has some hidden talents that gamers will appreciate.  We’ll take a look to see what the boulies Fit Pro office chair can do.

What is it?

The boulies Fit Pro is a high-back ergonomic desk chair.  This is the first foray for boulies into the office, with their previous offerings being focused on gaming chairs.  In addition to the Fit Pro, a base model Fit is also available, which is a standard height task chair.

What’s in the box?

• boulies Fit Pro chair
• Instructions (rather, an attempt)

Hardware specs

Design and features

I’ve never felt inspired to get a ‘gaming’ chair, as I’ve always preferred ergonomics and adjustment points to a bucket seat.  The Fit Pro feels like the happy medium. The design of the boulies Fit Pro brings to mind what a bucket seat gaming chair would look like with a flat back.  boulies has done a good job of meshing two distinct styles together in the Fit Pro, and from an aesthetic perspective, I really enjoy this chair.  While I would prefer no visible branding on an office chair, the boulies logo is applied tastefully on the back and in line with the other silver accents.

Importantly, it still manages to pack in the adjustment points needed to assure a good ergonomic fit.

Setup

A notable call out before getting to the actual setup was how surprisingly lacking the packaging of the chair was.  There was about 2″ of open space between the packaging and the edge of the box, which is more than enough space to make me nervous about damage in transit.  Writing “This Side Up” on a box does not actually protect anything while it’s being tossed around a carrier’s distribution center.  Indeed, there was a piece of the chair that had dislodged during transit.  The ZUOWE branded plastic piece which covers a couple of bolts behind the headrest had popped out but was, fortunately, an easy fix to pop back in.

Unfortunately, when the instruction insert was printed they weren’t scaled properly to the page, so the included instructions were incomplete.  Reaching out to boulies, I had a response in about a day with a .pdf copy.

The setup was otherwise uneventful and relatively easy.  After installing the wheels to the base, inserting the gas piston, and setting the chair on it, all that was left was the chair arms.  You could also forgo the chair arms if so desired.

The arms were the most complicated part of the installation, comparatively speaking.  Though they were still quite easy as it was just a matter of lining the arm up and screwing it in place with the provided tool.

And that’s it!

Performance

For a little context, I’ve been using Herman Miller and Steelcase chairs exclusively over the past few years between home and the office.  boulies marketing has declared the boulies Fit Pro to be the “best ergonomic office chair in the United States” when searched for on Google:

To its credit, the chair is certainly good, but declaring it the ‘best’ against undefined criteria is a bit cringe.  It’s also not priced amongst the office chairs that are generally considered in that S-Tier of quality and comfort, or backed by the typical commercial-grade warranty.  With the marketing chaff out of the way, let’s talk about the chair itself.

The Fit Pro is a generally comfortable chair, and the adjustment points provide an adequate range to dial in an ergonomic sitting position.  I really like the execution of the headrest – it’s integrated well into the overall design and provides an excellent range of adjustment.

One of the design elements of the fit pro is the relatively straight back for what is typical in a task chair.  This harkens a bit back to the ‘game chair gone corporate’ design approach.  I was skeptical but actually found it comfortable in practice.

The recline is not a lay flat but helps the chair transition from work to play seamlessly with the pre-set lock points.  The lumbar support implementation is also similar to the Steelcase Leap, which I always preferred to the lumbar support on the remastered Herman Miller Aeron.

I found the cushioning to trend towards the firm side, and with nearly a month of reviewing the Fit Pro, the chair still feels like it did out of the box.  While firm, it is not to the point of being uncomfortable.  The cloth material is also robust and easy to clean, and a quick pass with the hand is generally enough to tidy up the chair.  One element of note with the fabric is that it does seem loose in some places of the seat, the seat back, and the back of the chair itself.  It’s not excessive, but unusual in my experience with office chairs.  This also presents concerns with the fabric loosening further with time and use.

What I like

• Clean, minimal design
• Range of adjustment points
• Seamless transition from work to play

What I’d change

• Packaging needs to be re-thought
• Fabric is slightly ill-fitted in places
• General attention to detail and execution
• Six-year warranty is short for a commercial-grade chair

Final thoughts

The boulies Fit Pro chair has perhaps created a niche, viable category of ‘executive gaming chairs‘, and it generally works.  The high back design, aesthetic, and materials set it apart, but it does come with some faults.  boulies loses points here for detail in their execution – and further still for a comparatively brief warranty when paired against other commercial office chairs.

Price: $790.00
Where to buy: boulies
Source: The sample of this product was provided by boulies.