REVIEW – I haven’t had a good massage in at least 20 years. I’ve used various massaging chair pads or those full-body massage chairs you find in malls or other places around town, and they’ve always been hit and miss on my various aches and back pains. As this elder millennial’s body fully embraces middle age, said aches and back pain are fully the norm instead of occasional annoyances, so I was happy to volunteer for the Snailax Full Body Massage chair pad in the hopes that it might help.
⬇︎ Jump to summary (pros/cons)
Price: $269.99
Where to buy: Snailax (30% OFF entire Snailax website with code: SALE30) and Amazon
What is it?
The Snailax Full Body Massage chair pad is a back and neck massager that is designed to use shiatsu nodes, vibration, heat, and air compression to provide a comprehensive massage for your back and hips. It can be strapped to (or simply placed) on pretty much any chair or couch with a flat back and enough space.
What’s included?
- Snailax Full Body Massage chair pad
- AC adapter
- Manual
Design and features
The Snailax Full Body Massage chair pad is one large singular unit, with a wired remote and wired AC power. There are removable pads on the back and neck area to adjust the intensity of the massage. I quickly pulled these off after taking pictures so I could get the maximum intensity for my poor back (I suffer from chronic lower back pain and frequent pulled back muscles).
The four shiatsu massager nodes are smooth but knead deep into your tissues. If you’re sitting centered on the chair, they are perfectly placed to get back and spine muscles (they move up and down on a track while rotating to knead). I had no issues with these nodes pinching nerves or hitting bones, unless I sat on the pad off-center.
The seat includes a pocket to store the remote control, vibration motors, and air bags. The air bags fill up and release, sometimes together and sometimes independently which shifts your back around a bit into different positions (making the massage that much better and less repetitive). There are also air bags in the bolsters that squeeze your hips quite tightly as well as shifting you side to side during massages. All of these air bags are a welcome addition to a massage, I feel like it definitely helps the overall experience.
The neck massager is stronger than any human has ever squeezed my neck muscles, and if they’re sore it feels great. If that’s too intense, a nice soft neck pad is included. This can be flipped up and over or removed (velcro) entirely.
The controller gives you quite a bit of granularity on your massage. I mostly used the two Auto modes (pressing the “Auto Modes” button once or twice, respectively), but sometimes I would just target certain areas and turn on/off different features or spots. The remote is easy to understand and works great. I like that it’s wired so I won’t lose it.
My one disappointment is that the Snailax Full Body Massage chair pad has bolsters (wings that wrap around your hips and lower back) along with a stiff back, which doesn’t play nicely with a racing-style office chair that also has bolsters (you can see the gap in the picture above where the Snailax pad is 5 inches or so from the chair back). This did not result in a comfortable sitting position, so I ended up choosing a different spot in the house to place the Snailax Full Body Massage chair pad. If you plan on using this on an office chair, it needs to have a pretty flat back and about 16 inches of open width around the lower back to fit correctly. There is a strap to hold the pad to the chair (this strap isn’t long enough to go around a larger item like a recliner or a couch, but on an office chair it would work great.
Final thoughts
I use the Snailax Full Body Massage chair pad almost every day now, and it’s something I look forward to and make time for. Their recommended 3 x 15 minute sessions maximum is a good guide: when I do the full 45 minutes in 3 split sessions in a day, I do have deeply sore muscles the next day. The pad does have a 15 minute shut off, so I usually do one or two sessions a day now and feel much better every time.
What I like about the Snailax Full Body Massage chair pad
- Amazing deep tissue massage
- The airbags under your butt and lower back move your body around while the shiatsu massagers do their thing
- Neck massager can get as aggressive as I can personally take (you can lessen it with cushion layers provided)
What needs to be improved?
- The chair you use this in needs to be mostly flat – if it has pronounced lumbar or side bolsters it may not fit right
- Price – but the closest massage I’ve felt to this is in those $1000+ dedicated full body massage chairs
- They advertise using this in your car as a suggested mode – but don’t provide a DC adaptor so you’d need an AC inverter or to buy a DC adapter
Price: $269.99
Where to buy: Snailax (30% OFF entire Snailax website with code: SALE30) and Amazon
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by Snailax. Snailax did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.
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