Seat-on review: Humanscale Liberty

Continuing my occasional series of high-end workspace seating option reviews, today I turn my attention to Humanscale's Liberty, which takes a little different approach to chair design than the company's Freedom chair, which I liked a lot when I reviewed it in December.

Originally designed as a conference room chair, Humanscale upgraded the Liberty for desk use after customers begged for it. The result: A gracefully-styled chair that will look at home just about anywhere in the office.

The first thing you'll notice about the Liberty is how amazingly light it is. At about 27 pounds, you can easily move this chair around on any surface, and you'll have no problem picking it up for hauling up and down stairs if needed.

As with the Freedom, there are minimal controls to deal with here: Just set the seat pan depth and the height of the seat, and you're set. The only other adjustment to deal with is the arms, which you can bring up or down with a flick of the wrists whenever you need them.

What's lacking are reclining and lumbar adjustments: If you want to lean back, lean back. Lean forward to lean forward. That may work for some users, but it just didn't offer enough support for me. I tend to lean back while working, and I usually rely on a stopping mechanism in the chair to keep me from reclining too far. The Liberty doesn't have this feature, and it's loose enough that I found myself fighting the chair to maintain an appropriate posture. Combined with the mesh back panel, this put a lot of strain on my back and I found I sometimes had a little upper back pain after a long day at the desk.

Different users may need less support, so the Liberty may work better for you, but this is definitely one to try out in person before you buy. Prices range from the $600s to over $1,000 (the price of the one I tested: $1,110).