Inada Nest Massage Chair (Brown)

Work well. We enjoy the chair's massages 3-4 times a week right in our living room.

What a chair.We take turns here with my family in line one by one.I wish I had one years ago, each time I go rock climbing I could've used it.It is made in Japan. NOT CHINA> YAY

I am giving serious consideration to this chair, but require the opportunity to communicate with the seller/manufacturer before buying it.I am going to place an order for a massage chair today, and will wait impatiently to hear back so this chair can be in the running.Thank you.

Buying and choosing a massage chair is largely a personal matter and there are other factors that matter as well.Probably every company hypes their chairs as the best. You will not know what you like and dislike unless you can sit in each chair and experientially compare which you like better, and which ones you utterly hate. But to do that these days is nearly impossible to do. Why? Because there are very few brick and mortar stores you can visit to compare chairs of different manufacturers and different models.Even the online articles you will read rating chairs are in my opinion, for the most part worthless. Usually the authors will compare features, but there is generally no statement that the writers of these articles have actually sat in these chairs to evaluate how good a massage they got. Features may count for relatively little compared to the actual quality of massage. For example, some chairs have foot rollers, and some chairs use airbags for the feet. You may think that foot rollers are a desirable feature you would like, until you actually sit in the chair to find that the rollers are causing excruciating pain to both your feet.Even experientially comparing chairs side by side poses some problems. You may like one massage program, but not another, or one intensity but not stronger or weaker intensities. But because your time to try each chair will generally be limited, you may not experience the actual range of options for any given chair, thus leaving you with a poor basis for comparison. After sitting in five or six chairs in a row, your experiences may merge together, so that you cannot determine which chair gave you the best massage. However you will remember the chairs that caused you to be utterly miserable.Even after you get your chair delivered it will take you a week to explore all the programs and controls, and figure out which programs you like the most.My wife and I tried a Trumedic 1000. For my wife and I the massage was pure torture. (For the record two of our relative in Chicago tried the Trumedic and also hated it; while a nephew and his wife in Ohio bought one after they tried it in Costco and liked it.The massage we experienced in the Trumedic 1000 consisted of lot of excruciating pounding (that is our subjective experience) causing our backs to stressfully bow back in agony and we felt way worse after the so called massage. As for another massage chair, the Bodyfriend Phantom, the foot rollers, and other rollers on that chair again caused me severe pain. The salesperson told me that their customer feedback suggested that they build their machines to give deep tissue massage, but these machines, even at their lowest intensities were excruciating for me. I am by the way and older person, so I cannot speak for how young muscular people experience this.Please keep in mind that salespeople may try to sell you specific chairs to maximize their profit margin, and may not give you objective information.The machines I liked most were the Inada Nest, the Human Touch (brand cost was something like $7999+ model sold at Costco- too expensive for my pocketbook), and the Ogawa Active L massage, which I saw on sale for $2900, and I liked . We did not try more than 7 machines, and there were many that we did not try.We bought the Inada Nest, because it gave a firm , pleasant, and relaxing massage, with gradual and slow changes in strength during the massage, rather than an in-your-face massage with sudden and extreme changes of pressure, and severe pounding. The Nest definitely make our spines gently crack, releasing tensions without being excruciating. It is not considered a deep tissue massage chair.I had a bias towards a Japanese designed and built massage chairs after an article I read, because the few chairs still made in Japan are reported to have an extremely low defect rate, and presumably excellent warranties from the seller. I could not imagine how I would be able to rebox a heavy massage chair if I had to return it. However, I could visualize how angry and frustrated I would be if I had an even more expensive chair full of added bells and whistles, which, if it broke down, the seller or manufacturer refused and to stand behind their warranty; or if a short warrranty period had ended. (There are definitely reviews to be found on Amazon remarking on precisely this issue, particularly for some of the alleged best, high class super expensive chairs).Since the Inada Nest we bought was a floor model, we got it for $4,300 (discounted $1,700 from$6,000) with an 5 year extended warranty thrown in by Massage Chair Relief (the retailer which I might also call a discount retailer and internet seller since some of their chairs are at a discount, sometimes substantial), and a lifetime labor guarantee also from the seller, Massage Chair Relief in Cerritos, California. Because Japanese craftsmanship generally places a high value on workmanship, engineering, detail, reliability and functionality, we don’t expect this chair to break, even if the warranty were not backed up. Of course, one always has to,allow for exceptions.By the way, when I noticed the day after it was delivered that I wasn’t provided warranty papers that should have come with my invoice, from Massage Chair Relief and couldn’t find the sellor’s name among their list of authorized distributors on the web, I called Inada, somewhat worried. The Inada representative assured me the sellor was an official distributor in good standing, and within 5-10 minutes of my phone call, Inada emailed me my 5 year parts and labor warranty. How is that for service?As you may know nearly all massage chairs are made in China these days. Some of these are good quality, some of these are of reputedly substantially lesser quality. How will you know the difference until your chair breaks down ? What will you do if you buy a chair without trying it, find your hate it, and can’t even imagine how to rebox a 200-400 pound massage chair for return to the vendor? And what will you do if the vendor or manufacturer won’t service or repair your massage chair, or accept the return, and your warranty turns out to not be worth the paper it is written on?This is the very reason I purchased a Japanese designed and built product which my wife and I liked from the get-go. It is now two months after we took delivery on our Inada Nest and we continue to enjoy our massage chair and between the two of us, use it about 1-1/2 and 3-1/2 hours a day between the two of us . The individual programs are about 10 minutes long though you can run the chairs for almost thirty minutes by starting another programs before the former one(s) complete We both find the chair highly therapeutic because it stretches and relaxes our back particularly after waking up stiff. But I must warn you, I have found the chair highly addicting because of the relief and relaxation it provides. I should remark that there are some magazine articles that designate this as a relaxation chair rather than a therapeutic chair because it is not “deep massage”. I suspect this is meaningless hype. We find the chair therapeutic.Again, we purchased our chair at Massage Chair Relief in Cerritos, California which frequently has incentives to buy their chairs, including discounts on floor models and returned chairs. They have around 20 different models of massage chairs to try at their store in Cerritos, have another store in Las Vegas and are planning to open a store in Arizona, I believe in Scottsdale). As I said we bought a significantly discounted floor model, ). They appear to be one of the few massage chair “brick and mortar” stores left in the country. This, by the way, was not the chair the salesperson there appeared to favor. He felt there were better ones, and he preferred deep tissue massage chairs. These are more complex chairs, and my more recent research on Amazon suggest that at least some of these more complex and expensive chairs that have additional features the Nest lacks, appear more prone to break downs, based on the limited information I have reviewed perused on Amazon!By the way you may find some sellers including Massage Chair Relief that have Sales, such as Labor Day Sales and Christmas Season Sales. (Massage Chair Relief appears to have a couple month long Christmas Sale, but I don’t know about Labor Days Sales. They want you to buy a chair and appear to have some flexibility in their pricing, and seemingly the willingness to stand behind products they sell more than other sellers). You can find on Massage-Chair-Relief.com at the center of the top of their web page a menu item “Current Sales”.Some words about features you might like that are not on the Nest: There is no built in pillow under the head. There is no hip massage, or lumbar or other heaters. There is no no trapezius massage, or glute massage (back of leg rollers) and the neck massage is limited and not the best. (But the full back and lower back massage is spectacular). There are no foot rollers, though air bags will give a decent massage of hands, arms, feet, calves, and butt. Again this is not considered a deep tissue massage. There are two to three levels of intensity, depending on whether you use one of the eleven programs, which are all great, or a manual massage feature.I love the stretch feature of the massage that pulls the legs down while the spine is stretched. I find the massage deep enough and never excruciating or unacceptably painful. There ought to be some level of acceptable pain you feel at times when your body is tender and stiff or why buy a massage chair?I would not have bought a massage chair, sight unseen, based on vendor hype, or untrustworthy magazine articles on the internet rating chairs on the basis of features. There is at least one chair I saw that weighed over 400 lbs. (ugh), while most chairs appear to weigh 225 or more. the Nest has a small footprint. It weighs about 175 lbs., yet is very comfortable to sit in. I emphasize, try before you buy, and also do adequate research. No one can possibly know how you will experience the massage in any chair but you. It’s easy to buy a reliable car sight unseen on the internet, because of the huge volume of reliable cars sold. But in my opinion the relative low volume of massage chairs sold in the US, and the necessary customization to your particular body is more likely to lead to a disappointing and expensive experiment if you don’t experience massage chair alternatives before you buy.While my wife and I love the Nest, please get what suits you after considering what is within your budget, effective , comfortable, durable and reliable. There is no point feeling cursed by an excruciating massage chair, or one that breaks down and that ends up as a mere decoration in your home, and takes a tractor or at least a crew of strong men (or super athletic women!!!) to remove.