Best Massage Chair Reviews: An Ultimate Guide
After months of scouring Amazon for the best massage chairs and writing meticulous reviews of the most popular choices, the Human Touch Novo XT has finally emerged as the overall winner, giving fierce competition to the more popular and already established brands like Inada and Panasonic.
Compared to Inada massage chair, Human Touch Novo XT is slightly cheaper because some of its components are manufactured in China.
Nevertheless, Novo XT beats Inada with its incredible features like mechanical foot rollers, zero gravity, 34 auto-massage programs, and 3D L-track that enables the rollers to massage your back from the neck all the way down to the buttocks.
Human Touch Novo XT also comes with a 5-year limited product warranty–more than any massage chairs–which cover in-home service, parts, and structural. Other features you’ll surely love include the full body stretch program, three deep tissue programs, 6 manual massage modes, and unique space-saving design that allows the chair to move forward when activated so it can easily recline with minimal wall clearance.
By combining complete features with a unique unibody design that significantly increases massage coverage, the Human Touch Novo XT has taken the lead and become the benchmark in designing world-class massage chairs.
Equally impressive is the Brookstone Recover 3D zero gravity massage chair which garnered almost the same rating as Human Touch Novo XT. Like the latter, this Brookstone massage chair boasts of an incredible list of features which include zero gravity, multiple airbags, L-track rollers, a backlit remote control, and deep-kneading massage nodes/rollers that work on the entire body from the neck to the calves and hips.Both the Brookstone Recover 3D and the Human Touch Novo XT feature a space-saving mechanism that enables the chairs to automatically slide forward upon activation, making it easier for them to recline even with very little space between the chair and the wall.
In terms of design, we’ve rated Novo XT’s as slightly better than Brookstone’s. While the latter reminds us of a spaceship, the unibody design of Novo XT not only makes it look more attractive but also increases its massage coverage or the percentage of the user’s body that can be massaged by the chair.
Meanwhile, if you’re short on budget or looking for something that is relatively more lightweight and easier to assemble, there are cheap massage chairs available for you. For the under-$500 category, we’ve found that the iJoy Active 2.0 Perfect Fit Massage Chair to be the most sophisticated among the budget-friendly massage chairs we’ve reviewed.
A product of Human Touch, this massage chair offers not only vibration but also shiatsu-style gliding massage, recline feature, 3 pre-set massage programs, a tethered remote control, and a compact space-saving design suitable for those living in small urban spaces.
Since it’s one of the most affordable massage chairs, its features are understandably limited. It doesn’t have an adjustable intensity, heat function, or mechanical foot rollers. Still, the fact and it went above and beyond to offer more features than most massage chairs in the same category makes it a winner.
If you’re looking for more features but with the same budget-friendly price, we recommend cheap massage chairs that cost under $1,000. In this category, the iJoy 2580 massage chair stands out for its recline feature that can be easily activated with a touch of a button; simple, well-polished design; 3 auto-massage programs; and a soft pad to dampen massage should it become too intense.
Finally, for cheap massage chairs with under-$3,000 price tag, the Human Touch HT 7120 massage chair has outperformed its competition with its adjustable massage intensity, heat feature for the lower back, and foot and calf massager that uses a patented figure-eight technology.