Musso H80 Pro Ergonomic Chair – Update

I had to send it back, here’s why!

So yes, I had the Musso H80 Pro Ergonomic chair for 8 days of the 30 day free trial period, and it was enough for me to know that I couldn’t use it long-term. I spent about 60 hours over that 8 days, working, chilling out and relaxing in the chair, and that told me what I needed to know. I’m so glad that Musso had the 30 day trial period, it’s so difficult trying to find anywhere that you can try an office chair out nowadays, especially in the wilds of South Yorkshire. Being able to try a product properly, knowing that you can return it if it’s not right is greatly appreciated in this society that’s increasingly becoming internet only. It’s nice to see an organisation recognise that and take it seriously.

When it comes to the chair, firstly, and most importantly, the chair isn’t right for me, but it’s a high quality chair, well designed and built, and it will probably be perfect for a large chunk of the population. I’m 52 years old, 6 feet tall (183cm?) and just under 17 stones (102kg ish), with probably slightly longer legs in proportion to the rest of my body. I’ve also suffered from back pain, including pretty bad sciatica for at least 20 years. If you’re like me, the chair might still be right for you, but if you’re interested, remember to open everything carefully and don’t damage any of the packaging to make sure your return goes smoothly if it isn’t a good fit.

I already spoke about the chair’s assembly in my previous post so I won’t go into that any deeper. Simply put, it went together well, was clearly made of high quality materials, and despite some washers being a little small everything went great. I could feel the lower back ergonomic benefits immediately, but I did have some concerns around the arms and the sensation of pressure under my thighs at the boundary of plain mesh and the supporting product (foam?) under the mesh at the front. These issues didn’t get better, and formed a large part of the reason I had to send the chair back. On top of those, despite the really wide range of adjustments on the headrest, I just couldn’t find a position where it was far enough back for my upper back and neck, and it ended up causing me a lot of pain.

The Arms

On initial inspection and trial, the arms are brilliant. There’s so much adjustment available on them:

• Up / Down – there’s a wide range of height adjustment, they could be above the surface of my desk or underneath it, and the height was then locked in place and couldn’t change without you intentionally doing it.
• Forward / Back – the tops of the arms slide forward and backwards for a relatively good distance. They click in an almost ratchet like fashion, and take a bit of pressure to move, so although a button to lock them in place would be nice, it’s not 100% necessary, and I was happy with that.
• Right / Left – the arm tops also rotate a good few degrees so instead of having them point directly forward and back, they can independently twist to point say North-East / South-West or North-West / South-East, which again adds to the personal preference comfort piece. This, like the forward and back movement, was ratchet like and although not restricted by a lock button, was relatively stable.
• Tilt – those arm tops have another nice adjustment, the tilt angle can be pointed upwards or downwards a few degrees at the front. I thought this was a brilliant idea, and it really helped me to find a comfortable shoulder postion, BUT… This was one of the big reasons I had to send the chair back. There is no button or lock to change this angle, and the slightest pressure or arm position change moved the angle in the direction of pressure. This led to me slipping back when moving and twice trapping my fingers under the front when trying to stand up. That’s a safety feature, and for me was a big problem. Now maybe I’m “holding it wrong“, or standing up in “the wrong way”, or maybe I’m just too heavy for the arms, but I need the chair to support me safely and not alter its configuration just because I lean a different way. This needs a lock button without a doubt.
• Spin – on top of all the above, the arm tops are on a small lever that allows them to independently spin round 180 degrees, and be pointing left and right, or one forwards and one backwards for example. I found this feature really useful because the arms are fixed asymmetrically to their base, and are longer at one side than the other. This meant that if I wanted the chair closer to my desk, I could spin the arms around so the short side was at the front, and it gave me exactly the distance I needed. An unfortunate side effect of this was that it put the tilt angle hinge closer to my weight centre so they moved up and down more easily, throwing me off balance. The spin itself was again ratcheted, and held itself in place relatively well, and didn’t have (or really need) a position lock. I liked the spin movement because it also allowed the arms to be a little wider away from the body if needed.

So yes, in general, lots of brilliant adjustment options on the arms, but definitely niggles, and a bit of a safety concern with both the trapping and the falling.

The Seat Base

The seat base itself is also adjustable, both in height with the usual gas lift affair and some forward and backward movement. In general, for relatively short periods, I found it comfortable. At all times though, I could feel that transition between plain mesh and supported mesh towards the front of the base digging into the backs of my legs. I think this either needs softer supporting material, or perhaps for it to be moulded into a slope coming up from the back of the chair to the front so there’s no defined edge where it touches the legs. What also touched my legs was the foot rest when stowed. I used the footrest once but I really don’t have a use for it, that was just to make sure it worked as it should and despite being plastic, it was relatively comfortable. I didn’t like though how when my feet were flat on the floor, the footrest dug into the backs of my legs a little bit. That needs to be brought back just an inch or so for comfort. As they’re attached to the seat base I’ll note that the castors are smooth and work well on my laminate floor with no marking. They didn’t roll so smoothly on the “gift” chair mat provided by Musso though, more on that later! The wheel base is solid and well made, and looks good too.

The other issue I had with the chair base was discomfort in the rear of my rear! After less than an hour of sitting (remember that I sit here for at least 8 hours a day working, plus other general computer and desk use), I was getting pain in my coccyx and backside. The front under the base of my hips and in my legs was fine, but at the back it was very uncomfortable and I had to regularly stand up. That’s great for my health, because I should stand up regularly, but the nature of my job means that generally I can’t, so it’s a problem. It’s nice to be healthy but nicer to have a roof over my head and food in my belly!

The Chair Back

I’m not going to include the headrest in this part, I’ll give it its own section… The back in itself though was generally comfortable. I think the way the sides hug your lower back are a personal preference thing. I sometimes found it comfortable, but other times I found it irritating. I do tend to hold a few extra pounds around my middle, and I think that’s probably got something to do with my irritation rather than the chair back itself. Either way, that section definitely helped with the shape of my lower spine and supported it really well. You can tell that this was extremely well designed, and like the rest of the chair, very well built. The chair back was airy without being cold, and generally just a good shape, that looked good and felt good. I had a little quibble with the range of adjustment of the back, not enough to have impacted the return decision, but the range of tilt wasn’t exactly smooth or uniform. The tilt-lock basically worked in very few positions, and my back was either extremely upright (which is how I like to sit anyway) or way too far back – there was no small adjustment option, you’re either upright or laid back.

The Head Rest

OK, there’s no avoiding it, this is the big reason why the chair had to go back. It simply caused me too much pain and put my head in the wrong position. I couldn’t move it far enough back out of my way, and the only real fix for me would have been to remove it. Oh, and in the opinion of third-party observers, it made it look like I was in a disabled person’s supportive wheelchair, like one my grandfather used to have (but I’m too old to care about appearances, and this had no impact on my decision!).

I guess for a balanced review of it though, I’ve got to start again with the fact that this is just me, and for many people I’m sure this headrest will be perfect. It’s well designed, solid, has a massive range of adjustment and I personally thought it looked quite cool! It’s very comfortable for the head to rest on, with the mesh taking the weight nicely. It can come forward from the back of the chair a really good amount, and the tilting up and down of it gives you much tinier adjustments in and out, so you can get it just right for you (assuming that unlike me you don’t need it to go further back over the back of the chair). You can also adjust the height if you’re really tall.

For me though, it needs to be able to be moved back or out of the way. Even at it’s most backwards and lowest position, it pushed my head too far forwards and caused severe pain in the top of my back, my shoulder blades and my neck. I’ve heard it described as “gamer’s neck”, but I don’t really game, I just sit at my perfectly height adjusted desk with my perfectly height adjusted monitors (just above my eyeline for the top of the monitors) and work for many hours each day. I’d hoped to be able to test the chair for longer (although I think 60+ hours over 8 days is a fair test), but this pain meant I had to bring my old broken chair back into play and disassemble the Musso. A few hours into sitting on my old chair and the pain had subsided.

A quick note on the actual chair disassembly, everything went really well, just reversing the assembly method, but the gas lift was really stuck solid in the seat base. I ended up putting plenty of WD40 around the join, leaving it a while, then using vice-grips with plenty of cloth padding to twist and move it out. It eventually just popped out and all was good. If you’re going to do this yourself, remember to not damage the gas lift or the seat base. Be patient, protect the surfaces and it will come. If there’s any damage and you want to return the chair, there’s a very strong likelihood that you’ll either have to pay for the damaged parts or they’ll refuse to accept the return.

The Mat

When I bought the chair, one of the promotions was a “free” chair mat with it. There were two designs, so I chose one with a triangle, I guess it’s just a way of advertising the brand, but I’ve never had a chair mat before and thought it might be worth a try. I know the mat itself as a separate item doesn’t really belong in a review of the chair, but the impact on the chair’s movement whilst using it makes it relevant. The mat was packaged separately, rolled up in a long thin plastic back, rolled with the upper face inwards, and secured with sellotape across the base. Taking the tape off left a clear mark where it removed a layer of the back, but as that’s facing the floor I guess it doesn’t matter. What does matter though is no matter how much I flexed it and tried rolling it the other way and leaving weights on it either way up, I couldn’t get the edges to lay flat, they were just curled up thanks to the way it had been rolled so tightly in the packaging. This meant that the chair’s castors kept snagging on this as it rolled over them making it more difficult and more folded. Also, the relevant part here, putting the chair on the mat made it very difficult to roll around. I like to move position in the chair and roll forwards and backwards, left and right, but this was very difficult on the mat. After less than 2 days of trying I gave up and tried it as a mat in the middle of my room, which with its curled up edges, didn’t look great, so it got rolled up the reverse way for a few days to see if that would help. Spoiler alert: it didn’t!

The Returns Process

At this point, I guess I knew it had to go back, so I took pictures of the condition (as new), put it back in its packaging (I kept that in good condition, just in case), and contacted Musso to ask how I went about returning it. I’d seen (and screenshotted) their advertisements showing 30 day free trial sit and 30 day free returns, along with contacting them before the trial and being told not to worry, so I was confident that the return should be simple. Hmmm… OK, it sort of was, but my confidence was shaken a bit at the start. First of all the initial response was a couple of days, which wasn’t my experience pre-sale. That response though was telling me how great the chair was, how the ergonomics had been designed, how the chair needed “breaking in”, and how much testing had taken place. It also offered me a 50% refund if I kept the chair (pointing out how “fair” this was). For a nigh-on £400 chair, that’s some refund, but it’s only any good if I can actually use the chair, so I thanked them, but said no, sorry, I need to return it.

Next came the offer of a 75% refund. That makes the chair a great price, and I could probably have turned a profit on eBay if I’d wanted to, but I was getting really worried now, and after the pain it had caused me, I didn’t want to have a potential purchaser try and return it to me for the same reason, so I explained all the reasons why I was returning it, suggested improvements to them, and made it clear that I wanted to return it as per their advertised offers. At this point, the communications became more formal but the returns process had been initiated.

There was lots of back and forth about pictures of the individual pieces, the method of packaging, the condition of the outer box, the importance of being able to re-sell it, and even the way the screws were packaged up, but eventually all was good and a return courier was booked to collect the chair (they said I could dispose of the mat however I chose). I was asked to take a picture of the courier collecting the chair, which I did, and a couple of hours after sending that through I had my full refund.

In Summary

So yes, in summary, the chair wasn’t right for me thanks to some niggles with the seat comfort, some pretty serious concerns about the arm rest adjustment, and the severe neck and back pain caused me by the headrest. Although there was some worrying back and forth, the returns process went reasonably well and I got my full refund extremely quickly after the chair was returned.

If you’re going to take advantage of the trial yourself, I think it’s a great idea. Although not right for me I think it’s a well designed and built chair, and the support from the company is spot on. Just remember to be very careful with the packaging and make sure you don’t damage it, so that they can re-sell the chair if you decide to return it.

As for me, I thought the only other realistic option was the Secretlab Titan Evo, but I’ve also had the Noblechairs Hero recommended to me by someone with a similar height and build, and although I’ve had no particular recommendation, for reasons around the adjustability of the lumbar support, I’m probably going to pull the trigger on a Boulies Master Max.

Happy Sitting!

– The Zoo Keeper