We want you to be extremely satisfied with any massage chair you buy through our chart. We don't want the chair to fall apart after a year of use. We have read some horror stories of cheap massage chairs that fall apart after 3 months. That's why we put every massage chair we recommend through a tough endurance test to see if it will really last.

How did we perform the endurance test? We used many different methods but the first test we performed was the field test. We placed each massage chair on our chart in the lobby at the Chamber of Commerce building for 3 years. We allowed every visitor to use the massage chair completely FREE. We had people that were skinny and large, some weighed over 350 pounds. They all seemed to love the chair. We wrote down any complaints they had and submitted them to the company to give them feedback.

We started with 50 different chairs and only 5 made it to the top of the list. We rotated them, but as they broke we took them off the chart. Most of the chairs broke down after a few months of use. These were some of the common reasons why some of them broke down:

• Bad Remote - This was the most common problem. Lots of massage chair remote failed after 4 months of use. The wire that connected the remote to the chair was not strong so it broke easily. On some of the models, one or two of the buttons would not work. They said their chair is very well made but after a few months the remote would malfunction, and we would not be able to use the right side of the chair.


• Bad Motor - With a few chairs we put through the endurance test, after 6 months their motors would stop working. The chairs would stop going up and down. Some worked after we turned the power on and off a few times. With others, the motor would just fry.   


• Arm or Foot Massage Malfunction -  Some parts of the chair would stop working, either the right arm or the left arm. Sometimes the foot massage would stop going up and down.


• Power Switch - Some cheap companies make the power supply so bad that the chair would flicker on and off.

These were just some of the most common problems we saw. Now remember, we did put these chairs through heavy use. We had 10 to 30 people use the chair every single day. Some were 15-year-old teens, and some were 350 pounds. We tried to simulate what it would be like to have the chair for 15 years because we don't want you to get a chair that can break easily.

The worst part about a chair breaking was when we called the company for a warranty. Some sent specialists to come fix the chair within a week. Some took a month with constant phone calls. Some stopped answering our phone calls all together. We were secret shoppers so they had no clue we were testing their chairs. Most of the chairs failed our test. But instead of being negative and writing down all the chairs that failed, we just listed the ones that passed.

In order to get on our list, they had to pass our endurance test without any issues. If they had issues, the company must fix the chair within a week and we should not have to pay for it. Every chair on our top 5 list worked with extreme quality. Some chairs like iRobotics had a broken arm but it was replaced in a week. One of the best chairs was the Medical Breakthrough, because their chairs were originally made for commercial use so they had already put their chairs through all kinds of tests because they sold their chairs mainly to SPAs and hotels that use them heavenly.

So although the Endurance Test was very time consuming, we thought it was necessary to avoid our readers from buying a chair that was bad. Our reputation is very important to us, so before we recommend any chair we want to make sure we fully test it as much as we can.