Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I just received the massage chair and overall I'm impressed. First the delivery - they deliver it on a palette and don't take it into your home, so I had my handyman come and install it (including lifting the 250 pound chair up the stairs). Its a royal bitch to get up the stairs and the chair is so wide that they had to take the door off the room it was going into. The instruction manual is all but worthless. The chair itself has 3 programs - fatigue relieving, pain relieving and comfortable mood. Less programs than a lot of the top end chairs, but, to be honest I'm not sure how much the programs change all that much anyway. The chair comes with heat which is applied to the soles of the feet and to the sides of the lower back when it is turned on. You can't turn on just one area, so when its on its on in both places. The biggest disappointment on the chair (other than the instructions) is that the foot massage does not have rollers at the bottom of the feet - it uses only air bags on the side and bottom of the feet. Top end chairs (like Brookstones' Osim models) generally have rollers on the soles of the feet. The other chair I was considering was Brookstone's uastro 2, so now that I've received this chair and also tried the uAstro 2 in Brookstone's, I can tell you the differences. First, the uAstro 2 has rollers on the bottom of the foot massage and it has a device that goes around your neck and provides a limited neck massage (doesn't move up, down or sideways, just presses in on 2 spots on the side of the neck) and the device also presses down slightly on the shoulders. It also has airbags that go around the sides of the shoulders to put pressure on the sides of the shoulders, which this chair does not. The rollers on the back of the uAstro 2 also go about an inch or 2 further down on the back and into the upper butt. The uAstro 2 also has a lot more programs - maybe 20 or so, though as I wrote above, I don't know how much of a difference there is between the the different programs. The uAstro also moves the whole chair up or back so that your back maintains position relative to the seat (zero gravity reclining?), while on this chair the seat remains stationary and the back of the chair reclines. This chair has a calf massager (using air bags) while the uAstro 2 does not and this chair has a single roller that goes up the middle of the butt from the seat up through the very low back, which initially seemed pretty limited, but works well with the combination of the other rollers going down the back at the same time (it kinds of sandwiches your back between the rollers coming down from the top and the single roller going up from the bottom). Other than these factors I'd say the 2 chairs are pretty similar - the back massages are similar (this chair might give a slightly stronger massage than the uAstro 2), the arm massages are pretty similar (air bags) and the foot massages are similar except for the lack of rollers on the soles. As I wrote above this chair has a calf massage, while the uAstro does not and the uAstro has air bags on the side of the shoulders while this chair does not. Overall I'd say the uAstro 2 is a little better, mostly because of the rollers in the foot massage, but also because the rollers on the back go down into the top of the butt and it provides a very limited neck massage and the way it reclines is better in that it provides a more consistent massage regardless of the level of reclining. That being said the uAstro 2 is $3500 delivered and this chair is $1050 delivered (although you'll need help getting it into your house, which might cost a little more money). If price is no object and you want the very best chair get the uAstro 2 (which I like better than Brookstone's udivine model, which is another $1,000 more), but if you want to save some serious money and get a chair that's almost as good for 1/3rd the price then get this chair. Update: I just went to Brookstones and again tried the uAstro 2 and I wanted to update the info above. In addition to the differences above, the uAstro 2 massage mechanism is a little smoother than this chair, it has airbags aside the waist (which this chair does not), it has vibration for the arms, which this chair does not, and it has separate airbags for the hands and the arms, while this chair has a single airbag for the hands and arms (so the uAstro will do the hands separately from the arms). On the other hand, this chair has this lower back/thigh stretch, while the uAstro does not, and has heat on the bottom of the feet, which the uAstro does not. All in all, I think this chair's back massage is actually a little better. After using this chair on the comfortable massage setting, I'm practically falling asleep, which isn't true with the uAstro 2 on the relax setting. I still think the uAstro 2 is a little better chair overall, but I think the back massage on this chair is a little better.