If you're in the market for a new chair but don't want to totally break the bank on a Herman Miller (or similar), then what are your options? You could look to the second-hand market, or you could look towards the seemingly endless list of alternatives that are out there. FlexiSpot is one such company that makes a lot of home office equipment, including standing desks and chairs, and we got the company's BS12 Pro in for review.

If you're working at home all day, a good or bad chair can make or break your back health. Ergonomic chairs like these aim to match the curvature of your spine and give you full support, in order to prevent long-term damage or strain to your back. For the most part, the FlexiSpot BS12 Pro manages to do just that, but there are a number of downsides that make it hard to recommend for most people.

About this review: FlexiSpot sent me the BS12 Pro review. The company had no input into the contents of this article.

Pricing and availability

The FlexiSpot C7 Ergonomic Chair is available for £429, and the company appears to intend on selling it in the United States in the near future. You can pick this chair up in two colors, black or gray, and we've got the gray model. It looks good and comes with the headrest in the box. If you're intent on purchasing one of these in the United States right now, the FlexiSpot OC6 is available on Amazon for $270 and offers many of the same features.

What I like

It's a comfortable chair to sit in

I typically use a Herman Miller Aeron chair, and so coming to the FlexiSpot BS12 Pro I was expecting to be bitterly disappointed. That wasn't the case at all, and I was surprised by how comfortable it was to sit in for long periods of time. The chair can recline quite far, and the headrest's height is perfect for me. The arms can angle towards me or away from me, and the chair can go up or down and lock in all of its various positions.

Furthermore, the lumbar support is adjustable and can be moved up or down to match your spine, meaning that it's built to fit basically anyone. The chair was also pretty easy to assemble, with the back, headrest, arms, and legs coming separately and needing to be attached together. I had the entire thing built by myself in roughly half an hour. These are all of the components of the chair that can be adjusted:

• Seat depth
• Arms (both height and angle)
• Height
• Recline
• Lumbar support
• Headrest height

Notably, you don't need to attach the headrest if you don't want to. The chair seems to be built in a way that it doesn't matter if you want it or not, it won't look odd without it. I attached it, but you can skip it if you want.

What I love is that the major controls of this chair are found on levers on the right-hand side, rather than being hidden underneath the chair. They have icons too, so you can sit in the chair and adjust it at the same time without needing to get up or lean too far forward to see what you're doing. You don't even need to get up to adjust anything except for the height, as the recline can be adjusted by simply unlocking the mechanism and then leaning back right away.

I find that the chair itself is incredibly comfortable to sit in for long periods of time as well, with the soft materials of the chair being comfortable when placed directly against the skin.

What I don't like

This chair is incredibly plastic

It's hard to describe, aside from the fact that this chair feels cheap in basically every way. Aside from the fabric of the chair itself, all of the plastic feels cheap and hollow. The lumbar support also feels weak, though I'm coming from an Aeron which is known for how much back support it gives and costs several times the price. The headrest especially feels like an afterthought.

It's a good chair overall, but I feel like for the amount of money that this costs, you should get more premium materials. The fabric is comfortable as I already mentioned, but with how cheap the rest of the build feels, I would be worried about some of the plastic snapping or breaking over time. That especially goes for the headrest which you essentially need to force up and down, but also the arms of the chair, too.

Should you buy the FlexiSpot BS12 Pro?

You should buy the FlexiSpot BS12 Pro if:

• You want a chair with lumbar support without breaking the bank
• You want a very adjustable chair for all kinds of body types

You shouldn't buy the FlexiSpot BS12 Pro if:

• You need a lot of lumbar support

From what I've heard, the FlexiSpot BS12 Pro is a step back from the BS11 in some ways, though I didn't have that chair and can't say for sure. What I can say is that from my research, very few people complained about the quality of the plastic used in that chair, whereas in this chair, it is decidedly cheap. If I were to guess, FlexiSpot probably put a lot more towards the fabric that users sit on this time instead of the overall build quality, because the fabric is excellent.

If you want a cheap chair that gets the job done, then the FlexiSpot BS12 Pro definitely does that. It's nothing special, but it doesn't need to be, and it fits in well with the rest of the FlexiSpot portfolio of home office products. The company has excellent standing desks and chairs, and while I don't think I would buy this chair outright myself, I think that there's something to be said for it for the right person.

To be fair on the lumbar support too, some people don't like aggressive lumbar support. I do and I'm used to it, but if you don't want aggressive lumbar support, then you might like this chair. Plus, FlexiSpot's C7 chair does have aggressive lumbar support, so it seems that in the case of this particular chair, it's a design choice.

At the moment, this chair isn't available in the United States, but we'll update this article with the official link once it is available. For now, you can purchase it in the United Kingdom.