After a year of sitting in nine top-rated chairs and talking to four ergonomics experts, we’ve concluded that the Steelcase Gesture is the best office chair for most posteriors. Thanks to its ball-and-socket armrests (which function like a human shoulder), it offers a wider range of adjustability than any other task chair, so you’re more likely to find a fit that works for you, however you like to sit.

The Gesture is also attractively designed and more compact than any other full-featured task chair; Steelcase offers dozens of finishing options, too. This means it will look better in a wider variety of spaces than its competitors. And in addition to being more comfortable, its highly adjustable arms let you stow the chair almost anywhere since you can lower them and tuck them in as needed to fit under a smaller desk. Steelcase is also renowned for its build quality, and the Gesture is no exception, but should anything go wrong, the company’s chairs are backed by a 12-year warranty.

The Steelcase Leap used to be our top pick, and we still like it a lot. Built with many of the same features as the Gesture, it’s comparably comfortable under many conditions. However, it isn’t quite as adjustable—it lacks the fancy arms—and its design is a bit chunkier overall. Bypassing the Gesture in favor of saving about $50 with this model is hard to justify, but if the Gesture is unavailable, the Leap is what we’d get. Another point in the Leap’s favor is its adjustable lumbar support, though the Gesture’s adaptive back negates any need for this feature. The Leap has also been around for more than a decade, which makes it easier to find used at a steep discount.

If you want a mesh chair because your office lacks climate control, or if you are prone to perspiring, you might prefer mesh to the Steelcase chairs’ solid foam cushioning. The mesh style was popularized by the iconic Herman Miller Aeron in 1994, and this chair is still the best of its kind. Although Herman Miller has released several model lines above and below the Aeron in price, the Aeron’s continued success and storied reputation make it an easy pick. The motion ergonomics aren’t as comfortable or as natural feeling as those found on the newer Steelcase designs, nor is the seat cushion as soft or as supportive of multiple positions due to its hard edge, but this chair remains one of the most comfortable options available, and it comes with a 12-year warranty.

We think that paying extra for a nicer chair, if you can afford it, is a worthwhile investment since you’ll be spending a lot of time in it. But if you can’t spend $900-plus on an office chair, IKEA’s MARKUS is a good bargain. If it fits you—and it probably will, since it’s designed as a lowest-common-denominator product—it can be pretty comfortable compared with other cheap chairs we’ve tried in the past. The mesh back breathes well, the back-tilting mechanism is surprisingly smooth, and the chair has good build quality for the price. But it offers almost no adjustments—just seat height and back tilt. The seat cushion is very hard in comparison with those of more expensive models, as well. To be clear, this IKEA model is good for its price, but that doesn’t mean it’s remotely comparable to our other recommendations in comfort or adjustability.

Why you should trust us

To make these picks, we interviewed a variety of expert sources—chair designers, ergonomics professors, physiotherapists, and ergonomic consultants—to figure out what to look for. We then asked a reporter to test five top contenders over the course of several months in 2013. In 2015 we tested our original picks against three new contenders using a panel of Wirecutter staffers of various body types.

Who should buy this

Fourteen thousand hours—if you have a desk job, that’s the minimum amount of time you’ll spend sitting over the next 10 years. Add the nights you have to work late, the weekends you’re called into the office, and those unfortunate occasions when you end up scarfing down lunch in front of your computer (which may be every day), and the hour count only goes up from there. To put that in perspective, that’s nearly a quarter of your waking existence, over the course of the next decade, that you’re going to spend with your butt in a chair (unless you work at a circus or in retail or something). We now know that any sustained ass-in-chair time can be detrimental to your health, but bad sitting—as well as the bad chairs that engender it—adds even more long-term risks to the equation. So putting a little time and money into finding a chair that makes sense for you is a worthwhile endeavor.

And when it comes to desk chairs—or task chairs, as they’re known in the biz—it very much is about finding one that makes sense for you. Professor Alan Hedge, director of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Laboratory at Cornell University, told us that finding the right chair is like finding a good pair of shoes: You’ll want yours to follow certain design principles, and you have matters of materials, quality, and aesthetics to consider, but ultimately you’ll want something you feel comfortable in.

Unfortunately, even a good chair might not be enough to save you from the problems associated with a sedentary lifestyle. Over the past few years, a huge amount of research has indicated that the central workplace health risk is not in using ill-fitting chairs but in remaining sedentary for long periods of time—whether that’s sitting or standing.1 We outlined the scientific case against sitting at length in our guide to standing desks, but here’s the gist: Recent studies have shown that long periods of not moving put you at higher risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and a handful of forms of cancer. But the good news is that modern task chairs such as the Steelcase Gesture and the Herman Miller Embody take this into consideration and actually encourage you to move while sitting.