I first tried this in the store and thought it was amazing. After taking it home I’ve noted a few things to look over. There are 3 zippers on the back near the upper and lower seat fold, and 1 zipper on the seat bottom. Unfortunately, the zipper bodies have sharp metal edges and the seat cover does not have flaps to cover them, so they might damage the upholstery of your chair. The instruction manual warns of this, and says not to use it on wooden chair surfaces. I placed a folded towel underneath the unit to protect my leather recliner. This slightly adds to the height and further reduces the depth of the seating area. Still not big of a problem. The seat bottom does nothing at all except for being a cushion and a holder for the wired handheld remote. The unit is not comfortable to sit on when not in use. However it is somewhat clunky to remove, transport, and store with the 12 ft of power cable.
The SBM-100 might be a better and more economical choice because it does not have a bottom seat cushion, it offers some leeway in positioning the unit against your back. Homedics also offers the slightly more expensive SBM-300 and QRM-400 which feature rolling massage, adjustable massage width, and the ability to hold the massage heads at a specific point. The SBM-300 also has vibrating seat massage while the QRM-400 has 4 heads. Adjustable width is nice as I feel the SBM-200 massages too close to my spine.
I have also found that it doesn’t go high or low enough to the comfort many would like. Just a few inches here and there would make it perfect. Sure, you can slouch down or sit way up to get it, but if they made it like that already it would be awesome.Some have complained that the massager is too intense, even painful. I didn’t have that experience. I used this on a straight-backed kitchen chair. The directions warn that it’s not recommended for use on a wooden chair due to the zipper at the back which could damage the chair. Due to that fact, I took that cushioning flap that I didn’t need and flipped that over the back of the massager and down between the massager and the chair. But, if you’re not careful it will scratch it.Other people have said that the massager has a strong smell when you take it out and it will fade out over time, however I did not have that problem at all, so perhaps it is just with certain ones.
There are 4 choices of massage: Demo, full back, upper back, and lower back. Demo is frankly useless. It simply makes one complete up-and-down pass of your back and then stops. Both the upper and lower back start at about midback. An unfortunate downside is that there is no way to stop the unit and have it just massage in one place. There is a Velcro strap that holds the thing to your chair. There’s another clip further down to really secure the massager in place. You’ll likely want to find a chair where you can keep this thing and hopefully camouflage the cord, which is a bulky black AC connector.
Lastly, while this is a great chair for relaxation, don’t think it’s going to equal a real masseuse.
