Herman Miller Mirra Chair Review: A Worthy Alternative to the Classic Aeron

The Herman Miller Mirra Chair provides a casual alternative to HM's more classic Aeron Chair.

This is just a short review of the Herman Miller Mirra chair.  Let’s start by going over the many positive aspects of the chair. The Mirra chair offers a unique fit that’s completely adjustable to accommodate almost anyone. This means that you can accommodate a lot of body types and sizes on the chair.   If you buy the fully loaded model, almost everything is adjustable. If you buy the basic chair, it actually has a non-adjustable lumbar and I know that this can actually be a bit uncomfortable for some people. So, just keep that in mind. One of the amazing features of the Mirra Chair is the mesh backing that offers total back support. It basically molds to your spine instantly so whenever you’re moving in your chair it moves with your various movements and accommodates all the sizes and postures as well.

Another feature, which is very important to me, is that it has a tote feature that has different pivot points so it pivots at the hip, for example, or at the knee or the ankle. This means you can adjust to any position that you want it to be.  I’m a pathologist so I’m looking down a microscope quite a lot of the time, so for me, that’s quite a nice feature. Another feature again is the seat. It’s very similar to the Aeron chair in that it allows your body to breathe, whereas other office chairs can trap your body heat and make you feel hot.

Customizations and Design

Like all other Herman Miller chairs, there’s a huge number of customizations available.  You can get the Mirra chair in virtually any color combination that you want. Just in terms of its look, I think it has a fantastic, innovative design. It just looks clean and kind of futuristic.

A Few Cons

It’s obvious that I really like this chair overall, but there are just a couple of bad things. I mentioned already that the basic chair is nonadjustable for the lumbar. So, if you do have issues with your lumbar then you might want to consider moving up to the fully loaded version. Another thing I’ve heard, but not from my experience, is that very small people can have problems with the arm chairs since they can’t adjust them far enough in and basically they have to extend their arms out to rest on the arm chair. So if you are shorter than 5’2″ and fairly light, that is a consideration you’d need to make. Also, smaller-framed people have reported that the chair itself is too deep and so they kind of get lost in the depth of the seat. Just another small thing to note: the Mirra chair has two screws which hold the chair back to the base and as you sit in it over a few months of use they kind of work themselves loose. So don’t throw away your little hex wrench, because you’ll need them to turn the screws.

Overall, I think the Mirra chair is fantastic. It ranges from around $500 for the basic up to $1000 for the fully customizable, which is cheaper in comparison to the Aeron.