There’s something altogether comforting about lying back into a cushy armchair, ensconced in fabric and supported from head to toe. It’s from this basic truth that springs the class of furniture known as the recliner, and it’s from this category that the Flexispot Lotus arrives.
Like Flexispot’s sit/stand desks, which I’ve reviewed before for the likes of Eurogamer and IGN, the Lotus is electrified into movement, and even sports a pair of USB ports to ensure that you can remain fixed in position for hours on end. A wide stance and high weight tolerance of 160kg allows two people to cuddle together in one chair, or one person to try a variety of positions to remain comfortable.
At £399 or $520, the Lotus is hardly an impulse purchase, but it’s also not unreasonably expensive – after all, Ikea’s Muren recliner is £329 in the UK, only a little less, while being considerably smaller and manually operated.
The Lotus is available in a variety of PU leather and fabric finishes, as well as three trim levels: the manual ‘standard’, electric ‘pro’ and phone-holder equipped ‘smart’. I’m testing the mid-range pro model in light grey fabric, which includes a USB-C port, USB-A port and two buttons to move the Lotus between its upright and reclined positions.
Apart from the metal panel with these controls and ports on the right side of the chair, there’s a metal Flexispot wordmark fixed closer to the front right, which is a bit tacky but not egregiously so. The final feature is a hidden compartment on the left side, which falls open to reveal a space big enough to fit a few remotes, a Nintendo Switch 2 and other detritus like charging cables, controllers and so on.
The Lotus is big, I am a fairly robust 188cm and 85kg kind of guy, and there’s both length and breadth in excess here, with the footrest running to my calf and the headrest extending for an extra few centimetres above the top of my head. That means the chair takes up a good amount of space (100x98cm of floor real estate), being noticeably larger in each dimension than the Ikea Strandmon chair I used before this, and of course the chair becomes even longer when fully reclined (161cm). As the name suggests, you could comfortably sit cross-legged here if you didn’t want to use the footrest at all.
As well as reclining, the Lotus is on a round metal base and sprung with springs to let it rock back and forth or rotate around – though the power cable means that you can’t spin infinitely, you have a fixed 360-degree arc of movement. That power cable is around two metres long, which is enough for most places in my office, but may require extension if you want to use the Lotus in the centre of larger rooms.
The Lotus comes in about five or six pieces split across two boxes, with the base and chair forming one box (39kg) and the backrest forming the other (19kg). Assembly is straightforward, just requiring you spend a bit of time unwrapping everything from plastic covers, pushing cushions into fabric, screwing in the footrest and ensuring all of the velcro fasteners are attached where they ought to be.
All tools and provided and there’s little that can be truly messed up, with only the positioning of the low armrests and seat on the bottom of the chair being up to user interpretation, and in any case you can always pull things apart and try again if needed.
In my case, it took significantly more effort to bring the chair upstairs than it did to put it together, with the only real sticking point being pushing the backrest down into the base of the chair, which requires some finessing over the course of a minute or two. All told, assembly took around 30 minutes, and the instructions were perfectly understandable – not always a given.
I’ve written the entirety of this review while relaxing in the Lotus, and it remains as comfortable after an hour as it did upon first sinking into its cushiony fabrics. The electric recline function and the sheer width of the chair makes it easy to make postural micro or macro adjustments, while the subtle movement allowed by its springs allow you to rock yourself (or your favourite cat/dog/person) to sleep. The controls are easy to reach, as is the storage, and piggybacking off of the chair’s power supply to recharge your phone or laptop is genuinely useful.
The chair could be a tad quieter while changing position, or incorporate a booster that makes it easy for those with limited mobility to stand up, but there is very little to complain about here. The only real question marks regard how well it will stand up to use over time, and how easy it will be to clean, but everything I’ve seen so far suggests that the Lotus will continue to work well for years to come.
The Lotus is an extremely comfortable chair with some well-implemented features, especially the integrated USB ports and Switch-compatible hidden storage. Assembly is straightforward, material quality is good for the price, and the electric recline function works reliably.
The only true words of warning I have concern the chair’s weight and size; you do need a dedicate a significant amount of floor real estate (for a typically compact British home) to the Lotus, and carrying the heavy boxes upstairs without risking injury requires a relatively capable individual or the combined efforts of two people. Similarly, the length of the power cable may limit placement without extension.
However, if you do have the space and the strength, the Lotus is an excellent recliner that I’m happy to recommend at its current price, especially as it has quickly become one of the most sought-after spots in my house.