3 years in and my "good value" chair is already done
My current chair cost around $400 and looked solid when i got it. three years in the lumbar support has gone completely soft, the recline clicks and sticks, and the seat foam compressed so much I can feel the hard pan underneath. nothing visibly broke, the support just degraded until it stopped doing its job.
thats the problem with mid-range chairs. they do not fail catastrophically, they just slowly stop supporting you and by the time you notice you have been compensating with garbage posture for months.
the BIFL bracket has Steelcase and HM which last a decade plus. below that its disposable Amazon stuff. but the $400-700 range is this weird dead zone where everything LOOKS durable but the internal mechanics seem designed to last maybe one warranty cycle.
I sit 6-8 hours a day and replacing a chair every 3 years is not BIFL, that is just slower consumption. I came across a Kickstarter project (lavenne r9 pro) that is trying to move away from fixed lumbar toward dynamic back support that adjusts as you shift. no idea if the long term reliability holds up, and crowdfunding a chair is its own risk, but at least the design philosophy targets the right problem.
is the only real BIFL answer to just hunt down a used Leap or Aeron and accept that mid-range will never get there