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Room & Board Jude office chair review: A softer take on the task chair

The Room & Board Jude office chair brings an upholstered look to the home office. Here’s what to know about its design, comfort, features, and price

The Jude brings a lounge-chair sensibility to the home office without giving up the basics you expect from a task chair. Its biggest strength may also be its biggest limitation.

The office chair gets comfortable

There’s a reason office chairs tend to look like office chairs. They’re built around a long list of adjustments, ergonomic features, and hard-working materials that are meant to keep you sitting at a desk for hours.

The problem is that all of that functionality can make a chair feel, well, like an office chair.

Room & Board’s Jude takes a different approach. It has a wide seat, a padded back, soft upholstery, and a more residential silhouette. It looks closer to something you might put around a dining table or in a living room than a traditional task chair. But it still swivels, adjusts in height, and has built-in lumbar support.

That combination is the reason the Jude is interesting.

Work Design Magazine spent several days working from the chair, evaluating its comfort, adjustability, and user experience across different tasks and settings. The reviewers found it roomy, plush, supportive, and noticeably different from a conventional task chair. They particularly liked the wide seat and substantial cushion, describing the overall experience as closer to working from a lounge chair lifted to desk height.

That doesn't mean the Jude is trying to replace every ergonomic office chair. It isn't. Work Design also points out that it doesn't offer all the adjustments you might expect from a traditional all-day task chair.

And that gets to the heart of the Jude: it isn't trying to win by having the longest list of knobs and levers. It's trying to make working at a desk feel a little less clinical.

What you’re paying for

The Jude starts at $999 in fabric and currently ranges up to $1,449 depending on the fabric you choose. Room & Board also sells a leather version, which starts at $1,379 and goes up to $2,079.

That's a........

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