Flintan IKEA office chair review: simply comfortable

First published on October 19, 2015

As someone who works on a computer all day, my favourite office chair is the Flintan from IKEA.

Flintan IKEA office chair

I’ve tried many chairs over the years — IKEA and non IKEA — and have found them to be either too much in the “executive” style without proper lower back support, or too rigid for when I want to lean back.

The Flintan has the right back support and a nice tilt action. I prefer the Flintan to the more expensive IKEA Markus (which makes it on a lot of “best chair” lists).

With the “Nominell” arm rests, the Flintan is $99 CAD.

There aren’t many options to adjust the Flintan. The arm rests are fixed, but you can change the height of the chair and lock or unlock the tilt action. The tilt action is unique (compared to many other chairs I’ve tried) in that it is easy to lean back in it, but its resistance adjusts based on how much you lean back. Therefore, it does not take any additional effort to keep the recline position at the exact angle that you’d like. It is sturdy but forgiving. With the Markus, I don’t like the fixed recline positions and I find the resistance when leaning back to be a bit too much.

This entry is filed under Canadian Small Business, Consumerism and written by Peter Keung. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

5 Responses to “Flintan IKEA office chair review: simply comfortable”

January 6th, 2016 at 5:16 am
Yen says:

Hi, may I know do you fix the chair by yourself? Cause I tried the 9th step and it’s not working. The two parts are not joining together. Can you help?

Yes, I did. But what’s the 9th step? Is it where you put the base on the seat? If so, it’s a matter of fiddling with the angle.
February 24th, 2019 at 1:36 pm
Samuel says:

Could you tell me what the height is if the chair’s armrest at minimum height (just want to check if it fits)

Reply from Peter: by my measurement, to the top of the armrest at the minimum height it’s 26.5 inches
July 8th, 2019 at 10:50 pm
Orange says:

How were the armrests? I’m not so sure about the rounded design, but the rest of the chair sounds great.

Reply from Peter: Hi — that’s a good point. The arm rests are not that nice — they often leave bumps on my elbows!
November 30th, 2020 at 3:31 pm
Andrew says:

Hi, I love the chair, too. I’d love to be able to lock the seat, stop it from swivelling. Is that possible?

Reply from Peter: I have the same issue and no solution!
October 16th, 2023 at 7:12 am
Dreu says:

Hi, I know it’s an old post. I hope it’s okay to ask here now. How is the chair handling now? I am planning to buy one. Does the seat get too compressed? I need to use it for 6-7 hours continuously. How is the reclining function, are you able to hold in in one place by increasing spring tension?

And since I have a not so conventional desk, I would like to know if the hand rests can be completely removing without affecting or removing any other components. I don’t mind taking screw drivers to chair if it only is 4-5 screws that holds the arm-rest in place.

-Thanks

Reply from Peter: The hand rests are easy to remove. The seat held up fine. The recline cannot be held in one place. After many years, for more adjustability, I ended up changing to a used Steelcase Leap V2 for my main chair.