Biofit Bimos Fin Leaning Chair Review
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Overview
| Review Summary |
The Fin’s a gorgeous product with a fatal flaw. The black-and-silver body looks lovely, and would do any office proud. We’re also major fans of leaning stools, as they inject a little activity into a seated workday. However, Biofit’s inexplicable decision to equip the Fin with a non-contoured, edged seat negates their otherwise excellent design, and we currently cannot recommend it as a long-term seating option. |
|---|---|
| MSRP / List Price | $863.97 |
| Street Price | Scan for available discount deals |
| Where to buy |
Buy on Amazon |
Rating
| Expert Rating | |
|---|---|
| Positives | As sleek as the name would suggest. The Fin has an attractive, minimalist look, and would add a bit of futuristic chic to any setting. Leaning stool design helps keep users from a completely sedentary position. |
| Negatives | Very poorly designed seat cuts into the back of a user’s thighs, causing discomfort and fatigue. Unsuitable for extended use as a result. |
Bottom Line
[Editors’ Note – This product seems to be no longer available from the manufacturer. We will keep this review up for future reference and comparison.]
On the Edge of Your Seat
The strange, angled central column of the Biofit Bimos Fin isn’t just a design choice. Like a couple of other products we’ve seen, most notably those from Focal’s Mogo and Locus seat, Biofit’s minimalist seat is a leaning stool. These hybrid seats keep users in a half-upright position. If used correctly, a user’s weight is taken partly by his seat, and partly by his legs, a distribution that helps prevent some of the worst effects of inactivity by keeping the legs active.
As a result, users tend to rest on the edge of a leaning stool, rather than settling back onto the main body of the seat. The wide, shallow seat pan of the Biofit Bimos Fin encourages this, and that would normally be a good thing – balancing on the front of the chair helps maintain the beneficial leaning posture. However, the Fin’s seat comes with one serious design flaw. Most of the leaning stools we’ve recently seen, such as the Varier Move or the Focal Mogo, have a contoured saddle seat. These seat pans have a raised central ridge, and two troughs to either side that direct a user’s legs downward and outward. The result is a “tripod” position – stable, and ergonomically correct. Other products in the class, such as the Muvman by Aeris, instead rely on a simple, downward-angled seat pan. The primary benefit of both these designs is that they keep pressure off the back of a user’s thighs, instead concentrating weight on cushier parts of the body.
Why Biofit decided to go instead with an angular, edged seat front is beyond us, but it wasn’t a good choice. Since the tendency is to interact with the very front of the chair, the raised leading edge is in a perfect spot to cut into the user’s thighs just below the buttocks. Discomfort when sitting on the Biofit Bimos Fin comes fairly quickly, and we can imagine that fatigue would follow after, although we didn’t stick around to confirm that. It’s a strange, strange blunder to make, but it’s a serious one. As of now, we cannot recommend using the Fin for more than a couple of minutes.
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