The noblechairs ICON TX offers premium quality at a more affordable price

Towards the end of January, a large brown box weighing 29kg, emblazoned with the noblechairs logo arrived on my doorstep after two days in transit. Inside was the noblechairs ICON TX, that Overclockers UK provided for me to review, made out of an anthracite-coloured fabric – just one of the variants of the ICON TX that are available; other materials the chair is available in are synthetic leather, real leather, and high-tech faux leather.

As I planned to use the chair upstairs, I got a bit of help pushing the bulky box upstairs. Looking back now, it’d have been much easier opening the box up downstairs and then carrying the individual parts upstairs separately – keep this in mind if you’re planning to buy this chair for an upstairs room.

Specifications

Materials

Recommended for

Assembly

Once you’re ready to build the chair you’ll want to carefully open up the box, being careful not to rip into the chair fabric if you use a sharp object to open up the box. Inside you’ll find some screws to use when building the chair, and an Allen key to tighten up the screws. If you don’t have tools lying around the house, don’t worry as everything you need to build the chair is in the box.

The instructions manual is very straight forward and writing is kept to a minimum, instead, noblechairs has opted for illustrations that show you what goes where step-by-step. Depending on how quickly you comprehend the instructions, you could probably get the chair built in about 20 minutes – I wasn’t timing the construction of my chair but it felt like 20 minutes.

After you’ve built the chair, you fit the headrest and lumbar cushions before taking your seat; these should help with posture and ensure the best experience but if you dislike them, you can take them off. I have kept the pillows on mine because I’ve gotten used to them, they’re comfortable, and they provide extra support. The main body of the chair is quite firm and what’s nice about the ICON TX is that you won’t ever sit down on a cold surface like you would with a leather edition.

While I am totally used to the chair now and really like it overall, the fabric is a little grippy and can cause t-shirts to roll up a bit. This was more of an issue after I just got the ICON TX and don't really notice it much anymore. The pillow cases don't feel too dissimilar from the texture of the chair so you won't notice they're there aside from the support they offer - they are slightly softer than the rest of the chair though.

Going off on a tangent

Before I got this chair, I was sitting in a fold-up chair that was most definitely not intended for sitting at a computer with. Next to that chair, I had an identical chair where I have a little collection of books I’d been reading over the last few years. Once the noblechairs ICON TX was set up, I evicted the fold-up chair I had been sitting on and put it back with the table it actually belongs with while the chair for my books had to be moved over further to the side to give this proper computer chair some space.

No matter how comfortable you try to make yourself on a fold-up chair, you still end up with aches because they’re just not designed for sitting at a computer. Having replaced that chair with the noblechairs ICON TX and having tried it for several weeks, I can say that my comfort levels when sitting for prolonged periods have improved significantly.

Some thoughts

For the next few days after setting up, I continually learned of new things that the chair was capable of. You can heighten and lower the chair, adjust the backrest to the desired level, change the weight of the chair for leaning back, and most impressively, change the direction, height, and wideness of the armrests. I found out many days after owning the chair that the armrests were able to be lifted up and down using the paddles on the outer side of the armrest. The higher you have the armrests, the more support you get.

While the armrests are highly flexible, they do have quite a big issue that’s a tad annoying – they rattle when touched. They won’t make a noise while you twirl on the chair or anything but when you rest your arms on them you can feel them moving a little and you'll hear a small noise. Ideally, it’d be nice for the armrests to remain still once you have them set in the position you want.

There are a few things that I really like about this chair, the first is that you can tilt back and then lock the chair in place. There have been a few times when I felt like I was going to tip-up in this position but it’s really just nerves, there’s no chance of that happening especially with the heavy metal base that the chair is mounted on. The chair also sits slightly forward from centre so when you do lean back, you’re leaning over the middle of the chair really and not putting your weight on the back wheels which might otherwise have seen the chair tip-up.

As you could probably tell from my story of the fold-up chair earlier, you can guess that my attention to maintaining a good posture isn’t high on my list. One of my preferred sitting positions on that old chair was cross-legged, I was a bit concerned about whether I could continue doing that on the ICON TX, and I can report for all of you who like to sit cross-legged, that it’s perfectly possible because the armrests don’t get in the way.

Care and warranty

For those concerned about the maintenance of the chair after purchase, noblechairs says that the ICON TX can be vacuumed and cleaned with cleaning foam for fabric furniture. With it being made from fabric and not leather, you may have a harder time cleaning things like spillages.

If you're unfortunate and find an issue with your new chair, you're covered by the warranty for two years.

Conclusion

With a price tag of £339.95, the ICON TX is certainly not cheap. With that said, among the variations of the chair, it is the most affordable – the real leather edition will send the price way up to £529.99. The features of the chair are definitely premium, most of which were not on an old computer chair that I had which limited you to adjusting the height and giving you the option to disable leaning back.

What disappoints me most about this chair is the fact that the armrests are not perfectly still if you touch them with your elbows and the rattling noise you get as a result. Other than this, I would say that it’s good value for money.

If you are in the United Kingdom, you can pick up this chair now from Overclockers UK. If you are in the United States, you can check out noblechairs' Amazon store, however, it doesn't appear that the ICON TX is available there yet. For those in other countries, check out noblechairs' country directory.

Gallery: noblechairs ICON TX Anthracite