Steelcase has been one of the biggest names in luxury office seating for decades, and the company recently released an update to its popular mesh Karman model that has gamers in its sights. This new model features a high-back design with some truly eye-catching mesh weaves. It’s well-made and premium-priced, starting at $1,030, but if you’re looking for tons of adjustments like the Gesture, Leap, or Think, you might be left wanting more.
Steelcase Karman High Back – Design and Features
The Steelcase Karman High Back is a striking mesh computer chair. The Karman in general was already an eye-catcher, with its intricately woven fabrics, unique color combinations, and prominent contours, and the High Back takes those features and builds on them. It’s one of the most interesting and, in my opinion, best-looking mesh chairs you can buy right now.
While the original was a standard mid-back office chair, the High Back adds a sculpted backrest and integrated headrest. When I was initially approached about doing this review, the representative explained that the company had gamers in mind with this release. In a way, it’s easy to see why. It’s certainly a chair that you can lean back in with a controller and game comfortably. On the other hand, there are enough color options and the design is minimalist enough that it could easily fit into an office setting. It’s a good-looking design that can work well in a variety of environments.
Like every Steelcase chair I’ve reviewed so far, it offers impeccable build quality and a fine attention to detail. Across the board, the Karman High Back feels well made and designed to last. It uses a metal frame with a flawless finish (color-matched to the color scheme of the chair) and high-quality open-weave Intermix fabric mesh. The material is simultaneously soft, flexible, and clearly robust. It feels soft to the touch, like traditional fabric chairs, and not plasticky like many mesh ergo seats. Time will have to tell, but upon close inspection, it doesn’t seem like it would be prone to fraying like a more traditional thread might be with such an open weave.
I have to admit that the new high back design initially had me worried. Its prominent contours left me wondering if it would actually match my back or if I would find myself huddled in the middle without actually being supported. Thankfully, the backrest is designed to allow the mesh to flex and match the exact contours of your back. That said, I would still recommend picking up the optional adjustable lumbar accessory. While the mesh is able to flex, the lumbar support provided that little bit of extra support my lower back needed for long hours at my desk.
This new model comes with an integrated neckrest. Note that it isn’t a headrest and doesn’t work as one. It’s small and thin, only moves up and down, and positioning it under the head forces you forward uncomfortably. Shifting it beneath the neck, however, allows the contoured high back to support the head much more naturally. That also means that the actual headrest is completely non-adjustable. I’m happy to see a neck support, but if a headrest is a make or break feature for you, I would highly recommend testing the chair before picking one up for yourself.
While I personally found the chair comfortable, I was surprised by the lack of adjustments it offers in comparison to other leading options in Steelcase’s line. You can adjust the backrest across four levels, but two of these options are locks (upright and limited tilt). The other two offer more or less tension when you recline. It’s the same LiveBack system I remarked on in my review of the Think (2025).
The other adjustments are limited and basic. You can move the neckrest up and down, the armrests up, down, in, out, or tilt them to different angles, and adjust the chair’s height. If you pick up the optional adjustable lumbar accessory, you can adjust that up and down too. There are no knobs to adjust the lumbar pressure or other fine adjustments. It’s just two tabs that move a plastic-backed cushion up and down behind the mesh. Seat depth is also locked.
Steelcase does offer other benefits, however. There’s a dedicated cushion beneath the seat rest, bringing the best of both worlds between traditional and mesh chairs. The edges of the chair are also soft, so you won’t need to worry about it digging into your skin. Steelcase also nails the cushions on the armrests. They’re firm enough to feel made-to-last but soft enough that you can actually lean on them without giving yourself a sore elbow. The contouring of the chair is also well done too, with a waterfall edge on the seat, and curves to guide you into a proper seating posture.
The Karman may also take the cake as Steelcase’s best-looking chair. Unlike most mesh options on the market, you have the option of getting translucent or opaque fabric. The latter does a good job of masking the fact that it’s even a mesh chair at all until you look closely. There are plenty of options to choose from too so you can find a color scheme that matches your personality. All told, there are a dozen different schemes to choose from, as well as two Intermix Shift options.
Intermix Shift is where things really get interesting for the aesthetics of the chair. It’s named such because it weaves together two different hues of mesh to create a gradient that shifts depending on how you’re looking at it. As of this writing, there are two options: red-blue, and green-gold. I was sent the red and blue version, and the shifting, reactive gradient is downright beautiful.
Other customization options are more limited, though. Unlike the Think and Amia, you can’t customize the color of the base or frame of the chair. Instead, that’s dictated by your fabric color. You can choose between 4D armrests, height adjustable armrests, or no armrests at all, which, coincidentally, is where that base price of $1,030 comes in. You can also choose between wheels for carpet or hardwood floors with or without wheel hubs.
The cheapest version with armrests (height only) and the adjustable lumbar will set you back $1,269. The most expensive version, which includes opaque fabric, 4D armrests, the lumbar support add-on, and hubless wheels for hardwood floors tops out at $1,584. With its comparatively limited adjustments, this draws into question the value of the chair. While there’s no mistaking its quality, if you really want your chair to be 100% tailored to you, it simply may not be the best option (even if it is the best looking one).
Steelcase Karman High Back – Performance
Over my years of testing chairs, I’ve come to recognize that I generally prefer fabric. I’ve sat in many mesh chairs and found them to be very comfortable, but between the two, I prefer the feel of soft fabric and supportive cushioning versus the breathable web of mesh seating. This is entirely subjective, of course, but I wanted to share that fact because some of my conclusions are going to be based on that personal preference, so keep your own tastes in mind.
The Intermix Shift fabric is excellent, and since it’s a weave of different colors, it stands to reason that the other variations of Intermix would be equally soft and comfortable. There is nothing plasticky about this mesh. It feels very nice to touch and has a softness that I don’t typically associate with this style of chair. At the same time, it maintains the benefits of being flexible and breathable, something that the seat cushion, surprisingly, doesn’t really hinder.
The design of the seat allows it to be significantly more comfortable than other mesh chairs I’ve tested. One of its defining qualities is that it has a very lightweight cushion directly under the seat, allowing you to have a cushioned seating experience while most others simply feel taut under your backside. It doesn’t take up the entire surface of the seat, so it doesn’t quite emulate a more traditional foam seating experience, even from Steelcase itself, but compared to typical mesh designs, it’s a big improvement.
The backrest takes some getting used to, but I did eventually come around on it. The first couple of days were a learning experience as I adapted to its contours. The upper back is far more curved than any other chair I’ve tried. Once I was used to it, however, I came to enjoy it. You have to relax and settle in and get that neckrest positioned correctly for everything to come together.
Head support is fine thanks to the adjustable neckrest, but I wish there was some adjustability in its support. The neckrest does well positioning your head so that the contoured back can fill the role of a headrest too, but it falls short of a truly adjustable headrest like the one found on the Gesture.
The armrests are surprisingly less adjustable than on the Think and Amia – there seems to be less width adjustment, and they don’t seem to move quite as smoothly either. They get the job done, and practically speaking, the differences in range aren’t that large. The soft but durable padding on the armrests is a much more important quality, and Steelcase nails it. Even so, it’s hard not to feel like they are a step down from those other models. It was able to accommodate gaming with a keyboard and mouse or a controller easily, however, and could be positioned to support my arms over extended typing sessions too.
The lack of adjustments is disappointing. I would have much preferred to see a recline tensioner instead of the LiveBack system included here. LiveBack is based on body weight, according to the company, but in practice, it really just provides you with low or high resistance when leaning back. I personally found the higher resistance setting to be too great and the lower resistance setting to be too loose. I eventually settled on the low resistance option so the chair didn’t feel like it was fighting me. But I wasn’t able to dial in an exact setting for my weight and sitting habits.
The adjustable lumbar support also seems woefully overpriced for what it is. You’ll have to pay upwards of $50 to have it added to your chair. And while it does work, it really seems like a cushioned fabric strip with plastic structural support. My perception here is probably influenced by the chair’s limited adjustments overall since it’s functional and doesn’t seem particularly weak or prone to breakage. But this is an expensive chair and it’s strange to see it so good in some areas and limited in others.
The overall impression is that while the Karman High Back is comfortable, well-made, and features several unique design elements, the biggest selling point of this chair is that it looks incredible. You are making some clear trades in form over functionality, and if that’s what you value in a luxury seat, more power to you. Given what’s available elsewhere in Steelcase’s line-up and the wider market, I wish there was more here to really make it your own.
