Massage Chair Shopping Guide and Helpful Hints

INADA Versus Other Massage Chair Brands

INADA massage chairs stand out when compared to all the other major massage chair brands in the market. Because of this, we encourage you to learn as much as you can about massage chairs.

Educated consumers will recognize the superiority of INADA massage chairs to all other available brands. This is not to say that there aren’t other good massage chair brands available to U.S. consumers. Some examples of other good manufacturer brands include the following:

Panasonic Massage Chairs

Fuji Massage Chairs

Fujiiryoki Massage Chairs

The quality massage chair market is dominated by Japanese owned and operated manufacturers. This is not surprising as Japan is the single most competitive massage chair market in the world. Amazingly, over 22% of Japanese households own a robotic massage chair! Over the years, fierce competition in Japan has pushed the sophistication and reliability of Japanese massage chair brands to where they are today and well beyond what non-Japanese makers are able to produce. In general, any consumer seriously interested in quality should focus their attention on Japanese brands.

Other companies are all relative newcomers to the world of massage chairs and usually trail the Japanese leaders by many years in innovation. Often, these companies also deliver far less in reliability and overall massage performance. Worldwide, the leader in the luxury market is INADA. The company has held this dominant position for many years, and it was cemented in 2000 with the introduction of the INADA Chair i-series. This model line was a huge success in Japan, and it became INADA's #1 selling luxury massage chair of all time. And it continues to sell extremely well in Japan and the rest of the world. Since 2000, the INADA Chair i.1 has been improved and re-introduced as the INADA Chair i.a-Alpha and the INADA Chair i.2a. Both are available today in North America.

As you shop around, you will note that established massage chair dealers that are interested in quality focus their selection on the Japanese brands. Usually this is the result of experiments with lesser quality brand. To date, those who know the massage chair business tend to agree that these non-Japanese companies simply don't measure up to the Japanese manufacturing standards or massage quality.

There are other popular brands in the U.S. Most offer value-priced chairs. There are countless non-branded massage chairs that you can find at tradeshows and in stores which should be shunned as the consumer is at great risk of purchasing a highly unreliable product.

Examples of popular massage chair brands include the following:

Interactive Health  –  U.S.*

Human Touch Massage Chair (from Interactive Health)

iJoy Massage Chairs (a budget line from Interactive Health)

Omega Massage Chairs - China

Massage Genius Massage Chair – Taiwan

King Kong Massage Chair - Taiwan

* Interactive Health imports and purchases its massage chairs from Daito-Osim Health Care Appliances (Suzhou) Co., Ltd. in China. Human Touch is a registered trademark of Interactive Health.

Other common names that massage chairs go by include Massage Loungers or Zero Gravity Massage Chairs. These names suggest little about what the massage chair does and consumers should understand that all these names describe the “massage chair” category of products. All INADA massage chairs are also massage loungers and zero gravity massage chairs.

Coverings - Leather versus Synthetic Leather

Leather, synthetic leather, and vinyl are the coverings offered in most massage chairs.

In quality massage chairs, leather is seldom used. This is because leather is the hardest material to maintain and simply does not hold up with repeated use.

Synthetic leather holds up to the wear and tear of moving massage components, and it is VERY difficult to discern from real leather to other than the well-trained eye. INADA uses synthetic leather in all of its production models, and most people - even furniture experts - are fooled into believing that INADA uses genuine leather.

Massage Chair Makes and Models

We’re so confident of the value and performance of INADA massage chairs that we invite you to try the competition and judge for yourself. To get you started, we’ve provided a list of some of the more popular massage chair options in the list below. These are the most common names that you will encounter in the U.S. market, and showrooms that feature one or more of these models should be relatively easy to find.

Panasonic Swede-Atsu Wave Massage Lounger EP1272.

Panasonic Real Pro Elite™ Massage Lounger EP3222

Panasonic EP3202 Massage Chair

Panasonic Shiatsu Massage Recliner Chair

Panasonic Real Pro Shiatsu Massage Lounger

Panasonic 10611K Swede Atsu Technology Massage Lounger

Panasonic 790K Shiatsu Massage Lounger

Panasonic EP790 Electric Reclining Massage Lounger

Interactive Health Get-A-Way Elite RMS 10 (Discontinued)

Interactive Health iJoy Massage Chair

Interactive Health HT 110 Robotic Massage Chair

Get A Way Robotic Massage Chair RMS-15

iJoy 130 Massage Chair

iJoy 100 Massage chair

iJoy Massage Chair - iJoy 130

Human Touch HT-125 Massage Chair

Human Touch HT-135 Massage Chair

The following table compares features of five different premium priced chairs: