I visited Las Vegas from January 5-7 this month to meet with a bunch of the companies who supply the massage chairs we sell. I had the chance to meet with Inada, Infinity, Luraco, Human Touch, and uKnead. It was a great visit and I got some good video footage of some new models. The video is below, but here are the highlights for your perusal:

1. Inada has a new model coming out in April called the Inada Nest. It will be priced at $5999 and has some pretty cool features that we’ve not seen before in a massage chair. First of all, the rollers are “pumpkin” shaped in that there are ridges on the massage rollers. It makes for a somewhat different massage experience, particularly in the top of the shoulders area. I really felt those rollers hit my levator scapulae muscles (tight muscles at the top of your shoulder blades).Secondly, the Inada Nest has quad rollers, each side of which are independent of each other. In other words, the left and right rollers work independently of each other as the rollers go up and down the spine. In my mind’s eye, the practical application of this would be for spines that have muscles imbalances from right to left, i.e. scoliosis perhaps. The rollers would address the hypertonicity of each side as differently as the muscle tightness might be from side to side. Pretty cool, actually.
2. Luraco introduced it’s new 3D L-track chair, the Luraco Legend. This chair won’t be available until the 3rd or 4th quarter of this year, but it will be the first non-Chinese made L-track chair, which is interesting. It will be priced at $6499. Some of it’s features include a 58″ roller track, which actually massaged the belly of my hamstrings (I’ve never had an L-track reach that low down my thigh), 3D rollers that have separate intensity adjustments for different areas of your spine (in other words, you can make the neck massage stronger than that of the low back and/or buttock area), foot rollers, and can handle taller bodies as well as shorter bodies just like the iRobotics 7 does.
3. Human Touch introduced their Novo XT around the beginning of the holiday season in 2016, but they never had inventory until the end of December. Now, they are out and about and there were some on display at CES. We actually have a floor model in each of our showrooms. Great chair. It is a 3D L-track chair that can handle taller bodies and has a very easy remote control to use, plus a lot of automatic programs to play with. It has foot rollers and Bluetooth, as well as a space saving feature. You can check out the chair already on our website.
4. uKnead is introducing a new model, called the Lohas, to their line up. At this point, we only carry their L-track Lavita, which has been a pretty steady seller. The Lohas will also be an L-track, but has a sleeker body design. It also includes calf rollers, foot rollers, calf airbags that can flip up and massage the knees, quick access keys on the right armrest to control the positioning of the chair without having to fiddle with the remote control, Bluetooth connectivity, and a space saving feature. It will be priced at approximately $3895 and it will not be available until April.

Here is the video of my visit to CES with some conversations with the company folks talking about their new chairs…

I hope you found this interesting and helpful!

Dr. Alan Weidner

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