Karman S-ERGO 305 Lightweight Ergonomic Wheelchair S-ERGO305Q16RS, 29 lbs., Quick Release Wheels, Frame Rose Red, Seat Size 16"W X 17"D, Factory Adjustable Seat Height (Default 19" Floor To Seat)

I have been using a lightweight wheelchair for more than thirty years due to a spinal cord injury. I am active, drive two vehicles and work full time, so my wheelchair gets a lot of use and I consider myself a well-informed wheelchair user. I also have a mechanical engineering background. I have had Quickie 2 (Sunrise Medical) wheelchairs for the thirty + years in a wheelchair, so I wanted to try a different brand, one that my insurance carrier’s approved supplier does not stock.This wheelchair is well built and has some very innovative features, but it is not for everyone who uses a wheelchair every day. The price is more than fair considering other comparable lightweight wheelchairs. However, in my opinion, the cons outweigh the pros. It is more than adequate for pushing grandma or grandpa around the house or the mall, but if you need a wheelchair for everyday use and abuse that is fully adjustable, this wheelchair may not be for you.Pros:Lightweight and easy to maneuver. Rear wheels are feather-light and have flat-free solid tires and will also accommodate 24” x 1” pneumatic tires that are available at most durable medical supply stores. Solid tires are OK, but they do wear and have to be replaced and the replacement is difficult. Wheels that can use 24” x 1 3/8” tires are available (Spox Spinergy), but they are expensive. Shop online for the plastic mag-style wheel that uses a pneumatic tire. They will fit this wheelchair. Just be cognizant of the axle size, hub width, wheel diameter and quick release feature. They will also raise the height of the wheelchair about 1 ½” and may narrow the sitting area.There are plastic caps cover caster nut axles to prevent damaging baseboards, furniture, etc.Brakes work well and are sturdy. They put some thought here. Brakes have a torsion spring to keep the pawl away from the wheel when they are not in use. This makes removing and installing the rear wheels easier because the brakes stay away from the wheel. I have a classic car where I have to disassemble the wheelchair in order to get the wheelchair into the back seat. With my old wheelchair, a Quickie 2, the brakes would sometimes interfere with the wheel install. No issue with this wheelchair. The spring keeps the brake away. Time will tell if they stand up to the many times one locks and unlocks the wheels.Fold down back support is handy. This allows the wheelchair to be stored in a smaller space such as a trunk of a compact car. When folded downward, it also does not block your rear view if you put the wheelchair into the back seat of a car.Footrests swing inward and outward. As advertised, they swing both ways and are easy to operate. They are also removable.Cons:No back height adjustment:This is important if you use a wheelchair due to a spinal cord injury. The back height usually is the same level of your injury. In my case, I am a T-5, so the back height would be about 14” above the seat cushion. This wheelchair back is too high for me so I took the liberty of making it lower. Can’t tell you how, the folks at Karman may read this.Poor instructions:The owner’s manual that came with the wheelchair is useless. It only covers safety features, warnings and means of operation, not much regarding the adjustments of the wheelchair itself. Look further down and I have provided instructions how to lower the wheelchair height which was the biggest headache.Uninformed customer service:They do not know their own product. I had problems removing the nuts that secure the rear wheel axle so I could lower the chair. I spoke to their ‘technical’ department representative and they told me to use a vice grip and a wrench to loosen the nuts. Since I have worked on classic cars most of my adult life, this was a ‘duh huh’. The method in which to loosen those axle nuts are outlined below.Not made in the USA:Although company headquarters are in City of Industry, California, wheelchair is made in Taiwan or Thailand. My wheelchair is made in Thailand. All fasteners are not SAE (US) and are metric but bearing sizes are SAE (US). A mixture of metric and SAE sizes.Manufacturer does not stock replacement parts: I spoke to Karman’s Customer Service and inquired about replacement parts. The replacement parts that are subject to wear and breakage are only stocked in Taiwan and not available in the US. Wheelchairs break and the brakes, rear wheel supports, front supports and other parts are all subject to unintended abuse and will break. You are out of luck if you need to replace any of the parts associated with these assemblies. They do stock plenty of accessories at industry comparable prices.Lots of plastic parts:Unless it is carbon fiber, metal is always stronger than plastic. The only plastic parts that raises concern are the rear wheel supports and the front frame supports above the casters. They are plastic. They look beefy, but I would prefer they were made from an aircraft grade aluminum alloy.Front casters:If you lower the wheelchair, you cannot use the 7” casters that come with the wheelchair. They will no longer fit. Diameter will be too large. Prepare to spend up to $80.00 for a new set of five or six inch casters.No strap to pull up on to fold the wheelchair.Folding the wheelchair when you are sitting in the driver’s seat of a car or van can be awkward. Most wheelchairs, at least my Quickie 2, has a strap across the seat where you grasp and pull upwards to fold the wheelchair. No such thing with this wheelchair. I added my own.Instructions - Wheelchair height adjustment:Removing the nuts that secure the rear wheel axles was a headache since I had no instructions and Karman customer service did not have a clue. The nut that is inside the frame is actually two separate parts. The knurled piece is a jam nut, a nut that is tightened against the hex nut that secures the axle. Hold the outer nut (outer side of the axle) with a vice grip or 20 millimeter open end wrench (a vice grip worked best for me). This nut is not a hex nut. It only has two flats where you can hold it into place. Put a piece of duct tape around the knurled nut and grip with a pliers or channel lock. Lefty-loosey / righty-tighty. Remove the knurled nut (it is slightly undersized, so it will take some force) and put aside. Then, with a 24 millimeter (a 15/16” wrench will fit securely also) box-end wrench or deep socket wrench, remove the hex nut which is also a little tight. Best to spray the nuts and axle with a little WD-40 which will reduce friction. Don’t forget to reinstall the flat and lock washers that were behind the hex and two-flat nut of the axle. It is a very fine thread, so use caution when reinstalling the nut being careful not to cross-thread it.Caster axle removal is much easier. The plastic caps that cover the hex head and nut just pop off. Removal is standard procedure. As I stated before, if you lower the wheelchair height, you will not be able to use the 7” casters that come with the wheelchair. Plastic caps just snap back on.Footrest adjustment is easy also. Just removal of the bolts and relocating them, moving the footrest support to your desired height and then re-installing the bolts and nuts that secure the footrest supports.Hope this helps you decide if this wheelchair is for you. I’ll revisit this in a year and update my review and let you know how the wheelchair stands up to a year’s worth of everyday use.

I'll start by saying what I like about this chair. It is well-built and lightweight. My previous chair was heavy and uncomfortable, hurting my back.This chair relieves that strain and is lighter, which makes transporting easier.It has some very well thought out touches, such as rear step-levers that make it easy for someone pushing you to assist you up a step or ledge. It has adjustable armrest height. And additionally the entire armrest can also flip-up and out of the way which has come in very handy in some situations.The cushions are anti-bacterial as well, and the entire chair is very well designed.NOW HERE IS THE MAIN ISSUE:This chair is *very* difficult to find replacement parts for! This may not seem like a big thing at first, but as you use the chair over time, the armrests will wear, and things will become loose and wear down with time, and you will want / need to have them replaced. This is when you will discover as I have, that there is no real place to buy any replacement parts for this chair. I have been to Karman Healthcare's website. They show you all the parts, and there is indeed a "shopping cart" at the top-right, however you will find that there is no way to actually add any of those parts to your cart!I have contacted them twice via the e-mail link (their contact form doesn't actually work!) and after two and a half-weeks received a response telling me to contact them to order! What was I doing before? Day-dreaming?!I also visited all of their reseller sites (of which Amazon is one) They sell the chairs, but not the parts, To me it seems like overkill to have to buy another complete chair just for the parts. In-fact the only place I have found to buy some (not all) of the replacement parts is eBay, and the prices are absurd!So in closing, I like the chair itself, but when things need to be replaced, it becomes a real pain indeed. Keep that in mind.

I am recovering from brain surgery that left me with diminished right motor cortex capacity. I bought this chair as an around-the-house device when no one else is around and I feel unsafe using a walker. I hope and expect to not need it at all in the future, so I didn't want to foot the bill for a carbon fiber chair. I find it to be well engineered and well constructed from appropriate materials -- it's not built like a $6K bicycle, but there is plenty of value for the money here.The various releases and controls are easy to use -- much more so than those on a run-of-the-mill steel chair.I would prefer more machined metal-on-metal mechanisms rather than diecast plastic, but I wouldn't expect these at this price point. I find the heel straps unnecessary and more trouble than a simple heel stop, but they have the advantage of great adjustability. The brakes are satisfyingly effective, but I do worry about fragility of the handles when they are in the folded-back position.There are a few things that are different from the description/pictures on the Amazon product page. The chair is silver, not red, and thus matches the description, not the pictures. The chair did t come with the ergonomic hand rims described in the "from the manufacturer" part of the product page, but rather with simple toric handrims. The hand rims are not gray as in the pictures, but are instead clear-anodized. One description says the arms are fixed, but they do indeed flip up. Of all those things, the only one that's at all important to me is the ergonomic hand rims.Good job, Karman.

I purchased this chair for my son, but within a month the armrests had started to break. He uses the armrests to get all the way to the back, and this chair's armrests couldn't take that. He is not at all heavy, so that tells me they are not of a very good quality. He has always done this with his previous chairs, and they either never broke, or they lasted a good long time. The whole chair seems a bit flimsy. On the positive side, it is comfortable to him.