Buying guide

Start with the job, not the brand. The chair has to get through your doorway, survive the way you travel, and match the person who actually moves it — you, a caregiver, or a motor.

Manual, transport, or power

Choose a manual wheelchair if someone can self-propel or a caregiver can push a full-size chair. Choose a transport chair only if someone else will always push and the chair has to be light in a trunk. Choose power if distance, shoulders, or fatigue make pushing unrealistic.

A folding carbon power chair such as a Jazzy Carbon is still a travel chair. It will not do the work of a Permobil or an Amylior with tilt. People get hurt, financially and physically, by buying the travel chair because it was the one that fit in the photo of a car.

Folding or rigid

Folding ultralights — Quickie 2, Ki Catalyst 5, Helio C2, Veloce — close up. Rigid chairs — Nitrum, Aero Z, APEX — usually push more efficiently and come apart. If the chair goes in a car twice a day and the person loading it has pain, a folder is often the honest choice even when a rigid is lighter on paper.

Canadian winters

Small front casters dig into snow and slush. A larger caster, a front-wheel or rear-wheel power base, and a bit of ground clearance matter more in January than a glossy indoor photo. Salt also eats bearings. A travel chair that lives in a trunk is a different maintenance story from a rehab base that is outside every day.

Doorways and transit

Overall width is wider than the seat. A 18 inch seat with camber can miss a 32 inch bathroom door. If the rider stays in the chair in a vehicle, ask for transit tie-downs that are actually tested. Most chairs are not crash-tested just because they have a seatbelt.

Who should measure

For a standard homecare chair, a careful measurement at home is a decent start. For an ultralight or anything with tilt, power seating, or a child in it, a seating clinician should size it. We source the chair. We are not a clinic. The size and fit page is the home method, with that limit written on it.