Sarah is a freelance writer with a focus on health and wellness. She has written for publications like Women's Health, Healthline, and Parents. She taught creative writing for five years, and has a bachelor's degree in English from Southern Connecticut State University.

Oluseun Olufade, MD, is a board-certified orthopedist. He teaches as an Assistant Professor of Orthopedics at Emory School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Comfortable, lightweight, and barely noticeable

Can be worn under any type of clothing

Gentle vibration makes it impossible to neglect your posture

See your posture progress over time with the app’s tracking data

Device usage is 100 percent dependent on the Upright GO app

Basic use of the device isn’t intuitive

The Upright GO Posture Corrector is the perfect way to improve your posture if the idea of wearing a brace doesn’t appeal or won’t work with your lifestyle. It’s simple, discreet, and can be put on in a matter of seconds regardless of what you’re wearing. But this highly technology-based method of correcting your posture comes with some drawbacks, namely that you will always need the app nearby when using it and will need to remember to charge it frequently.

We purchased the Upright GO S Posture Trainer so our reviewer could test and assess it. Keep reading for our full product review.

Whether you’ve been working from home for the past year and a half or not, anyone with an office job—or one that requires frequent sitting—knows the posture struggle well: what’s comfortable in the moment doesn’t always feel great later (hello, aching back at midnight), but perfect posture is both hard to maintain and hard to get used to. 

If you’ve ever complained that your neck or back hurt after a day at the office, something about your environment is probably off-kilter. Checking the ergonomics of your workstation is a good place to start, but all the ergonomics in the world won’t help you if you’re still slouching and slumping in your perfectly-calibrated desk chair. This was definitely true for me; the more I worked from my home office, the more pain and stiffness I had when I was finished. 

For so many of us, poor posture is a bad habit that we don’t even realize we’ve adopted, leaving us in the dark about how to fix it. A posture corrector is a great way to both identify any posture problems as well as correct them over time—this slow-and-steady approach makes correcting your posture totally painless, gradually training your back and neck muscles to hold up your body in more ergonomically-friendly ways.

As someone who has always worked from home, I was interested in what the Upright GO had to offer. Could it really help me sit up straighter, and would that make me feel better at my desk? Here’s what I found.

There’s really no assembly or setup of the actual device here; it comes with one adhesive applied to the device, ready to be used. The real setup is downloading the app to your smartphone or tablet, creating a profile, and customizing your settings and training goals.

One thing I was initially frustrated by was the device charging—it doesn’t come charged, but the instructions don’t indicate that. It wasn’t until I downloaded the app, hoping I could get started right away, that I realized I would have to charge the device before I could try it out. A full charge can take two to three hours, so I had to set the device aside and get started the following day instead.

“The real setup is downloading the app to your smartphone or tablet, creating a profile, and customizing your settings and training goals.”

Otherwise, app setup was fairly straightforward: I input my age, sex, weight, and height, confirmed how many minutes of training per day I wanted to achieve (the app recommends starting out with 8 minutes per day at first), and adjusted some notification settings, like alerts for completing my daily training and vibration style and strength.

The Upright GO comes with a soft storage case, a USB charging cable, extra reusable adhesives, and a few other useful items, like an adhesive removal tool (which is the size and shape of a guitar pick) and alcohol cleaning wipes. 

The reusable adhesives seem to work quite well; even when they felt slightly less sticky to the touch, I still didn’t have any trouble getting them to stay put on my skin. (Of course, this could be pretty variable between users, depending on your skin or how often you move around during the day.) I didn’t really need the tool to remove the adhesives when it was time to apply a new one, but it worked just fine as well.

“I would have preferred a slightly larger case that I could have put all the GO accessories into at once.”

While the storage case is useful in terms of portability—it’s a small square about 2.5 inches wide—I would have preferred a slightly larger case that I could have put all the GO accessories into at once. As it is, you can only put the GO device itself and a couple extra adhesives inside; it would be nice to keep everything, including the USB cable, all in one place.

Compared to putting on a back brace, adjusting the straps for a secure-but-comfortable fit, and fidgeting with the placement so it doesn’t chafe or interfere with your clothing, the Upright GO device couldn’t be any easier to get on: you peel off the protective plastic on the adhesive, place it in a vertical position anywhere in the center of your back (literally wherever you can reach with one hand), and press down until it’s stuck. It doesn’t matter whether the power button is on the top or bottom because the GO tracks your posture either way.

The device turns on with one short press of the power button and off with a longer press. You can also switch from training to tracking mode and recalibrate your posture position with the power button. Simple LED light indicators make it easy to know what your GO is doing; green means ready to use, blue means connecting to the app, and red means low battery or charging. 

Removing the device when you’re finished is quick and painless; even though it stayed on my skin without any trouble, it wasn’t difficult or uncomfortable to simply peel it off after use.

I’ve tried wearing back braces and posture correctors before, and I’ve never been a fan. I have sensitive skin, so traditional posture correctors always left red marks and chafing after hours of use. I also found it was hard to get a good fit that stayed in place comfortably.

“It’s literally a posture corrector that you can put on and forget about—in fact, I did forget it was there most days.”

All of these problems are solved with the Upright GO: there’s no adjusting, no chafing, no wondering how much longer until you can take it off. It’s literally a posture corrector that you can put on and forget about—in fact, I did forget it was there most days, a feature I really appreciated (and which certainly increases the likelihood that I would wear it enough to actually reap some posture-correcting benefits).

It takes about two to three hours to charge the GO, which isn’t bad if you remember to do it—but a long time if you forget and are hoping to charge it quickly without losing a lot of training time. 

Once the battery is fully charged, Upright GO says the device can last through 20 hours of use. If you’re using it to track your posture during a typical eight-hour work day, that means you’ll have to recharge about halfway through your work week (or, if you don’t want to interrupt use, charge it after every two days instead).

Since the GO doesn’t give you any information on the actual device (it’s not like a fitness tracker or smart watch, in other words), you will be entirely dependent on the Upright GO app when it comes to setting your posture, completing your training goals, and tracking your posture over the course of your day.

This is both a good thing and a bad thing: while it was helpful to be able to see my progress and customize my GO, there were times when I wanted to just put the GO on to correct my posture but couldn’t because I didn’t have my iPad handy (it was charging, or I was in another room and couldn’t initiate a training session). This is the one area where an electronic posture corrector falls short of a physical brace that can go wherever you need it to and can be put on at any time.

“While it was helpful to be able to see my progress and customize my GO, there were times when I wanted to just put the GO on to correct my posture but couldn’t because I didn’t have my iPad handy.”

I also didn’t find the app to be super intuitive at first and there aren’t many instructions for use. I consider myself pretty tech-savvy so I figured it out with some practice, but anyone who struggles with app-based devices might not appreciate that this device can only be used with its app. 

There are two particularly useful tabs which every user should get comfortable with: Stats and Settings. The Stats tab allows you to see multiple data points for any given day, including:

You can also customize several settings for your GO in the Settings tab, including:

Lastly, the app allows you to check the battery level of your GO, turn off your device remotely, and even order new reusable adhesives (a pack of 10 from the Upright GO store is $9.95, and can be delivered in 2 to 3 days with free shipping).

How well the GO works for you or not will depend, in large part, on your willingness to learn its quirks and remember to actually put it on. If you can master those hurdles, I can’t see how it wouldn’t help you in the long-term; it’s a simple but effective reminder to check in with your body positioning throughout the day, look for patterns in your posture, and adjust your environment.

“After just a few days, I was able to check my posture even without the device, knowing what would constitute slouching simply based on how I was positioned in my chair.”

In this way, I found the GO to be hugely effective: noticing that I was having a hard time maintaining good posture in my old office chair, I swapped it out for one that made sitting up easier and more comfortable. And once I had found a comfortable but posture-friendly position, I could enter into training mode to practice maintaining it.

After just a few days, I was able to check my posture at my desk without the device, knowing what would constitute slouching simply based on how I was positioned in my chair. It became less difficult to maintain a straighter posture and I was less uncomfortable after long bouts in my desk chair. 

Officially, Upright GO says it can start improving your posture within the first two weeks, and that seems reasonable to me; with prolonged use, I feel confident that I would be both more familiar and more comfortable with a healthier, stronger posture in other scenarios as well.

When it comes to putting on your Upright GO and, well, going about your day, the comfort of this tiny device can’t be beat: it sticks discreetly to your back and doesn’t interfere with any of your clothing, the adhesive last for multiple uses, and clear-but-gentle vibration lets you know when your posture needs adjusting.

With the device’s physical ease of use, though, comes some technological difficulties. It needs to be used alongside the Upright GO app, which is not the most intuitive program we’ve encountered; a lot of settings need to be customized to get your GO working the way you need it to, and by the time you really get the hang of it, you’ll probably need to recharge your GO and start all over again tomorrow. If you’re tech-savvy, you should be able to catch on and finesse your use of the Upright GO Posture Corrector pretty quickly, but everyone else might find the device’s dependency on tech a bit frustrating.

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