<p>The mechanical properties of chondrocytes are closely related to the onset and progression of osteoarthritis; however, current research on the mechanical behavior of chondrocytes undergoing large deformations is insufficient. In this work, via micropipette aspiration (MPA) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) experiments on chondrocytes, finite element simulations combined with numerical optimization were conducted to obtain the mechanical parameters of three viscohyperelastic models (neo-Hookean (NH), Mooney-Rivlin (MR), and Arruda-Boyce (AB)). The results showed that for the elastic responses of chondrocytes, all three models can capture the mechanical behaviors of cells with good accuracy for both the MPA and AFM experiments, among which the AB model had the best fit. In terms of the viscoelastic behavior of chondrocytes, the single-term Prony series of the three models can describe the creep response of the MPA experiment well, whereas for the pressure relaxation behavior of the AFM experiment, the fitting degree of the single-term Prony series of the three models was low. However, the prediction ability can be significantly improved by using the two-term Prony series, for both the MPA and the AFM experiments, the AB model still yielded the best prediction of viscoelastic responses. Thus, compared with the NH and MR models, the AB model is more suitable for characterizing the elastic and viscoelastic mechanical responses of chondrocytes undergoing large deformations. This study provides an alternative methodology for investigating the large deformation mechanical properties of chondrocytes, which may help to further study and reveal the mechanotransduction mechanisms of chondrocytes.</p>