Customer Reviews

Ergo The Seat Ultimate Bicycle Saddle

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Having had prior experience with nerve injury and having some familiarity with anatomy I do take the danger of cycling inflicted nerve and vascular injury seriously. Often such damage is just compression nerve injury which reverses itself in a matter of days or weeks, but there is also the real possibility of more serious damage to the nerves or local artherosclerosis which does not normally heal by itself. Possible symptoms are tingling, loss of sensation, erectile dysfunction and even urinary continence problems. The risk is probably more serious for men than for women. There is also very little that medicine can do for you in these cases.

Studies show that some of the ergonomic saddles on the market with cut-outs of various designs cases can in some cases actually make the risk of injury greater, but concentrating pressure on a smaller area than conventional saddles. Only noseless saddles like this one can really eliminate the danger by entirely tranferring the weight from the perineum to the buttocks.

I ride regularly and intensively (80-90 minutes a day) in crazy Manhattan. Here are my observations.

1. This saddle is not only safer than conventional saddles, but also more comfortable. I had not realized that my previous saddle was causing me discomfort until I started using this one and found that it was a more pleasant experience.

2. It takes a few weeks to get used to this saddle. At the beginning it felt like somebody kept trying to push me off the bike. After a while it feels perfectly natural.

3. There is a reason that most saddles have a nose. Correcting the alignment of your bike by pushing on the nose from the side with your thighs has a more important role in controlling a bike than most people realize. Without the nose some of the gracefulness and manouverability is gone. I ride a mountain bike and I am often heavily loaded with bags, etc., so I don't exactly swoop through the streets, anyway. On a road bike or natural terrain this might be a forbidding problem, though.

4. Using a noselss saddle considerable weight is transferred from the saddle to the handlebars. This in turn leads to an increased risk of injury to the hands, wrist and arms. I recommend using cycling gloves, preferably the gel type. My feeling is that this sort of injury i smore likely to be noticed early and has a better chance of being reversed than damage to the perineum.

5. Related to the previous point, unless the road surface is very even and I am going straight and at a moderate pace, it does not feel safe to take either hand off the handlebars, which means that I cannot give hand signals in traffic anymore. This is perhaps the most serious problem I have with this saddle. Have to be very careful when changing lanes.

6. I found that the patches at the back are not truly retroreflective, so I taped them over with reflective tape.

Overall, this is a product well worth considering, but unless you buy one and try it out, you won't know whether it is a viable solution given your particular riding style and anatomy.

Hard to believe, but females have parts that are sensitive to bike seat horns too.... So I bought this seat and I love it! No more pressure, no more UTI's. It took me all of 30 seconds to get used to it and I'm having no problems with balance. The only tiny, tiny drawback that I can see is that every so often I have to scootch myself backwards on the seat because I've slid forward a bit. But I was doing that on my old seat even more frequently to try to relieve the pressure from the horn. All in all, a great choice if you want to do without the horn.

Recently I started cycling to get some exercise. However, three weeks into my program saw me rushing to the doctor because of "trauma" to my groin area because of the traditional saddle. My doctor advised me to change the saddle and use padded cycle shorts. I read the reviews on "The Seat" and decided to give it a try. This was definately one of my better buying decisions.

After installing on my bike and taking a ride around the block, the comfort I felt was amazing. It was like moving from an old jalopy to a spanking new Mercedes. No pain; no pain medication needed.

That being said, it took me about 30 minutes to get adjusted to the new feel. It was a bit harder to balance and a little tricky when removing a hand from the handle.

Now that I've taken a few rides around the community, I'm definately sold; there's no going back to an ordinary saddle. The build quality of "THE SEAT' is exceptional as well and does a good job of cushioning the ill effects of bad road surfaces. Forget padded cycle shorts; any normal shorts will do!

"The Seat" does completely eliminate the normal discomfort of the "horn" digging into your rear.

However, after two 90-minute rides, I think I need to get something else. After a while it causes a sharp pain on one side where my bottom makes contact with the seat, so that after about half an hour I can't think about much else. And it really pushes me forward so that I am leaning heavily on my handlebars (which are raised to the maximum height). Padded gloves help, but it's not enough.

Then again, I do have a variety of nerve problems in my body (but none observed before in the place on my rear where I get the pain with The Seat), so for most people it could be fine.

I'm going to try another traditional style seat, with more padding than the skinny/hard one one that came with my bike.

My wife and I have been using this saddle for 10 years on our tandem bikes. We love the fit. However, of the 11 saddles of this type we have had, 4 have broken in the last year. The rails have been breaking at the bend joints without warning. This is a catastrophic failure on long ride and therefore we cannot recommend this seat. I contacted ERGO about the failures and they said that they had only had 2 previous failures in 200,000 seats sold. They offered to replace the broken seats. I sent them the first 3 broken seats and after 6 months and a further complaint, they sent me one back. The fourth seat (only 6 months old) broke a few days later. When I reported that to ERGO, they told me to pound sand.

I am a regular mountain biker (hard-tail, shoe clips, rides on roads and soft trails). For an entire year, I was dealing with terrible pelvic pains, which I had assumed were caused by my "regular" bike seat. So I bought Ergo the Seat, hoping that this would solve the problem. Long story short: my pains turned out to have nothing at all to do with my bike. (The leg press machine at my gym was the major culprit).

Having bought The Seat, I decided to use it anyway, as a preventative measure. It is well constructed, and it certainly takes weight off of your groin area. Earlier, I had tried the Hobson Easyseat, which was exceedingly uncomfortable -- it felt as if I was leaning against a kitchen counter! The Ergo is definitely more comfortable than the Hobson.

Unfortunately, as other reviewers have discussed in depth, you will sustain a huge performance hit with seats such as this. The redistribution of weight will go to your arms, as well as your legs. I suppose the good news is that one can eventually adapt to it, to a point. After a few rides, my arms were definitely becoming used to the added stress. However, the extra strain on the legs will mean that cycling becomes noticeably more strenuous. It is almost equivalent to riding while standing up, except that you don't benefit by using your body weight during peddling, as one would while going up hill. The new strain on my legs and knees was very noticeable with the Ergo.

I eventually reinstalled my old seat, and it felt as if cycling was twice as easy.

For some people's physical issues, Ergo The Seat may mean the difference between cycling and not cycling. In my case, it turned out to not be beneficial for me. That being said, I cannot knock it as a product, because it does exactly what it claims to do. I recommend to be sure that it is going to be a solution for you, before investing in one.

The improvements in this seat are just like the all improvements in in our office environments - fundamentally engineered for comfort and health. I had no trouble adjusting to riding as I had read in previous reviews (I am into comfort biking). My only reservations with it is the overall size is a little small and it could be padded more than it is (I have an average build). I can't wait until competitors pick up on the design and give us more custom features to choose from. Buy one now!

I expect bike seats to last, this one didn't, so I bought the Schwinn version for less money, lets hope the big brand means something.
The part that broke was the part of "the seat" that connects to the seat post. The cushion was still in great condition, which makes me feel like "the seat" was a waste of money since I've got a perfectly good "seat" with no way to connect it to the seat post.

This seat is a big improvement over my old seat which was oversized with a Gel filled cover. I had no trouble getting used to this new seat. It was an immediately rewarding experience. I did not suffer any discomfort similar to what I did on previous bicycle seats.

One thing of note is that this seat is fairly small, smaller than I imagined. Despite its size it is much more comfortable than a standard seat design twice the size.

Another note is that I am using this seat on a stationary bicycle and that I am about of fairly average build and height - 170/6' 2". My wife who is a good bit more petite has also noted how much more comfortable this seat is than a standard seat.

I use my bicycle as an indoor training bike and was experiencing a lot of pain with the usual bike seat even with the gel pad over it. This seat though is AMAZING. It is really comfy and there is no pain at all. Now I can bike while watching tv for as long as I want. I did read some other reviews how this seat may be a bit tricky to use if you were actually biking outside though b/c the horn helps you balance and since this seat doesn't have a horn, it just takes some getting use to. Bottomline though - I would highly recommend this seat. Also just an FYI, you need an Allen wrench to put this on so go get one if you don't have one already.