Although it might be a hard one to get hold of in Australia at the moment, it’s well worthy of your consideration.
Pros
- Weight
- Comfort and fit
Cons
- Heavier than competition
- Availibility
About the Manufacturer
Another relatively small brand branching out of its traditional area of expertise, the Italian brand Scicon are well known in the cycling world for their high quality bike bags and bike luggage. Recently the brand has started branching out into other accessories including glasses, clothing and saddles. You’ll even find their glasses on the Israel Start Up Nation and NTT pro teams.
Review
Scicon seemed to come out of left field when they announced their intention to expand into cycling clothing and components – on the face of it, high quality bike bags don’t seem to have much to do with chamois and UV protection for your eyes. However, Scicon’s parent company ASG have a lot to do with these, providing pro bike teams and manufacturers with a wide range of fitting and materials consulting and development – including wind tunnel testing and clothing. In then makes sense that they would extend this expertise into a more consumer orientated brand.
For their first saddle, Scicon have targeted the zeitgeist going for a performance orientated, short nosed saddle. The brand claims that the Elan is a mix between comfort and performance and on first inspection the shape and the material are certainly leaning towards that, with a short 240mm length and cut out, but a curve to the rear and padding that almost seem like they belong on another saddle. For a first stab at a saddle the finish is superb with understated graphics on the outer a well finished composite shells on nylon rails. The Elan also sits at the heavier end for saddle in this category with our test piece weighing 207g – but we will point out it’s a fair bit cheaper than a lot of its direct rivals and is pretty competitive for a saddle with this much padding.
We tested the Elan on both road and gravel bikes for 8 weeks across tarmac and trail racking up about 1000km. First up, for a saddle that is performance orientated it’s sure comfortable. The padding is a big aid to that, but the hull also has a decent amount of flex in it giving all day comfort on tarmac but also for some decent hours off road too if you’re sitting back on the cushy end. The Elan is plenty of supportive if you want to give it some thrashing however and we found the dimensions and short nose perfectly suited to sprints and aggressive group rides.
Although it might be a hard one to get hold of in Australia at the moment, it’s well worthy of your consideration.
Key Specifications
- Width: 144mm
- Weight: 207g
- Material: Carbon fibre, synthetic upper