WHICH is BETTER? (Kinekt vs Redshift Sports Suspension Seatpost Shootout)

in today's video we're gonna get super supple and look at not one but two suspension seatpost which one is for you which one should you buy what do I think about them welcome back pathos peddlers and if you're new to the channel if you love your bike but don't race the supple life you have found your people hit that subscribe button I'm gonna preface this by saying that the whole idea of suspension seatpost did not get me excited at first I've been kind of sitting on these reviews for quite some time pardon the pun but I will say after having tried both the seat posts in varying terrain especially off of the city streets here in Tucson they're making me a believer so in this video we're going to talk about two of them they're both very similar but also kind of different and unique if you ride them back-to-back and I'll give you my impressions of each and try to give you guys information so you can figure out if one of these is right for you full disclosure both these seat posts were sent to me to review and for me the purpose of this review is not to sell you the seat posts but to describe them as accurately as possible so if you are interested in one of these you can make the right decision so I'm gonna take a look at the kinetic seat posts first so the kinetic seat posts previously called Cirrus or body float and I quite sure the history of the the name of the brand but now known as kinetic this uses a two spring system right up here right below where the saddle attaches to the seat post itself it weighs in at about 577 grams so if your weight we need both these seat posts are gonna give you pause when you purchase the seat post it's generally set up for different weight ranges you can get different Springs for this I believe they have Springs that will suspend a rider up to 300 pounds what they I really love about the seat post in particular is the way you control the suspension there's a little control knob here that you can tighten or loosen and there's a scale here so you can always set it to your preferred setting and this allows you to make it softer or firmer I tend to set mine a little bit on the further side just because I'm not a fan of a pedal Bob and you can do that on the fly right here one thing to note about the seat post is all the suspending elements are up here not down here at the bottom this is just empty so if you do want to save some weight you could cut this down a little bit so contrast this e post with this one by redshift sports this seat post when using a single spring weighs in at about 544 grams so a little bit lighter than this guy but if you add the second spring in here to kind of firm it up it does bring the weight up to about 567 grams so these are actually way a little bit closer than you would think so what's interesting about this is all the suspension Springs are actually inside the seat post itself it ships with one mainspring but you can add a smaller auxilary spring if you're a heavier rider or want to firm it up similar to the kinetic it's got this kind of parallelogram design here that moves up and down and with the redshift it has this little what they're calling kind of a fender of sorts that's magnetic and this helps protect these moving parts up here from Road gren to adjust the spring tension on the redshift you actually have to remove the seat post and set it from down here there's a scale here and you just sit by turning this bottom cap this compresses the springs and there is a little scale here for repeatability it does come with a sheet of paper with a little graph which has the suggested spring settings for rider wait for me at about 180 pounds I use both both Springs in dialed it in a little bit on the firmer side and one thing to note is that since the spring mechanism is in the bottom of the seat post you can't cut this down to save some weight so ultimately if you're a weight weenie and are wondering which one is lighter they're about the same this one could be potentially lighter because you could cut off some of the seat posts but ultimately a wash in the weight department so I've been riding with both the seat posts over the last month and a half on my first fret actually brought both of them out and would swap the mid ride to get a sense of how they use their suspension I tried my best to set them at a similar firmness I tried to make them both on the firm side so I wasn't getting any pedal bob on flat ground so ultimately this is what I found the kinetic seat post had the tendency to use most of its travel right away and then stiffen up at the end where red chef's seatpost tended to ease into most of its travel so what I found for me in terms of which is better for what terrain actually preferred the kinetic sea posts for a really rough terrain where you're going over baby heads maybe some slightly technical single track something where you want to take off a lot of the big hits whereas with the red shift I felt like it was better tuned or more tunable to the kind of small bumps that you would hit on a gravel road overall the sensation was pretty similar with both by alternating on the same trail on the same ride back to back I was able to discern a little bit of a difference so in my mind if you're riding you know rockier terrain maybe want to add some rear squish to a hardtail then something like the kinetic seatpost would be the better choice if however you're writing mostly gravel roads and aren't going to be soaking up big hits but just want some kind of general more subtle suspension over the length of your ride and something like the red shift seat posts would do better a couple of other nuances I found although the red shift seat post was a little bit more of a pain in the butt no pun intended to adjust the suspension because you did have to pull the seat post out when you did make the suspension changes it didn't really alter kind of the angle of the saddle or anything and whereas for the kinetic although I appreciated this kind of external control knob I found that when you adjust the tension it does alter kind of the pitch of the saddle assess stating some kind of saddle changes so though this is easier to adjust the suspension I did find that you had to kind of compensate the saddle position the bit whereas this one not as easy to adjust the suspension but didn't alter the picture angle or anything of the saddle so what are the pros and cons of using these suspension seat posts I found that actually one big pro was doing steep gravel climbs where you had to stay seated otherwise we would break that rear traction but often times you would get bumped off by a big rock or both also awesome on rocky the sense as you would expect on flatter non-technical terrain to prefer the redshift just because it wasn't as Bobby as the kinetic seacoast in terms of cons you know weight is a big one if you're running some kind of bike packing saddlebag these may interfere if you have lot if you have very little clearance between your bag and your front tire when these go through their suspension it's going it's going to rub your bag on your tire overall I was pleasantly surprised by both the seat posts I didn't really think of myself as the suspension seatpost type you know tending to like the simplicity of getting that suppleness have the tire but after testing both of these out they've kind of actually won me over I can see they're useful if you're doing an event or in or ride places where it's really rocky with lots of steep kind of technical climbs or if you're a heavier Rider let's say over you know two hundred pounds two hundred fifty pounds and it's unsafe to run your tires up low pressures to get this that suspension this allows you to gain some of that suppleness even though you're running your tires at a higher tire pressure so that's what I think about these two suspension seatpost whether you guys think let me know in the comments below do any of you guys run suspension seatpost yourselves would love to know your long-term experiences if you want more accessory reviews be sure to check out this playlist and as always keep the supple side down

Channel: Path Less Pedaled

Views: 254,539

Keywords: bicycle touring, bikepacking, bicycle, travel, tourism, ride, adventure cycling, pathlesspedaled, the path less pedaled, bike touring, bikepacking gear, bike gearing, roadslikethese

Id: M8yf7SGJyFs

Length: 8min 3sec (483 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 28 2020