Hope Carbon Seatpost

One of the easiest things you can do if you fancy a cheeky little upgrade is to buy a new seatpost, and if you really want to treat yourself then this Hope Carbon edition is one to go for. It looks stunning, weighs next to nothing and has one of the simplest seatclamp designs for the user going. It's a beauty.

• Pros: Excellent seatclamp design, easily adjustable, amazing quality
• Cons: You can go carbon for a lot less

Hope is very proud of the fact that it designs, tests and manufactures in-house here in England, and when it delivers stuff like this seatpost it's easy to understand why.

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First of all, I found the installation and adjustment of the saddle very simple. Rather than bond a clamp into the top of the carbon fibre tube Hope has created an assembly that passes through the post. (If you're interested, you'll find this drawing on Hope's website of the assembly.)

It's a selection of beautifully CNC machined aluminium alloy mounting plates which have near-infinite adjustment for saddle angle.

You don't need to remove any part of the assembly to get the saddle in place, all you do is loosen the bolt that passes through the centre, line up the rails and tighten. There are a selection of adapters to fit non-round saddle rails too.

The Hope weighs 197g for this 27.2 x 350mm post, which is pretty good but certainly not the lightest we've seen. Hope has gone for durability and strength, claiming that the Carbon post can be used for road riding plus cross-country and even downhill mountain biking.

It's achieved this by using T700 for the post, which has one of the highest tensile strengths for what are known as 'standard modulus' carbon fibres.

The shape also helps, as the inside of the post isn't round; the wall thickness of the rear section is thicker than the rest of the post.

Hope also uses various layups of carbon fibre on the outer diameter to resist pressure from the seat clamp and to give the neat finish.

For height adjustment you get clear markings on the rear of the post in 10mm increments. Going by the minimum insertion line there is a good 270mm of length to the saddle rails.

This is the only length option in a 27.2mm diameter, but you can get a 400mm post in either 30.9mm or 31.6mm diameters.

All of this adds up to a very well designed and engineered product, which is why you are paying more for it than others on the market. For most road applications it is probably over-engineered, but with the quality you know that longterm durability shouldn't be an issue.

> How to set your saddle height

The recently reviewed Reilly Cycleworks Vector seatpost is lighter than the Hope by 36g and a lot cheaper at £89.99, so as I said up top, you can go carbon for a lot cheaper. But I stand by my overall findings, that as a package the Hope post is an exquisite piece of kit for whatever type of bike you are riding. The quality is exceptional – but only you can decide whether it is worth the extra outlay.

Verdict

An excellent piece of engineering with looks to match, which arguably makes it worth the money