Selle San Marco Mantra Dynamic Saddle

The Selle San Marco Mantra Dynamic Open-fit saddle is the sensibly priced kid brother to the Mantra Superleggera we tested previously. It's reasonably comfortable and still a competitive weight, but it's definitely a firm, performance-orientated saddle, not a comfy-as-a-couch seat for upright cruising.

If you like a firm, flat saddle, then the Mantra Dynamic is for you. It has a stiff, fibreglass-reinforced hull topped with a thin layer of closed-cell foam and a pressure-relieving gap down the middle, all of which comes together in a saddle that's very much a platform for going fast.

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This is saddle design as performance-enhancement, not as bum-coddling, but it's nevertheless pretty comfortable, as long as you like your saddles firm and flat. There's an element of 'if you like this sort of thing then you'll like this' here, but that's hard to avoid with saddle reviews.

I used the Mantra for rides up to about 100km, and for 60-90-minute Zwift sessions, without discomfort. Indoor trainers are a strong test of a saddle because you spend so much of the time seated. I find that if a saddle's comfortable for a Zwift session, then it's almost certainly going to be comfortable for a lot longer on the road.

You definitely notice it less when you're making a big effort, and not just because the rest of you is complaining. Hunkering down in a deep tuck spreads your weight over more of the Mantra's surface, whereas sitting up concentrates it all on the point where your sit-bones contact the seat.

The Mantra Dynamic Open-fit is available in two widths, 136mm and 146mm, of which this is the wider. Selle San Marco says it weighs 233g, but it's 217g on our scales. That's good from a weight-weenie point of view, but maybe the missing weight is missing foam that would have made the Mantra a tiny bit comfier.

That weight is pretty much what you expect from a £90 saddle. You lose 30g or so by going up to the Selle San Marco Mantra Racing with its carbon-fibre-reinforced hull, and your wallet will be £30 lighter for it. From there you very quickly get into diminishing returns until you're forking out £300 for the 112g Mantra Superleggera.

I find I can get comfortable on a range of different saddle widths as long as the overall shape is right. Saddle fit isn't as simple as getting the right width, which is the impression you could get from some saddle makers who'd have you choose a saddle just by measuring your sit-bone width, and nor is it just down to how flexible you are. Instead, both of those factors matter, along with your riding position and the exact shape of your undercarriage.

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And some of us are more adaptable than others. Team GB physiotherapist and bike fit guru Phil Burt calls those who can handle significant changes in position 'macro-absorbers', as opposed to 'micro-adjusters' who can tolerate only very small changes from their accustomed position. I suspect this applies to saddles too: some of us can adapt to different seats, some of us can't.

I adapted to the Mantra in a few rides, even though it's very different from my usual Fizik Aliante and Brooks Cambium saddles, so even if you don't usually like this sort of thing, you might find the Mantra is a pleasant surprise after all. If your riding is about going fast, it's a seat you should definitely try.

Verdict

Firm, comfortable saddle that's a solid platform for go-faster efforts