RAGLEY TRACKER

£29.99

SPECIFICATION Weight: 260g • Rails: Crn/ti alloy • Width: 140mm, Height: 50mm, Length: 280mm • Contact: hotlines-uk.com

The first thing we noticed about the Ragley Tracker is the price; £30 is stonking good value for a saddle at this weight with cro-mo rails, a synthetic leather cover and Kevlar edges. The build is not quite as good as some of the others on test, but you have to take a hit somewhere.

Instead of a bonded cover, the Ragley skin is glued and stapled in place. So far, we’ve not had any issues with it splitting or coming unstuck, but there are a few areas where it’s not very neat and you can actually see the foam poking through. The key thing with this construction however, is the cover is under tension, which is sometimes why it quickly gets worse when you get a split.

The profile and tapered shape are reminiscent of the old Charge Spoon, which interestingly you still see online for £20. It has a slight hammock shape, quite a bit of padding in the nose area, a short channel and a slight notch at the rear for tyre clearance.

It’s not a particularly wide saddle and the shape does taper down around the sit bones, so you rock a bit more on this one. To get a comfortable position we actually angled the nose down slightly and that allowed us to sit more into the shoulders of the saddle. This also lifts the tail, so you don’t go flying off the back. When the saddle is covered in mud there is not a lot of grip and, like the WTB SL8, those Kevlar wear patches do hold on to dirt.

The Tracker features Crn/ti Alloy rails, which suggest they’re titanium. They’re not. They’re cro-mo rails with a surface coating and a trace element to improve the tensile strength. Either way the

Tracker is still one of the lightest saddles on test, although that’s because there’s very little meat at the rear, not because the rails are particularly lightweight.

The quality is average, there’s only a single width, and it’s not that supportive and a bit hard at the rear, but it’s dead cheap. If you want a good-looking saddle for peanuts, this is it.