Customer Review: Zipp SL Speed Seatpost

In this review, our customer Bob is going over his new Zipp SL Speed Seatpost. The seatpost and saddle have a large effect on the fit and comfort of your roadbike. Bob says the Zipp SL Speed seatpost is good looking, lightweight, and comfortable. Check it out!

I purchased my Zipp SL Speed seatpost in August for use on my Cervelo R3 roadbike. The version I purchased was the 400mm, 27.2 post with 20 mm's of setback. This post replaced a superb Dura Ace alloy seatpost I had been using on the bike for about a year. Zipp allows you to cut the SL seatpost length down so long as you maintain at least 100mm of minimum post insertion inside your frame when the post is installed. I cut my post from 400mm down to 290mm, and the post weighs about 150-160 grams after cutting.

What I like about the seatpost are its looks, comfort, low weight, and very easily adjustable saddle rail clamp. The dark graphics of the post are very stealth without advertising an "in your face type" logo. Very nice. The post setback is achieved with a gentle slope towards the top of the carbon post, and looks very well finished as you would expect from a Zipp product. One thing I tend to dislike about many seatpost saddle rail bolts is that they are vertical positioned bolts hidden under the seatpost head, and are not all that easy to access with an allen key or a torque wrench. The Zipp SL Speed's seatpost uses a two bolt horizontal system with both bolts lying on opposite sides of the seatpost head making access to these bolts and saddle adjustments very easy. The seatpost bolts, just like Zipp's stems use the T25 Torx standard, which is simply a superior system to regular allen key style hexagon bolts. The Torx bolts provide greater surface area for your tool to contact the Torx bolt head, thus allowing proper torque to be applied without the worry of stripping hex type bolt heads. With Zipp's horizontal Torx style seatpost bolts I had no problem assessing them using a Hazet 6000 series torque wrench with a short Hazet T25 Torx socket. There is no way accessing these bolts would have been as easy had the seatpost used a vertical bolt or two hidden under the seatpost head as many seatposts do. Big plus to Zipp for that, and setting my saddle rails to the correct position and tilt on the Zipp seatpost head was again very easy. Zipp also provides a small T25 Torx key with the SL Speed seatpost that can easily be carried with you when you want to make on the fly saddle adjustments on th road. The T25 seatpost bolt standard matches the T25 bolts used on Zipp stems. So now I carry one small T25 torx key that can handle any road adjustments needed to my seatpost head, my stem, and my Cervelo R3 seatpost binder bolt (T25 standard also). Very nice and well planned out by Zipp! As for the comfort of the Zipp CF SL seatpost I'm honestly not sure if it is placebo effect or not, but so far I certainly think I'm feeling less road buzz in the back versus the Dura Ace alloy post that I was using. The Zipp post does not seem to flex excessively at all, yet it seems to do a good job of handling road buzz.

Overall, I would give this post at least a 9/10 rating. It's a good looking, lightweight, relatively comfortable, and very easily adjustable post so what is not to like? I'll be building up an Open carbon frame in a few months for gravel type riding, and this post is at the very top of my list right now for that build. A superb post and worth the price in my opinion for all the reasons noted above.