Tested: Specialized, Rock Shox and Crank Brothers Drop Posts

The idea of lowering a mountain bike’s seat for improved descending abilities is obviously nothing new.

From simple quick-release seat clamps and Hite Rite Seat Locators from the turn of the 1990s to the much more technically advanced Power Post that remotely folded one’s saddle forward onto the top-tube via a parallelogram-style post, it was only a matter of time until these pioneering post-dropping ideas would evolve into something more user-friendly and therefore more popular.

Enter the latest generation of drop-posts. With a flick of a finger timed with a little bump of the rump, these posts can quickly and conveniently drop a saddle out of the way when the trail demands more body English to either play it safe or speed it up.

As usual, there are more choices out there than even we probably know about (such as a Taiwanese mechanical post one mechanic on the race circuit uses and likes, but said isn’t available in the U.S.). So we decided to pick three that seem to work the best from our experience: Specialized’s Command Post; Crank Brothers’ Joplin 4;  and the Rock Shox Reverb.

FILED UNDER: Bikes and Tech / News TAGS: Command Post / Crankbrothers / drop posts / Joplin / Reverb / Rock Shox / seat / Specialized