The popular Charge Spoon saddle has nestled happily under the rear ends of various What Mountain Bike and BikeRadar.com testers for a few years now, and it remains in the range as a popular budget saddle.
But the designers at Charge wanted to design a brand new flagship saddle, and that's what you see here. This is the chromoly-railed verson - it's also available with titanium rails for £59.99 / US$86.13.
The Scoop's rails are curved, which allows them to be very forgiving. The rails mount cleanly into the moulded one-piece base, which compared to any other saddle is a work of art. The cover, which is made up of a waterproof microfibre fabric over super-light foam, is vacuum bonded on, which removes the need for messy and unsightly glue, staples and flaps of fabric.
It instantly makes other saddles seem dated.
By manufacturing it this way, Charge can give the Scoop saddle a very thin base, so the whole thing can flex with your movements to make a very comfortable seat. In profile, it's similar to the Spoon, though the centre is dipped a touch more and the nose has a little more padding towards the tip.
We had to dip the nose a bit more than usual to find our sweet spot, which offered a good consistent position and we didn't find we needed to move around much. That extra padding on the rounded nose means steep climbs are more comfortable than before, and the saddle never snagged our shorts either.
With this much flex we were concerned we might bend or twist the unit in use, but having ridden it for the best part of seven months straight we've had no problems. And thanks to the very tidy design, it cleans up like new every time.