With April Fools firmly behind us, we can get back to the unconventional but totally real gadgets we turned over in Taipei. As far as non-traditional saddles go, this All-Wings Falcon design possibly takes the cake, combining a shortened version of a normal bent saddle rail with a saddle top made out of a single piece of incredibly flexible engineered plastic…
All-Wings Falcon flexible noseless endurance saddle
The All-Wings Falcon pares down saddle design to the bare essential, support for your sit bones, while shedding everything else deemed unnecessary. The result is a saddle that looks unlike pretty much anything else we’ve seen strapped to the top of a seatpost, and promises all-day, pressure-free comfort especially geared toward ultra-endurance cyclists.
Many saddles attempt to relieve perineum pressure issues with a central relief channel or cutout, but even that only really works while you stay seated in the ideal position on the saddle and pressure from the nose changes depending on shifting hand positions on the bar or even pedaling up vs. down hill.
So that’s why designer Vincent Tseng completely eliminated the saddle nose in his patented desfgn, leaving just two supportive wings with a deep central channel in the middle.
What makes the All-Wings Falcon saddle actually work is a flexible & virtually unbreakable BASF engineered nylon wing that flexes between four contact points with the single looped tubular chromoly rail.
The bulk of the rider’s weight seems to be supported by the sit bones just inside of the outer rail position where the saddle offers plenty of support with just a small amount of flex.
Then the outer extension of the wings help distribute more of your weight across a wider area of the saddle, and gives you something stable to push against (since you are missing the stability you often get from having a saddle nose between your legs.)
While weight is transferred into the top of the saddle, the sloped front edges sits against the back of the upper thighs, comfortably flexing as you pedal. From a few minutes trying it out myself, the feeling of sitting & pedaling on the saddle is quite different, but offers a surprising feel of stability even without a nose for the saddle.
The curved forward shape of the Falcon also makes it ideal for varying you position on the bike. You can’t move front-to-back like on a conventional saddle, but you essentially maintain the same level of comfort whether on the tops or in the drops, as you pivot forward and nothing is in between your legs to add any pressure points. That also makes it comfortable to slightly rotate your weight forward or back on the arc of the wings’ top whether you shift your weight forward or back from steep climbing to steep descents. No more uncomfortably sitting on the nose of a saddle to get up the steepest climbs.
With its unconventional design, the Falcon saddle is unsurprisingly lightweight even without exotic materials. All-Wings claims a weight of 207g, but it tipped our scales <200g. The Falcon is 300mm wide overall to give support across your entire butt, and is 70mm tall & 140mm long overall from the tip of the rails to the wings’ back. The extended orientation of the tubular steel rails essentially mimics the sit bone position of a conventional saddle, so you shouldn’t need to change seatpost offset, and the rails themselves allow a relatively normal amount of fore-aft saddle adjustment.
The All-Wings Falcon saddle was entirely designed & is produced in Taiwan. It retails for $130, probably most easily found shopping on Amazon. The Falcon has a max 100kg/220lb rider weight, and is available in six colors: two black versions, white, dark red, yellow & celeste.
