Posedla Joyseat 3.0 custom saddle review: Not necessarily a silver bullet, but just as good as in my experience

Being a professional bike tester means that you spend a lot of time riding a great variety of saddles. Some bikes arrive and my heart sinks - knowing I either need to mess about and swap saddles, or put up with an uncomfortable undercarriage - and some I know I’ll get on with. Having pressure-tested a load of shorts in the lab, I know that your saddle choice makes a far greater impact on your comfort than your shorts do, and getting the best saddle for you is about as important a component choice as any you’ll ever make.

It’s also a highly personal choice. There really isn’t such a thing as a ‘good’ saddle that is comfortable for everyone, which is why we rarely review saddles here anymore, as what works for me (any variation of a Selle Italia SLR Boost Superflow) could be torture for you.

With the advent of 3D printing tech in saddle production, could a fully custom saddle made specifically to one’s rear end dimensions be different? Well, I must admit I was sceptical when I was approached by Posedla and offered just that. Happily though, I have been pleasantly surprised by the result.

The short version is that I don’t think it’s created me a saddle that’s more comfortable than my chosen favourite model, but it has created one that is as comfortable, and that’s really quite something.

If you’re staring down the barrel of trying to work out a saddle choice to suit your needs – which usually involves either an expensive bike fit, many trips to a saddle library, buying multiple models and trying to sell those that don’t work for you, or some combination of all three – then I think, in my experience at least, it can basically get you to the same end goal.

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Design and buying process

Visually, the Posedla Joyseat 3.0 looks like most other 3D printed saddles. It’s black, full of holes (sorry to those who suffer from trypophobia), and consists of a 3D printed lattice of variably squishy filaments atop a rigid base. It’s got a slightly more rounded rear shape, and a really big cutout down the centre compared to commonly available off-the-peg models, but in essence it’s the same basic concept.

There are three tiers you can choose. Plus (metal rails), Pro (carbon rails and shell), and Ultra (carbon rails and shell, but even lighter). I have the Plus, but the way you end up at any of the three models is identical and involves sitting on a box of foam. Unlike the previous version that we reviewed back in 2023, the 3.0 version now comes in four flavours: Road (least padded, flat shape), Gravel (medium padding, medium shape), MTB (high padding, curved shape), and TT (flat profile, more padded nose with an extended cutout).

As a custom saddle, one must of course provide some measurements for Posedla to work with. It’s beautifully simple and quite easy: A box of foam arrives in the post, onto which you plonk your backside, take some photos of the resulting indents, and upload them. There’s no need to send the box back.

The top surface of the foam is crosshatched with fine grooves to form a grid, and the rim of the box is covered in QR-code-like reference markers. You sit (carefully) into the foam, take nine photos, upload them to the portal, and then begin filling in questions relating to your riding style and flexibility. It really is quite alarmingly simple, and this simplicity, I think, lulled me into thinking it was probably going to end up as just another saddle or a gimmick.

The questionnaire is relatively self-explanatory. There are 10 questions relating to your flexibility (I can just about touch my toes), what sort of riding I intend to do (gravel in this case, as it’s a better test), and the duration of my rides (I think I put in about four hours, a usual weekend off-road hack). Once that’s all in, it’s a case of waiting until your saddle arrives.

My personal one took longer than expected because (and don’t laugh) my bum was too small and Posedla didn’t have any narrow shells at the time. This isn’t the case now, but it was quite a funny text to receive and certainly did wonders for my body confidence.

All in all, though, the whole process from getting the box to getting the physical saddle was extremely easy. You have to be careful when doing the mould, but it’s all well explained in the associated instructions.

I’m not overly enamoured with how the thing looks. It’s not necessarily the most elegant form, but saddles shouldn’t be judged on aesthetics really, especially given that most of the time they are obscured by my (tiny) behind. The important question is: Is it comfortable?

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Performance

I will preface this by again stating that saddles are a deeply personal component choice, and this is only my own experience based on the Gravel shape model. I can't speak for the Road, TT or MTB options, and I tend to favour curved saddle shapes over flat ones.

That being said, the Posedla Joyseat 3.0 did a pretty remarkable job of mimicking my chosen gravel saddle, the Selle Italia SLR Boost Gravel. It is perhaps convenient that my favoured saddle also has an enormous cutout, but I believe that a cutout really has no downsides, besides some issues around feminine hygiene that can result from spray from the rear wheel; this could be solved with a solid shell, however, which I do feel is perhaps an oversight.

So yes, it is comfortable, and after a four-hour gravel ride, it’s about as good as I would expect. It’s not more comfortable, it’s not given me a magic carpet ride or even the truly anatomical cushioning of a properly broken-in leather saddle (which is a joy everyone should experience at some point), but it’s certainly good enough.

There is an amount of breaking in, which I didn’t expect. The first few rides, it felt a little uniform and unyielding, but after three or four decent rides, it has softened slightly and is more pliant. I suspect there’s something along the lines of the filaments beneath the surface needing to move a little to break in, but in any case, if you do order one and it feels a little stiff out of the box, then give it a bit of time before making a final judgment.

With the ol’ thumb test, it’s clear how the saddle has been printed to provide different cushioning levels, in the same way saddles of old used sections of differing density foams, except here the transition is more gradual with less potential for ridging to occur at the transition zone. The area under my amusingly narrow sit bones is firm, the area directly surrounding it is less firm, and the nose is decidedly softer; perfect for those on the rivet sections on smoother ground in this case.

The cutout is large, larger visually than that of my chosen SLR, but the end result is the same insofar as I was never cursed with numbness in areas that I’d rather not go numb. I think the only real downside in this case, as a gravel bike saddle, is that it’s a little harder to keep clean.

I cannot yet speak to longevity. I have seen anecdotal evidence that 3D printed saddles don’t last as long as their standard counterparts, and this will likely be exacerbated with off-road use, but even with other 3D units I’ve tested, they haven’t exactly fallen apart instantly, but it’s something to be aware of.

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Value

Compared to a normal, mid-range saddle the Posedla Joyseat 3.0 is more expensive. An SLR Boost is around $150, while the Joyseat $399. This is 2.5x the cost for a saddle that is 0x more comfortable, which is quite a hard sell. However…

I can totally appreciate that finding the right saddle can be an absolute nightmare. I am in the process of trying to help my partner find a saddle that suits her, and I am lucky in that I have access to a lot of saddles that I can take home and try, but even then, it can (and still does) feel like a totally impossible task. I also cannot count how many saddles I’ve personally tried before landing on the one. If I had to buy them all to find out, I would have spent an awful lot more than $399.

I don’t think it’s going to replace going to a good bike fitter if you’re really having issues, especially if they have access to a saddle library, but if you want something that (in my experience at least) will get you more or less where you need to be all while taking quite a lot of the guesswork out of it, then I think it does actually represent pretty good value.

Verdict

The Posedla Joyseat 3.0 isn’t the most comfortable saddle I've ever tried, but it can recreate the most comfortable saddle I’ve ever used… which is basically the same thing.

It’s an expensive solution, but if you want convenience and a one-and-done approach then it certainly was a success for me, and given how painful (physically and mentally) finding the right saddle can be it’s probably worth it for some of you, and a comfortable saddle is a far better use of a few hundred dollars than more or less any other upgrade of similar cost.