Tried & Tested – Oxford Hot Seat

For the last few weeks I’ve been trying out Oxford Product’s Cool Seat and Hot Seat, alternately treating my posterior to either a cooling breeze or a cosseting warmth on my daily commute and weekend trips.

As it is still the middle of winter, and the mercury is sticking resolutely to the lower regions of the thermometer, I plumped for trying the Hot Seat first. It’s a universal fit, so should be suitable for almost any model of motorcycle or scooter, and installation is very simple – just two wires connect to the battery and a couple of elasticated hook-and-loop straps secure the Hot Seat to the bike’s saddle. As I was going to have the fairing off of my BMW, I also took the opportunity to try out Oxford’s £24.99 Junction Box; a four-outlet electrical distribution unit designed to make installing electrical accessories quicker and simpler. It is small enough to tuck neatly out of the way under the bike’s bodywork, and it has coloured LEDs to show everything is working, which will turn red to warn if one of the fuses has blown. Wiring it in made the installation a two stage process, but means the Hot Seat (and several other accessories on my bike) are now all plugged into switched terminals, meaning I shouldn’t come back to a flat battery should I forget to turn everything off.

The Hot Seat is made of a grippy textured silicon coated fabric, which stops it moving around too much, and is nice and thin so is barely noticeable once you are on the bike. It’s strictly a single-seat option though, so if your pillion wants to take the chill off their derrière they’ll need their own Hot Seat. The control button is located on the right hand side; a single press turns the Hot Seat on at full power, with subsequent presses cycling through the three heat settings. The button is large enough to be operated by a gloved hand, and it changes colour to show which heat setting has been selected, although this was a moot point as you can’t see it while riding, which meant choosing a comfortable heat level was literally a seat-of-the-pants experience. Once turned on, the Hot Seat warms rapidly – you can feel the heat in less than a minute. Wearing jeans, the warmth was very evident, and I soon had to select the 50% power setting to avoid my rear getting toasted. And due to the elements’ proximity to the femoral artery, it should help to keep the legs, and possibly down as far as the feet, a few degrees warmer by taking the chill off the blood.

Overall, it’s a relatively cheap and easy way to add a bit of comfort to a winter ride, with its £79.99 SRP well within impulse buy, or even ‘gift for a biker’, budget. It’s not a cure-all for cold-weather riding, but as part of an outfit along with heated gloves and a heated jacket the Hot Seat will keep riders on the road however cold it gets. I was a bit cynical before I tried it, but I’m now a convert and find my near-freezing morning commute far more tolerable with a hot bum.

Moving on to the Cool Seat came as a shock to the system. It straps to the bike’s seat in a similar fashion to the Hot Seat, using a pair of elasticated Velcro straps but unlike the one-size-fits-all Hot Seat, the Cool version comes in three sizes, to suit sports and street bikes, adventure and touring machines, or for pillions. It is made of two layers of 3D mesh, the bottom of which is rubberised to prevent slipping, which provides under-bum airflow when on the move, reducing moisture and heat build-up in the warmer months. In the middle of February, it honestly felt somewhat unnecessary, but it definitely works, as the cooling breeze around the hindquarters demonstrated. I’ll put it to one side for now and dig it out again in the summer to see whether it makes a sunny day ride more refreshing. SRP is £29.99.

Oxford Products; 01993 862300; [email protected]