Airhawk 2 seat pad

Remember how my expensive Corbin seat didn't work out? Yeah. So I figured what the hell and bought the Airhawk Medium for about $100 and gave it a 1200 mile test.

The Airhawk is an inflatable seat pad made by the folks that made inflatable pads for medical stuff. It is a series of interconnected bladders inside a fabric shell that mounts to your seat with some flimsy bra strap like straps that go under your stock seat.

The user guide advises you that less inflation is generally better.With a sportbike you don't want to be any higher than you have to be, so less is more. During my first day I gradually deflated until I found a comfortable sweet spot.

I made it 4 hours in the saddle without any back/butt pain the first day, so that was a success. Over the next four days of riding I never had any butt or back pain, a for sure improvement over the stock seat alone.

Too good to be true? Yeah. Here are the downsides:
-The seat tends to move around. Part of that is the bladders transferring air back and forth depending on where you sit and how you move, and part of it is the flimsy mounting solution.
-The cloth exterior would be great in the summer with jeans, but with leathers you continually slide forward on it. If they beefed up the front of the pad to mitigate that, it would be better.
-Air moves between cells when you move, so you move around too much on it while carving the canyons.

Overall I'd rate it 4/5. The Airhawk 2 was a huge improvement for slab over the stock seat. It needs a better mounting solution, a grippier surface, and a way to "freeze" which cells are inflated so you stay put in the twisties. Probably a better solution for a touring bike than a sport bike in the long run.