Kids Ride Shotgun Pro Seat review: smile maker

As the parent of two children under 3, the original version of the Kids Ride Shotgun seat has got to be one of the best cycling accessories I’ve got my hands on. Effectively a mini extra seat that fixes to your bike’s top tube, it means your kid can come mountain biking with you.

While putting a small child in front of a fully grown adult on a moving mountain bike might seem a bit risky, in practice it works really well. You can keep a watchful eye on your passenger, their extra weight is much more central and easier to manage than on a rear seat, and they get a much more fun, engaging experience than if they’re just staring at your back.

We reviewed the original Shotgun seat a couple of years ago, and while it’s good, it isn’t perfect. It clamps directly to your top tube, and relies on being set up with just the right amount of force, or it can shift out of position. It’s also designed to fit bikes with top tubes and down tubes of broadly similar diameters, which rules out using it with an ebike. I’ve used our original Shotgun seat loads, but riding up the hills of Calderdale with a bonus 16kg of impatient toddler on board can be a tad gruelling, so I was really excited to hear that Shotgun were developing a version that would be compatible with ebikes.

The new design is a huge leap forward over the original Shotgun, which clamped to your bike’s frame using effective but inelegant rubber-coated plates. The new version avoids any direct contact with your frame and its precious paintwork. Instead the seat sits on a slim extendable rail with a clamp at either end. The clamp at the rear goes round your seatpost, and comes with shims to accommodate different diameters from 27.2mm up to 34.9mm. The front clamp locks to a special headset spacer below your handlebars. The seat comes with all the tools you need to install it, plus a front mudguard and some stickers. Installation is pretty simple: just loosen off your bike’s stem, remove the bars, and replace one of the headset spacers with Shotgun’s. They even supply two with each seat, so you can swap it between bikes easily. You’ll need 10mm of spacers under your stem, and bikes with anti-rotation devices like Trek’s Knock Block system need an adaptor, but other than that, it’s very straightforward.

The Shotgun Pro has a lot of adjustment and it’s all pleasingly easy to use. The angle of the seat can be changed easily, using a couple of levers under the saddle, and it can also be moved backwards or forwards on the rail. The final part of the setup process is attaching the alloy footrests, which come with moulded pins and sturdy rubber stirrups to avoid any accidental toddler slopestyle tricks. These have two positions, and the widest setting will easily fit round an ebike down tube. The length of the footrest, the angle of the rods they’re attached to and even the angle of the footrests themselves can all be tweaked.

The seat as a whole weighs just over 1.9kg, but it’s very solidly made and feels like it could be handed down through decades of children. It’s rated up to 27kg, which means it’ll happily double as a carry handle for your bike. There’s an optional extra handlebar, complete with cute mini grips, which will set you back £27, or your passenger can just hold your handlebars. We’ve used the handlebar from the start with our other seat, so I fitted it for this test too.

Given that the Shotgun seat’s design relies on your passenger knowing that they have to hang on, when you start using it will require a bit of discretion. Shotgun reckons the seat will suit kids from 2 up to around 5 years. My daughter graduated from a Thule Yepp Mini front seat, which is more of a traditional child seat, but has a little loop-shaped “handlebar” which she quickly got the hang of holding on to, so transitioning to the Shotgun was pretty straighforward.

Forget about going full Danny Daycare: riding with your child means taking things steady, picking your route carefully to avoid anything too steep, lumpy or gate-ridden, and making sure you have snacks and warm clothes, as detailed in this supremely wise article by Hannah (Don’t forget, on a front seat your kid is more exposed to the elements, plus they won’t be doing enough physical exertion to stay warm).

But even though I’ve had to dial back the length and technicality of rides, it’s still been some of the most fun mountain biking I’ve done all year. Having been relegated to a rear seat for everyday bike trips, my daughter absolutely loves being able to sit up front again, and tends to enliven every ride with a running commentary on everything we pass, particularly if cows, sheep or horses are involved.

The seat is really solid in use, aside from one occasion where I didn’t manage to tighten up the thumbscrew securing the front clamp enough and it popped open. No disaster ensued, other than a small chip on the paintwork of my test bike, but it’s something to keep an eye on, and I’d really rather have a fixing you can tighten with a tool or a QR clamp. That said, attaching the seat to the bike literally takes less than a minute once you’ve done the initial installation and adjustment.

On most frames, the riding position on the Shotgun Pro will be a few inches higher than the original model. This means better clearance for your knees but also less headroom for tall children. On at least one occasion my daughter has chinned me quite hard after leaping out of the saddle unexpectedly. For context, I’m 5’10 and my daughter is around 40 inches tall, so taller parents may not find this an issue, but shorter parents probably will, and she might need to go back on our original Shotgun seat as she grows.

Overall though, our experience with the Shotgun Pro has been fantastic. The design and build quality is a leap up from the original, as is the ease of installation and removal. Being able to fit it to an ebike and razz up the hill to nursery pickup, then throw in a loop across our local trails on the way home, is a great way of getting exercise and spending time with my daughter. I’ve also used it on a normal bike, with no issues other than having to have words with my passenger about riding no-handed on a boring section of cycle path.

Overall

It’s expensive for a child seat, but the Shotgun Pro really is a very well designed and manufactured bit of kit. I’ve used the original version quite a lot, but I’ve done way more riding with the Pro, partly because the ease of installation and removal of the new version is much greater, and partly because I can fit it to an ebike. It’s also the sort of product that other people will get use out of when your child has outgrown it, so should hold its resale value. As my daughter grows we might have to switch to a lower-profile seat, but for now, it’s a brilliant way of letting us hit the trails together.