Review: Yep Components Uptimizer HC Dropper Post

Rewind to Issue #103 of Singletrack Magazine for Chipps’ review of the Yep Components Uptimizer HC 125 Dropper Post.

Yep is a Swiss company that makes and sells its dropper posts direct to the world over the internet. The amount of fine work that’s gone into this dropper is instantly visible – from the seat clamp (and hidden shock valve) to the internal cable mount and the remote thumb lever.

I tested the Uptimizer ST, another of Yep’s posts, a year or so ago (read Chipps’ review of the Yep Uptimizer ST here), which is still going strong, but this time I have the internally routed ‘HC’ post which differs in a couple of ways. The obvious bit is the internal cable routing, but the remote lever has changed recently too. The internal post is €20 extra over the ST.

This post offers a 125mm drop, but taller riders will be happy to hear that there’s a ‘tall’ version too with an extra 30mm of fixed post, and available in 125mm or 155mm drops, for riders struggling to get a tall enough saddle height at full extension. The post and lever weighs around 500g and it only comes it only comes in 30.9mm and 31.6mm diameters.

Apart from the obvious wiggling of cables to go through seat tubes, the installation of the HC went very smoothly. Huge bike-mechanic points go to Yep for having a simple slot for a gear cable nipple to sit in at the seatpost end, leaving the ‘bare end and a grub screw’ arrangement to happen inside the thumb lever. Having sworn at posts that have the cable arrangement the other way round, it’s so much easier to just slot the cable nipple in place and lower the assembly into the seat tube.

At the lever end, the bare cable exits the housing and into the base of the thumb lever, where it’s securely clamped with a grub screw.

A (colour coded!) lever end then screws on to this and the whole system looks as neat and Swiss as you’d hope. Any slack in the cable can be taken up by the barrel adjuster. The lever has a clamp that clips on to the bar, while two small bolts tighten it in place. It can run above or below the bar on either side and the 360° nature of the lever means you can push it away, pull it towards you, or even press it towards the bar and it still operates the post.

In use, the lever position works well either above the bars (for bikes with front shifters) or below (for one-by riders) and the clamp is neat enough to play well with all brake levers I tried it with. Operation is very smooth. There’s no feeling of resistance in the lever and the post moves smoothly up and down with infinite stops in between. Yep claims that its lower 100PSI or so (rather than the Reverb’s 250PSI) makes for a less stressed system overall and the whole post movement in both directions is satisfying and Swiss-like in its precision.

Post ‘wiggle’ is limited to about 2mm at the saddle nose and this isn’t felt while riding. The whole system can be rebuilt and Yep also offers a return-to-base full service. Customer service seems to be pretty instant too (like when you tighten up your seat clamp too tight and ask them why the post has stopped moving).

Overall

A ‘reassuringly expensive’ dropper post with neat and simple cable routing, smooth action and a fantastic thumb lever. A worthy contender.

Review Info