Oxford Hot Seat review | Heated seat for ANY motorcycle

Date reviewed: January 2025 | Tested by: John Milbank | Price: £79.99 | www.oxfordproducts.com

The Oxford Hot Seat on review here certainly lives up to its name… it gets HOT. Designed to fit over pretty much any motorcycle’s rider or pillion seat, it’s got the potential to transform winter riding at a fraction of the cost of OE or aftermarket heated seats. I’ve been using it through winter 2024/25 on the Zontes ZT350T to find out if it’s worth buying…

Pros & Cons

Construction and fitting

The Oxford Hot Seat is a simple design with a nylon top and bottom that both have non-slip dots. One of the first questions someone had when I posted this on the BikeSocial Facebook group was whether it slid about, so I’m pleased to report that it stays exactly where you put it.

Two elasticated Velcro straps are sewn into the edge on the bottom of the Hot Seat, which have plenty of slack to wrap around the one-piece Zontes seat, or the two-piece front or rear on my 2019 R1250GS. The problem I’ve found is that the straps are a bit too long, with not enough Velcro further back, making it a bit tricky to fasten on thinner / narrower seats. I’ve had no issues with its security on either motorcycle, so can’t realty complain, but a bit more Velcro would be useful in some cases.

Because the Hot Seat straps under your existing seat, stealing it wouldn’t be easy. The straps and cable could be cut, but it’s an unlikely scenario and would leave it pretty much useless.

The straps at the front could be trimmed, but there’s very little Velcro holding them together. Still, it does work. Ignore the strap with the red catch – that’s for the Motoairbag tether.

A thin, insulated two-core cable comes out of the back of the seat, with a screw-down sealed connector running through a 3A fuse to crimped ring connectors for the battery. The thing is, the Hot Seat has to be wired to a switched live, not direct to the battery (too much risk of it being left on), so you need to tap into a wire on the bike or use a power distributor like the Hex ezCAN or Oxford’s £24.99 Junction Box. Ideally some form of connector (like Posi-Tap) would be included to tap into the bike’s wiring. I soldered it and insulated with heat-shrink.

There was just enough cable (1.2m total) for the wiring to reach from the auxiliary power connector hidden under the front right fairing panel of the (relatively short) Zontes to the riders seat, but there wouldn’t have been enough to get to the pillion, so I’d have needed to extend it.

I’d have loved to have seen the auto-switch-off tech used in some of Oxford’s own heated grips to make the Hot Seat easier to fit, as it could turn itself off when the voltage drops below 13V for instance (when the alternator isn’t running), then it could have been connected straight to the battery.

Unfortunately Oxford doesn’t sell the connector end of the loom separately – something that would mean the pad could be swapped between bikes easily. The connector would have needed a retained cover to prevent corrosion, but it’d have been a nice touch for those with more than one bike.

Temperature and control

To turn the Oxford Hot Seat on, press and hold the weatherproof button on the side for a few seconds, then it’ll start flashing through the colour modes before settling on the red, 100% setting. At 12W this pulls just under 1A when the bike’s running, so shouldn’t have much of an impact on the alternator. Tap the button to cycle through green for 75% power then blue for 50% and then back to red for 100%.

When you turn the bike off then on again, the seat won’t turn back on until you power it up, and it’ll default back to full power.

While easy to operate with gloves on, it can be a bit awkward to find the button when you’re riding. More frustratingly though, you can’t see what mode it’s in unless you get yourself into some weird positions and angle the mirror just so. I’d have much preferred a traditional hardware switch here, like you find on most OEM and aftermarket heated seats – that way you could easily feel where it had been set.

Full power proved to be too hot for me at -2°C. Even on the lowest blue 50% setting over one and a half hours I still found myself having to lift my bum a few times to shed some heat. If having a physical switch meant I could only have only two settings and off, then I’d be more than happy with just the 50% and 75% settings.

Out of curiosity, I used a non-contact thermometer and the Hot Seat only measured up to 33°C in an ambient temperature of 5°C when on full power, but it definitely gets hotter than this when you’re sat on it for a while.

In the 75% and 50% settings, at times I measured lower (24°C), but also up to the same 33°C, which makes me think that the Hot Seat isn’t thermostatically controlled – it probably simply uses less current in the lower modes, so warms up more slowly and sheds heat more quickly if you lift your bum off the seat.

That’s not to say it’s bad, and the control works, but don’t be surprised if you need to lift your cheeks every so often. Still, that’s far better than the chilly alternative!

Three alternatives to the Oxford Hot Seat

Riding in winter needn’t be a chore, and heated kit really can help you stay out for even longer. Honestly, I’d say heated gloves / grips and vest / jacket are more important than a heated seat, but this is the icing on the cake. Or maybe the hot sauce on the chicken. Anyway, my wife is a huge fan of heated seats, so whether it’s to keep your pillion happy, or to pamper your own posterior, these are some others to consider…

• Available for £64.98 from Urban Rider, the Tucano Urbano CoolWarm heated seat cover has a pocket for a power bank (not supplied), so it’s not wired in to the bike’s battery, but could be connected to a USB outlet. If using battery bank power, you’ll need one of at least a 5,000mAh that can deliver 2A at 5V, which is said to last up to two hours. The Tucano Urbano (which contrary to its name doesn’t also have a cooling feature) has three heating levels, but it looks like it’ll be even harder to see what setting it’s at than the Oxford when riding as the button is positioned on the back.

• Arguably the best – but also the most expensive – option is to fit actual heated seats. Some bikes allow you to spec them from new, and others might have the facility to add OEM units later, but before picking one up second hand, make sure your bike allows that. My 2019 R1250GS cannot take BMW’s heated seats, and even later models that had the loom might need the dealership to enable the control in the ECU (though this MIGHT become an option later via the superb Hex GS911). There are aftermarket options though, which add their own looms, including from Wunderlich (which we’ll have a review of shortly) or Sergent.

• There are other options available through online marketplaces, including some that look similar for a lot less. However, none that I found seemed to have the non-slip material (which is vitally important), and Oxford products is – according to friends in motorcycle stores – known to have excellent, no-quibble warranty support.

These are just three of many alternatives – you can find all the heated kit we’ve tested here  and be sure to regularly check for the discounts available through Bikesocial membership.

Oxford Hot Seat review: Verdict

It’s great that the Oxford Hot Seat can do such a good job of warming your bum, and the fact that it’s a universal fit means nobody need suffer anymore through winter.

With an automatic disconnect it’d be easier to wire, but my only real frustration with it is how hard it is to control while you’re riding. Please Oxford, fit a tactile switch that has three or four positions to make it easy to control by feel! Or even a rotary switch / potentiometer as on some of your heated grips.

Overall though, as it stands this is a great product that can make a big difference to cold rides.

Do you own this product? Tell us what you think, or ask us questions about it at bikeclub.bennetts.co.uk.