Product Review: Illumiseen LED Breastcollar

Kristen Kovatch tries out this new high-vis tack.

Glow baby glow. Photo by Erik Bentley

I refuse to believe that there’s such a thing as “too much visibility,” especially as our world moves faster and faster and people seem to be more distracted — anything that makes me and my horse more visible to a passing driver can only be a good thing. The next step in high-visibility tack is here: Illumiseen’s LED breastcollar.

Illumiseen already has a proven track record in the high-visibility LED market, with reflective and illuminated belts available for pedestrians, joggers and riders as well as reflective LED collars and leashes for dogs. The breastcollar was a logical next step, and as a rider whose farm and trails lie along an unlit country road, I was happy to test this tack out.

The Illumiseen breastcollar comes in a variety of LED colors: orange, pink, green, blue, red, white and yellow. I selected the plain white, opting for the “headlight effect” (I could easily see this becoming a fun piece for the rodeo scene, however, to add some serious eyecatching flair to your night getup for barrel racing).

Each Illumiseen comes in a plastic storage bag with three USB chargers for the three individual batteries, one for each “arm” of the breastcollar. The batteries charged quickly when I plugged them into my computer, one at a time; the batteries should hold a charge for 10 hours of continuous use. The USB plug can adapt to the plug for an iPhone charger or car charging port as well.

The breastcollar includes two snaps to clip to the dee rings of the saddle and a loop to run the girth or cinch through. All three straps are adjustable for length.

Un-illuminated, the breastcollar is lined with reflective material. Photo by Kristen Kovatch.

At the barn, I realized that while the breastcollar is fully adjustable, it was still a good deal too large for my little cow pony (I’ve never hand-measured Red but I’m guessing he’s a legitimate 14.2 on a tall day). I sized everything down as small as I could make it and still had to make a few creative modifications — rather than run the sides to the dee rings, which would result in the breastcollar hanging down by Red’s knees, I clipped them together to create a breastplate rather than a true breastcollar. This setup did result in a bit of shifting around; in a perfect world I’d love to see Illumiseen develop a cob or pony size. I have no qualms that this would fit a regular-sized horse, and in fact this would likely fit my draft horses just fine.

In terms of visibility, the LED lights are small but mighty: I rode about 100 yards away and my husband/photographer/videographer could easily see the lights despite near-total darkness.

Additionally, the LED lights can shine in a solid pattern or two different speeds of strobe, as I demonstrate below:

The bottom line: the Illumiseen breastcollar definitely does the job of increasing the visibility of the horse through both the LED lights and the reflective material. Depending on your intended use, the sizing issue may or may not be a deal-breaker if you ride a small animal; I was able to work around the sizing for my particular circumstances and will be able to get plenty of use out of this breastcollar on my larger horses.

Overall, I’m impressed with this piece of equipment and am happy to add it to my arsenal of high-visibility tack!

You can learn more about Illumiseen at the company’s website and you can browse the full selection of products at Amazon.

Go riding!