If you’re wondering how the new Invisible Fence GPS collar compares with the Halo Collar 3, you’re not alone. Tons of our viewers want to know which collar will keep their dog safe off-leash while bringing us pet owners some much-needed peace of mind. Our Halo collar vs Invisible Fence review will set the record straight for you.
My team was able to get some first-hand experience with the Invisible Fence GPS collar, and honestly, we were surprised. Does the long-standing Invisible Fence Brand’s answer to the Halo Collar live up to expectations?
As always, we have links to these products that have the best discounts we can find for you.
So both of these collars claim to be the most accurate GPS fence, and there are a lot of technical details that set them apart from each other. But I will focus on what I think is most important for dog owners to understand before making a purchase.
First, let’s talk pricing.
Price
Both collars run about $700, but both are actually on sale for about $600 as I’m writing.
You’ll also need a subscription. In the case of the Invisible Fence GPS collar, the only option was about $100 annually when we signed up.
Subscriptions for the Halo Collar start at about $10/mo, but you can unlock features across three tiers capping out at about $20/mo. We feel the introductory bronze package is good enough for most dog owners. Whatever you go with, you can save some money by signing up for longer terms.
So pricewise they are pretty similar, although the Halo Collar offers a little more flexibility on the subscription.
SetUp
Now, on to setting up the collars. Things got a little rocky here with the Invisible Fence GPS collar in our experience.
We ran into A LOT of technical issues, and we weren’t able to get the collar up and running even after a few hours of troubleshooting and calls with customer service. While customer support was friendly, they weren’t able to answer questions or even explain why their troubleshooting suggestions might help.
These days consumers have grown to expect a smoother user experience, especially with higher end products.
Contrast this with the Halo Collar 3, where the setup experience is relatively straightforward. The app does present you with an awful lot of information, but they walk you through the process and you can be up and running pretty quickly.
Now, as we were setting up the Invisible Fence GPS collar our team noticed that this product is essentially the exact same product as the new PetSafe Guardian + Tracking collar.
Invisible Fence and PetSafe are both owned by Radio Systems, and since these collars were released at pretty much the same time it’s probably safe to assume that they are indeed the same product.
We’d successfully set up the new PetSafe Guardian, and since we didn’t expect much of a performance difference we opted to try returning our Invisible Fence GPS collar.
Customer Support
So we found the support email in our order confirmation and reached out 3 times over the course of a week, but we didn’t receive a reply.
Then we tried the support contact form on their website—no dice there either.
We were able to get in touch with them by phone and a pleasant support representative helped us initiate the return, but we didn’t get any confirmation so we called again the following week.
Turns out they send return labels by mail, which is fine, but it was over 2 weeks from our initial request before we received the return label. Keep in mind we won’t receive a refund until they process the return.
Now, I can’t say that reports on customer support experiences with Halo Collar are all roses either, but they definitely have a much more established customer support team and in-app tutorials to help dog owners.
We would have loved to test the Invisible Fence GPS collar for ourselves, but we also felt that most of our viewers wouldn’t have loved this experience either.
You can check out our videos testing the PetSafe Guardian with Tracking—we believe it is more or less the same collar, it’s cheaper than the Invisible Fence GPS, and the PetSafe team seems to have a bit more experience with these types of products.
Verdict
The Halo Collar has definitely been easier to use in our experience and while we’d like to see some improved accuracy and reliability with the Halo, we feel pretty comfortable recommending it over the Invisible Fence GPS based on our experiences.
Of course, over time the Invisible Fence GPS collar may catch up, we’ll be keeping our eyes on it.
Don’t forget to click the links below for discounts on the Halo Collar as well as our top recommendation—the SpotOn Fence.