What are the big differences between the Invisible Fence vs PetSafe Guardian + tracking collar? And which GPS fence is gonna let your pup run around off-leash by themselves but give you peace of mind knowing they’re protected from going anywhere dangerous?
My team tested both collars in action.
Does the PetSafe Guardian GPS with Tracking edge out the Invisible Fence GPS? Or does the Invisible Fence brand shut out the competition? Let’s dive in.
I’ve added some links the best deals on your next GPS fence collar below:
So both of these collars say that they’re the most accurate in GPS fencing and to be sure, there’s lots of tech-y details that set them apart from each other. But rather than get bogged down in the technical weeds of the PetSafe vs Invisible Fence comparison, I’m just gonna focus on the big basics and what you pup owners get out of each one. And I’m gonna start with the most basic comparison of all – the price.
Price
The Invisible Fence will set you back about $600 with a required annual subscription of about $100 a year, and your entire first year is free. But please remember from Year Two on, there are no monthly options – you have to opt in for an entire year at a time.
The PetSafe Guardian + Tracking collar is currently running for a hundred bucks less at about $500 and has a monthly membership price of around $10 – so roughly $120 annually. You get your first month’s membership free.
So, once your first year – or first month for the PetSafe Guardian – is over, your annual running costs for each break down to right about $620 for the PetSafe Guardian with Tracking and the slightly pricier $700 or so for the Invisible Fence.
If you’re wondering what both those membership fees cover; they’re to maintain GPS services and cellular data as well as creating, editing and using the wireless dog fences.
SetUp
Now, on to setting up the collars. On their website, PetSafe says it takes 1-2 hours for setup. In our actual experience it was way closer to two. It took a lot of quibbly troubleshooting – turning the collar on and off, restarting the app, redoing steps, those types of things. But I’m happy to say we got there in the end.
Compare this with the Invisible Fence, where the setup experience was an intense struggle. It took my team close to an hour and a half and we never really got it fully set up. It was buggy, it had loading problems, and the connection never really lined up. Ultimately, we had to get their customer service on the phone and sadly even that proved less helpful than we hoped. They suggested we step outside while working on the GPS connections – but we did and it didn’t help. Major red flags.
Creating Fences
Creating fences for the PetSafe Guardian with tracking was a little finicky. Every time we changed a setting, like when loading a fence to the collar or changing the correction settings, we’d have to do some minor troubleshooting. That meant turning the collar off and on, restarting the app, and reconnecting over bluetooth.
We were able to make a fence but the big thing we noticed is that you only have the option to draw in a fence manually by tapping on a map in the app – you can’t set the boundary by walking with the collar. By comparison, because we couldn’t get the Invisible Fence to work, there is no comparison. There’s a great irony here because the collar is identical to the PetSafe Guardian with Tracking collar – they’re both owned by the same parent company. So I’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest that the Invisible Fence would probably perform similarly to the PetSafe Guardian – if it worked properly, that is!
Field Testing
We then did some field testing to see what product actually works the best. As we always do, we strapped the new Guardian with Tracking on ourselves to test it in action. It was a little hard to judge the accuracy of the boundary because we’re drawing it in rather than walking. There is some boundary drift but you’ll experience this with even the best GPS fence technologies. It’s still usable for boundary training a dog [1].
The other thing we observed in testing was that the boundary feedback just consists of an alert, prior to advancing to correction. Now, as I said, we couldn’t make heads or tails of the Invisible Fence so we couldn’t field test it. I guess for now we can say their fence is so invisible it isn’t there, but now that some time has passed since product launch we’ll be giving it another try. Stay tuned.
Other Considerations
There are a couple of other considerations that I want to quickly mention.
Both collars claim to provide up to 48 hours of battery life, which is a paw up on other GPS fences out there.
We contacted Invisible Fence’s customer support because we wanted to return our purchase – but sadly, after reaching out to them three different times over a few days, and even emailing them via their support page, we never heard back. We did ultimately get them on the phone and settled our return but wow, it should never have taken that long.
Verdict: Invisible Fence vs PetSafe Guardian GPS
The PetSafe Guardian with Tracking is a bit cheaper, and generally the product seems a bit further down the line.
The Invisible Fence, however, was a bit of a disappointment in our first round of testing. For the price and the brand’s longevity in this space, we were hoping for a show stopper. Again, we’ll be revisiting their next iteration soon – but for now, of the two, we’re going with the PetSafe Guardian with Tracking.
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