ShredLights has recently released their new smart lights which include a bunch of new features, and one feature that I’ve wanted for years. I’ll briefly explain what ShredLights are, what the new smart lights have to offer, and whether I think you should get them.
What are ShredLights?
If you have an electric skateboard and you’ve joined any of the various esk8 groups online or offline, you have very likely come across ShredLights. They are basically different types of LED lights that you can easily attach to your skateboard.
They can also be mounted on your bicycle, helmet, backpack, pants, massage gun, and anywhere that can use a GoPro mount.
The lights are not cheap, but because of ShredLights’ S-Lock system, you only need one set of lights for all of your boards, bicycles, and PEVs. Moving a light from one mount to another is quick and easy, and requires no tools.
There are definitely cheaper lights that you can get, but none of them have all of the new features that come with these new smart lights.
Smart Lights
The new smart lights are called the SL-300+ for the headlights, and SL-R1+ for the brake lights. Note that I said brake lights and not just taillights because they do become brighter when you brake.
That’s just one of the new features and probably the least interesting one. Let me go through the rest starting with my favorite feature.
Group Sync
The smart lights have Bluetooth and can be grouped together any way you want. Lights that are in the same group can be controlled together by using just a single light. You no longer have to adjust each light one by one.
For example, if you have a set of four lights, like the combo pack, you can turn all of them on at the same time by turning on just a single light instead of turning on all of them separately. The same goes for turning them off or changing to another mode.
This feature makes using ShredLights super convenient and I don’t know of any other add-on lights for bicycles or skateboards that can do this.
ShredLights App
The smart lights can be added to groups with or without ShredLights’ mobile app. I’ve tried both ways and using the app definitely feels more intuitive. It’s a really well-designed app – I was impressed. You can see which lights are in which groups, and even drag them into different groups.
You can then customize the different modes for each group and even rename the modes and the groups.
I just kept it simple and set my main lights’ modes to low, medium, and high.
For my second group of lights, which is a pair of SL-FX+ RGB lights, I set the modes to have different colors and effects.
In the app, you can also see the remaining power of all the lights as percentages.
If you think bending over is disgusting, you can control the lights entirely with the app if you want.
And for those of you who don’t want to bend over and don’t want to use the app, you can enable the Auto On/Off feature.
Auto On/Off
When Auto On/Off is enabled, the lights turn on automatically if they detect motion and if they’ve been off for longer than 2 minutes.
And when the lights have been on with no motion for 2 minutes, they’ll automatically turn off.
For my use cases, because I carry my board into the subway and stuff, and I mostly ride during daytime, I don’t want them turning on automatically. So I personally keep this feature disabled.
But for those of you who only ride at night and only bring the board inside when you’re done with it, this feature would probably be really useful.
Beta
At the moment, ShredLights has labeled these new smart lights as beta, meaning they may still need some testing and refinements. I felt the Auto On/Off was a bit finicky, and the brake lights reacted a little bit slow, but everything else worked fine for me once I learned that the lights need to detect motion to be able to turn on as a group.
In other words, if the lights are off, you need to move the board a little bit before you can turn on the lights as a group.
The lights’ firmware can be updated over the air. So if ShredLights decides to make some improvements in the software, you can get them for free.
Even though these smart lights are in beta, I feel they’re definitely good enough for customers to buy. If they weren’t labeled as beta, I wouldn’t even have a problem with that.
Who they’re for
As I said earlier, ShredLights are not cheap. For the regular ShredLights, I feel they’re a good deal mostly for people who will use them on multiple boards. If you only have one board, nowadays there are several other skateboard lights you can consider.
But when it comes to these smart lights, I don’t know of any other lights that even come close in features and convenience.
Being able to turn on a group of lights using just one light is super convenient and saves time. For that reason alone, I think these lights are worth the premium.
That’s if you want lights on your board for aesthetics or to be more visible to motorists. If you want lights because you want to see the road, a powerful flashlight in your hand is probably better.
But again, if you’re looking for lights for your board that are easy to install and remove, convenient to use, and full of features, I think these smart lights are probably the best right now. By far.
If you want to get them, you can use my referral link for a 10% discount.