Best Electric Skateboard Lights 2023 – see and be seen!

What are the best lights for electric skateboards?

The best headlights and taillights for electric skateboarding are the “ShredLights SL-200”. They are very bright, easy to install and remove, and have a long battery life. They are also water-resistant (IP65) and shock and vibration proof. The SL-200s can be mounted on almost every type of board, and are available for a fair price. Check them out at their website.

ShredLights SL-200

If you want to ride your electric skateboard in the dark, lights are absolutely necessary. After a certified helmet and decent protective gear, lights are the most important gear for eskates. I live in central Europe, and enjoy riding my board in the springtime and autumn. The late sunrises and early sunsets make riding without lights almost impossible and definitely dangerous. With the right headlights and taillights, I can ride my electric skateboard safely even at night. I did a lot of research on lights for e-skateboarding. Here are the results.

Why do I need Lights for my Electric Skateboard?

The biggest risk in e-skating is overlooking cracks and holes in the pavement. This can lead to nasty falls. The risk of the of getting hit by a car is also increased when riding in dark conditions. One thing we can do to protect ourself is to use lights. They will light up the street in front of us and make us more visiable to car drivers. After a proper helmet, lights are proably the most important safety gear.

Electric Skateboarding is still kind of a new phenomenon, so there isn’t much empirical data on crashes between e-boards and cars. However, we can take a look at bicycle accidents to give us an idea of what the stats are like. The common factor in nearly every incident in which a cyclist got hit by a car was that the car driver was not aware of the cyclist until it was too late – often not until the moment of impact. One very common accident involves a left/right turning car driver hitting a cyclist simply because they couldn’t see them.

electric skateboards with ligths

Awareness is the key to prevent accidents. The everyday car driver is not accustomed to seeing e-skaters on the road and as a result, e-boarders are not on the driver’s radar.

So let’s all try to ride more safely and increase driver awareness with lights for ourselves and our electric skateboards!

Best Electric Skateboard Lights

ShredLights SL-200

Shed Lights SL-200

The company ShredLights is the most popular when it comes to e-board lights. Their basic model was very successful, but in June 2021 a new and upgraded version entered the market – the ShredLights SL-300. They have white headlights and red taillights available for purchase. The SL-300s now have a battery 1,5x bigger than their predecessor, can stay lit for up to 150 hours and have 300 lumens of maximum brightness per ShredLight. You can attach the lights when you need them, and take them off when you don’t – no tools needed. You can recharge these lights while they are installed on your board (you don’t need to take them off) via a micro USB cable. The ShredLights SL-300 work with almost every type of board.  They are also water-resistant, and come with an IP65 Rating. Years of research and development have brought this combination of reliability and ease of use to a set of trucks near you. I have managed to obtain a discount code for my audience. If you check out with the code “DANIEL10” you get 10% off!

Price: $99.99

Specs

Max Brightness300 lumens
Max Battery Life150 hrs max
Weight50 grams
Water Resistance Rating IP65
Recharge time2 hrs
Warranty90 days
Price $99
Link to Websiteshredlights.com/SL-300
Pros:
+ very bright
+ easily removable
+ versatile – mountable almost any board
+ water-resistant
+ long battery life
Cons
– Pricey

Shredlights SL-1000

Shredlights SL-1000

The Shredlights SL-1000 are the most recent eskate lights out right now. The lights are somewhat similar to their predecessors, the SL-200, but feature some important upgrades. The first thing you will notice is their size, they are significantly bigger than the SL-200. That’s because of the bigger battery and, as the name suggests, the increased luminosity to 1000 lumens. That’s right the lights are 5 times brighter than one SL-200! And the SL-200 were already pretty bright. One SL-1000 could substitute two Sl-200 and still would be brighter. Shredlights also reinforced their S-Lock mounting system. This is a welcomed upgrade since some users claim that their SL-200 shook off after some riding. What sets the two lights also apart is the new aluminum shell, a modular lense cap, a USB-C charging port, and an increased waterproof rating (IPX7).

Overview of the upgrades:

  • 1000 Lumen (5x brighter)
  • Reinforced S-Lock Mounting System
  • Aluminium Shell
  • Mounting a Diffusing Lense is now possible
  • UBS-C Charing port
  • Increased Water Resistance Rating (IPX7)

Specs

Max Brightness1000 lumens
Max Battery Life150 hrs max
Weight50 grams
Water Resistance Rating IPX7
Recharge time2 hrs
Warranty90 days
Price $99
Link to Websiteshredlights.com/SL-1000

Check out our post on the Best Electric Skateboards to buy in 2021

Best Electric Skateboards

ILLume V2 E-board Light

The ILLume V2 Eboard Light is the latest release from GenexDesigns, a one-man 3D printing company that sells its product on Etsy. The company’s founder Sam is an electric skateboard enthusiast and an active forum member of electric.skateboard.builder, one of the largest e-board forums on the internet. Sam regularly interacts with the community with the objective to design and build the best e-skate lights on the market.

The Illume V2 E-board lights are mounted onto the deck, not under it. The mount is a special 3D printed design, and you can purchase the combo set with one headlight and one taillight. The reviews so far are very positive and customers seem to love the product. Another useful feature Sam provides is a lifetime warranty on the 3D printed Mount. He’s so confident in the durability of the mounts, that if they break he will replace them – no questions asked. Sometimes the lights are sold out, but GeneX is constantly working on producing new pieces. You can check them out on Etsy.

  • The Illume V2 Lights offer four lighting modes: Max, Medium, and Low; as well as a strobe effect that flashes on Max brightness for maximum visibility. It has elevation and depression adjustments to control where the light shines. The light can reach as far as 150 feet on the ground and can be seen up to a mile.
  • Brightness: 320 lumens on max, 240 on medium, 180 on low.
  • Battery life: 2 hours on max, up to 8 hours on low, rechargeable to full in less than an hour

Update: now that they have had a little time on the market, it seems that customers love these lights! Almost all of the reviews are very positive.

Price: $59 (combo set)

Specs

Max Brightness320 lumens – headlight
168 lumens – taillight
Max Battery Life8 hrs max – headlight
6 hrs max – taillight
Weight50 grams
Water Resistance Rating IPX5 – headlight
IPX4 – taillight
Recharge timeless than 1 hr
WarrantyLifetime on Mount
Price $59
Link to EtsyILLume V2 E-board Light

Serfas Thunderbolt USB Light

The Serfas Thunderbolt headlights and taillights are very, very bright LEDs. They can be attached to the trucks of your board, or onto your backpack. You can charge the light in 3.5 hours via USB. It is water-resistant and comes with different brightness and flashing options.

However, users claim that the lights don’t have the longest battery life, and even worse – that they don’t warn you when the battery is low. That means there’s a high chance of the battery dying mid-ride, without you realizing that your taillight isn’t working. This could leave you invisible to a driver and increase the chances of an accident.

Check out the headlights here and taillights here on Amazon.

Alternative Lighting Options

Lights on Helmet

A really cheap and convenient way to improve your visibility is to put some lights on your helmet. You don’t have to buy a fancy new LED helmet or bother with installing lights on your electric skateboard – you simply attach the light onto a helmet you already own. The best part of this is that any direction you turn your head in will be illuminated.

There are many different helmet lights out there. In my opinion, the most reliable ones are ShredLights’ helmet lights. You can attach them onto any helmet or curved surface.

Lights on Backpack

Another way to improve your visibility is to attach lights onto your backpack. I do this myself and highly recommend this approach for vertical visibility. Having lights on your e-board is useful, but sometimes that isn’t enough for drivers to notice you. So I recommend attaching lights higher up, such as on your body or backpack.

With e-board lights we ride more safely at night. But it is even more important to protect your body. Check out my article on the best protective gear worth buying for electric skateboarding.

best protective and safety gear for electric skateboarding

E-board Lights and protective gear aren’t the only parts of the equation. To really know how to ride more safely check out my article with 17 insanely reliable safety tips!

electric skateboard safety tips

LED Vest

Another very useful item for nighttime visibility is an LED vest. It ensures that drivers can see you from almost any angle. They’re normally used by runners or cyclists, but in my opinion LED reflective vests are also perfect for electric skateboarders! They offer 360 degrees of visibility using multi-color optic LED lights. You can change the color and flash as well. What’s great about these lights is that drivers can see you without headlights shining directly on you.

It runs on 3 AAA batteries and lasts up to 40 hours. In addition, reflective detailing adds more visibility to this vest. The vest is weather and sweat proof. Its minimal design can be worn over t-shirts or heavier clothing. Check it out here.

LED Helmets

New Lumos Helmets – Lumos Matrix and Lumos Street

Lumos helmets have integrated LEDs on the front and back of the helmet, helping a lot when it comes to being seen at night.

The popular Lumos helmet now has an upgraded model. Lumos offers two models: the Lumos Matrix and the Lumos Street, both of which come with the ability to indicate turns and brake lights. The Matrix has a bigger LED Panel at the back of the helmet with which you can even program your own backlighting modes. The Lumos Street is a bit simpler and has only three LED strips integrated into the back of the helmet. The helmets come with a 10h battery runtime and a remote with which you can indicate the turn signals. Even with all these safety features and tech, the helmet only weighs 580g. That’s damn light! You can also connect to the Lumos app to  track your rides and share data with Apple Health or Google Fit. The best thing about the Lumos helmets is all of the safety certificates. It has 4 of them: CPSC / F1492 / EN1078 / AS2063. 

lumos matrix

Lumos Helmet

The Lumos Helmet has white LEDs on the front and red LEDs on the back. It dramatically increases your visibility and thus automatically ensures a safer ride. Another advantage is that it includes built-in accelerometers in the helmet that can detect acceleration and braking. This makes them act as braking lights – if the accelerometer detects braking, the red backlight on your helmet will glow brighter. You can even indicate your turns with blinking arrows (that will point in the correct direction) on the helmet. It has a ton of positive reviews and customers seem to love this helmet. You can check it out here on Amazon.

T2 Torch Helmet

Like the Lumos Helmet, the Torch bike helmet comes with integrated LEDs. It has white LEDs on the front and red LEDs on the back. It will greatly increase your visibility. You can get it here on Amazon.

LED Armband

This is another very useful tool for vertical visibility. You can attach LED armbands to your arms and increase the visibility of your body. They are available in many colors and are very affordable. This is a very useful tip for cyclers and runners as well. The armband that people like the most is this.

Special Flashlights

For pavement and ground lighting, flashlights are ideal. You could use your normal flashlight or special runner flashlights. For added comfort, the light of runner flashlights is angled down 24 degrees to offer the best lighting as you ride your electric skateboard.

The one I like the most has 300 lumens and lasts 5-6 hours per charge in flashlight mode, and up to 12 in strobe mode. You can check them out here on Amazon.

Go Pro Mount

You could use a GoPro Mount for a POV (Point of View) light on your helmet or on your board. GoPro equipment is normally very water resistant, shockproof and reliable. So I like this alternative a lot! The best part is that you can reuse your existing GoPro mount and don’t need to install something new. Check it out here.

Lights on remote control

With this setup, you can keep the light on your remote control and control brightness if you get into dark areas. It can save you from hitting major potholes and wiping out. It also acts as a wand to let approaching vehicles know you’re there. I found the Serfas Thunderbolt lights perfect for the remote control. They are extremely bright and can be easily recharged via a USB cable. Check them out here on Amazon.

DIY Lights

One of the cheapest but probably the most complicated way to make your board more visible are “do it yourself“ light kits. You can stick LED strips on the underside or even on the grip tape of your eboard. If you build your electric skateboard deck yourself, you can even integrate the lights directly into the deck. For example – between the wood layers, or between carbon or fiberglass layers. You can design what color and brightness the lights shall have, which is the most customizable option.

Underglow effect

Another way to be seen at night is on an electric skateboard with an under-glowing deck. You can very easily attach LED strips to the underside of your deck to increase the visibility of your eboard. Check the price here on Amazon.

What to consider before buying LED lights for your Electric Skateboard

So you want to ride your electric skateboard from dusk till dawn? Then let’s take a look at what you need to consider before buying lights for your electric skateboard. There are many lighting options for skateboards on the market.

What do you want – to see, or to be seen?

Hopefully both! If you are an e-boarder and you want to have safety lights installed on your electric skateboard, you have to consider one thing – do you want to be able to see, or do you want to be seen? There’s a difference between the two.

If you want to be able to see the pavement in the dark, you have to ensure that you install a bright white headlight on your board. That way, you can illuminate your path and see what is waiting in front of your board. However, keep in mind that these headlights have to be pretty powerful and bright. Otherwise – you see nothing, Jon Snow.

If you want to be seen while e-skating, a red tail light is a must. That way, you can avoid being bumped from behind by a car or even a bicycle. Besides taillights there are a lot of other options out there to ensure that you are seen. I have listed all of them in this article.

What lights should I use?

Electric skateboards are relatively new on the market. Hence, we don’t have a lot of companies that are dedicated to manufacturing lighting options especially designed for e-boarders. However, we can take a look at related activities and learn from them.

  • Bike lights
  • Scooter lights
  • Runner lights

There are many options on the market for us. Bike lights have been available for decades and they have evolved ever since. Unfortunately, the majority of bike lights don’t have proper mounting and shockproof abilities that are needed for eboards. But I have listed the most creative mounting option in this article. If you want to know the most essential feature of eboard lights then continue reading.

Luckily, some companies have designed special lights for longboards, skateboards and eboards! The most popular is “Shred Lights”. But “ILLume” and “Koowheel” make eboard lights as well.

Brightness

The most important things to consider for any vehicle driving at night are headlights, other lights for visibility and their brightness.

Headlights are important for the rider to see the road in front of the board, buy other people on the road have to see you as well. So headlights are not only important for our eyesight but also for our visibility too!

For an electric skateboard, even a small stone can be a very dangerous obstacle. To take care of the dangers that are laying ahead of you we want to be sure that the pavement in front of us is safe to ride on.

Lightweight

We also want to make sure that the lights for our electric skateboard are not very heavy. We want something small and especially light.

Waterproof / water resistant

The chances are high that you will eventually ride your electric skateboard on a wet road.  Maybe you decided to take your board to work and it begins to rain during the day. There is a high chance that you have to ride your electric skateboard in the rain. Wet roads should not be an insurmountable obstacle. Your electric skateboard but also your lights and especially headlights should be water resistant, or even better – waterproof. You can check the waterproof or water resistance of your lights with the IP standard.

Vibration-proof

Your lights should be vibration and shock proof as well. This is may not be so obvious at first, but we ride a lot on streets that are not very smooth. Small cracks and holes in the pavement can cause a lot of vibrations.  Electronic parts of electric skateboards are specially designed to be vibration and shock proof. When we look out for lights and headlights they should be shockproof as well.

Easy to install and remove

Another major point to consider is that your lights should be easy to install and remove. If you don’t want to carry your board around all the time, it’s very convenient to lock up your electric skateboard. However, it’s possible to forget to remove the lights. Normally people are nice and won’t steal things from your board, but it happens. My bicycle lights have already been stolen 2 times. So now I’m using lights that are very easy to install and remove, and take them off instantly when I lock up my bicycle. Since I bought easy installable and removable lights I have not needed to buy new ones.

Battery

Will the lights have their own battery or drain the battery of your electric skateboard? In my opinion, it is much more convenient if the headlights have their own battery. This way you’re not dependent on your board battery to see something when you want to kick push or electric skateboard in the dark. Normally a light battery will last a long time, at least for a few night rides. And most of the lights can be charged with a standard USB cable.

Quality – brand reputation

It is important to get head and tail lights from a trustworthy brand. If you’re planning to protect yourself, you don’t want to go cheap. There are some good companies out there with a great reputation.

Price

The price range of electric skateboard lights is big. There are removable bicycle lights on the market for a few dollars and you can find lights for above $100 as well. But you can get good quality, stellar brightness, water-resistant and shockproof lights within your price range. In my opinion, it’s not worth it to go cheap on headlights. Decent headlights that are water resistant, shockproof, built well and have an awesome brightness are worth the price.


Best Electric Skateboards

Check out our articles on the Best Electric Skateboards in each category :

Final thoughts – now it’s your turn.

I have listed many lightning possibilities. I think we all know that visibility is a big safety factor. So please use lights when you are riding at night or dark time. Thank you for reading my article! If I am missing a lightning option please comment below, email me or message me via other channels. Feedback and suggestions are highly appreciated.  

Now I want to hear from you:

Which lightning solution do you like the most?

Let me know by leaving a quick comment.

6 thoughts on “Best Electric Skateboard Lights 2023 – see and be seen!”

  1. For me it’s shred lights all the way they’re small and fit underneath most boards so they don’t ruin the aesthetic of the top, and the quick-release S-lock is super convenient.

    Reply

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