Visijax LED Commuter Jacket Review

Simon Tuck

The Visijax LED Commuter Jacket is a waterproof and breathable cycling jacket that has a total of twenty-three LED lights on it. These are situated on the chest, tail and on the arms. Uniquely, the amber arm LEDs are motion activated. The jacket comes in fluorescent yellow or black and is waterproof and breathable

I find with most waterproof jackets that however breathable they are they still tend to trap sweat to some extent. The Visijax’s fabric is breathable and there are vents under the armpits to help with this. The fit is on the generous side, which is perfect for commuting and allows a bit more air in. Sizes are from XS to XXL so you should find the right size. There are toggle adjusters in various places that enable you to get a more customised fit.

The Visijax LED Commuter Jacket should keep you dry and safe on your night time commute

The Visijax jacket has a quality feel, certainly as good as similar jackets in this price range that don’t have the added bonus of lights. There’s a Teflon coating to help keep dirt off too. I found the pockets to be useful, and in sensible places including the internal phone pocket. I didn’t test the waterproofing of the pockets to any extremes, but nothing got wet in the few slight showers I got caught in.

There are twenty-three Led lights on this jacket; five red ones on the back, six white ones in two strips of three on the chest, and six amber ones on each sleeve made up of three on each bicep and three on each tricep. These lights are controlled firstly by the control button on the battery unit. The battery unit lives in a pocket on the chest of the jacket and has a big red button on the front of it to turn the unit on to slow flash, fast flash or constant. I found this unit stuck out a bit and although it’s useful to have it there when turning it on or off I would have preferred it somewhere a bit more discrete, perhaps on the hip. It didn’t do much for the lines of the jacket.

The large control switch is easy to access, but could be more discreetly positioned?

Once turned on, the chest and tail lights will operate at whatever setting you chose. The arm lights are operated by raising your arm to horizontal, then they stay on for 10 seconds so you can put your arm back to the bars and turn whilst the LEDs are still signalling your intention to those in front and behind due to the positioning of the LED strips. This worked nicely, although one arm needed a bit more thought with the movement than the other to get them to switch on.

I also found that over certain types of bump the right arm lights would switch on by themselves, although actually I thought this was quite a good safety feature as the really bad bumps could end up with me moving to the right! I think this was partly due to my position on the bike, I have quite a stretched out position so my arms are almost horizontal out in front of me when I ride. The bumps would have straightened my arms slightly and the motion must have fooled the sensor. There is a 12 month warranty with the Visijax jacket, so if either of these niggles persists then I could contact the supplier.

Operating the sleeve mounted indicators is as simple as raising your arm

As well as a definite sense that I was being given more space by other vehicles I found a benefit that probably wasn’t even considered by the designer. I tend to have my Garmin on a low backlight setting, partly because I don’t want it to stand out to thieves and partly to save the battery. Normally this means that I can’t see the display at night unless I go under a street light. With the Visijax set at constant the chest lights lit up the display nicely and I could see it all the time! This may prove useful if you have a computer without backlight, or even if you needed to read a map or find the right key on your keyring. There are spare batteries available, but you should get around 20 hours run time depending on which mode you use and whether your route has lots of turnings on I guess.

Additionally, you get a free ICEid tag with this jacket. This has a QR code on it that you can register and link to emergency contact details. I found the tag rattled against something on the jacket as I rode so I’d have to modify it in some way or move it. Perhaps an elastic band around it would help. It’s a nice extra anyway and appropriate to the jackets intended use.

The sleeve mounted LEDs are mounted in a plastic strip

In summary the jacket is good quality, waterproof and breathable in comparison with similar jackets of a similar price. The LED’s are a great idea and generally work as intended; they certainly seemed to get me a bit of extra room from cars. The only downside was a slight niggle with the placement of the battery, which only matters if you get a tighter fitting size and don’t wear many layers underneath. The Visijax commuter jacket is perfect for commuting, and several colleagues at work asked me about it. In the black it’s quite discrete until you turn the lights on too.

The Visijax LED Commuter Jacket should keep you dry and safe on your night time commute

The sleeve mounted LEDs are mounted in a plastic strip

The large control switch is easy to access, but could be more discreetly positioned?

The ICEid tag can be accessed by a mobile app

An ICEid tag is included with the Visijax LED Commuter Jacket. in the case of an accident your emergency details can be quickly accessed by the emergency services

Visijax

[rps-include blog=127.0.0.1 post=30824]