The invisible fence has come a long way. There’s no more entrenching electric wire to send a radio signal to a dog’s shock collar—today’s products use apps and GPS to establish a virtual fence and connect to your dog's collar. The $999 SpotOn GPS Dog Fence is one of the most expensive options in this category, but unlike the $599 Halo Collar 4, it doesn't require a subscription fee—as long as your dog stays within the boundaries you define. Just remember that any virtual GPS fence requires extensive training; without it, pups won’t truly get the protection the collar affords. If you're not up for that, consider a dedicated GPS pet location tracker like our Editor’s Choice, the Fi Smart Dog Collar Series 3 ($19 per month).

Hardware and Subscriptions: Membership Is Optional

The SpotOn is a half-pound GPS collar meant for dogs weighing 15 pounds or more. It comes in one color (gray) and three sizes: small (for necks measuring 10 to 14 inches in circumference), medium (12 to 18 inches), or large (19 to 26 inches). It’s not pretty, but neither is the Halo when you remove the fabric cover.

The collar is made in America, but works in the US and Canada via a network of 128 GPS satellites. All sizes cost $999, but if you visit the SpotOn site and sign up, you'll be sent a constant barrage of discounts offering around $60 off. If you have multiple dogs, extra collars come with a $100 discount.

(Credit: Eric Griffith)

With most GPS collars, like the Fi Series 3, tracking a missing dog is the whole point. With SpotOn, the idea is to keep them home. SpotOn lets you set up an unlimited number of virtual fences at no additional cost, but tracking a mutt on the lam is only an option if you pay extra. Subscribing to a SpotOn tracking subscription activates a SIM card in the collar that connects it to the nearest LTE-M cellular network (regardless of carrier) for communication with your phone. That plan costs $9.95 per month, $95.40 per year, or $142.80 for two years (which saves you $96 versus paying monthly). The latter two plans come with a 90-day free trial.

If you turn the subscription on, you (eventually) get notified when the dog steps out of the virtual fence. It will then update your dog's whereabouts in the app every six seconds.

The SpotOn collar comes with a 90-day “no-hassle” return option if you buy directly from the company website. SpotOn has to approve the return and will first give you a free 30-minute consultation with a certified trainer to avoid that outcome. Third-party purchase returns (such as from Amazon) must go through the retailer. SpotOn offers a one-year warranty that includes a “one-time, no-questions-asked refurbished warranty repair”—including a replacement if a collar is lost and can’t be located via GPS. 

Rated IP67 against dust and water, the SpotOn collar is safe for dogs to wear while swimming. The battery life is rated at 26 hours. In reality, it runs for a little less, so expect to charge it nightly in the included proprietary charging cradle; no USB-C or plug-in option is available directly on the collar. If needed, you can buy replacement straps for $49.95.

For comparison, the Halo Collar 4 comes in multiple colors in just one size that you can personalize to any dog over 10 pounds with a neck size of 8 to 30 inches. It's lighter than the SpotOn by 1.5 ounces and costs less up front, but it requires a subscription to operate. If you subscribe to Halo’s least expensive Bronze plan, which includes five virtual fences and real-time location tracking, and prepay for two years ($191.76), it will take about four years to cost as much as the SpotOn.

Setup and Usage: Fences and Feedback

The collar works with the SpotOn GPS Fence app (available for Android and iOS). A Bluetooth connection is necessary for creating and managing virtual fences, changing collar settings, and training your dog on the system. Otherwise, the SpotOn system is entirely GPS-based, and the collar does not require a cellular or Bluetooth connection to keep your dog contained in the virtual fence.

The old invisible fence with the buried wire would send a radio signal to a collar, which delivered feedback in the form of a shock. SpotOn’s collar can do the same shock (aka “static,” which sounds nicer in the marketing), but offers other types of feedback to a dog straying too close to the boundary line of a virtual fence. Additional feedback options include sounds and vibrations. 

Fences created in the SpotOn app must be about a half acre in size, minimum, but can take on almost any shape. One fence can have as many as 1,500 virtual fence “posts” for shaping. You may also overlap fences to handle weirdly shaped areas of your property. You can create a fence within a fence, thus making keep-out zones, such as your barn or a pond. You can generate as many virtual fences as needed in the app, and not all have to be on your property. Make them for locations like work, the dog park, a friend’s house—any place the dog might visit and needs to learn boundaries. 

To create a virtual fence, you walk the perimeter with the collar in one hand, with the antenna pointed up, and the app running on your smartphone in the other. It'll “set” fence posts as you go. You can pause it when you hit an obstacle (like a pond) and resume again on the other side; this is also useful for setting the fence on a larger property. The narrowest point in a fence should be 80 feet wide and 15 feet from dangerous spots like driveways, so this doesn’t always work for people with small yards. The Halo supports smaller virtual fences (30 by 30 feet minimum), but they can't overlap.

(Credit: SpotOn/PCMag)

You should always set a home zone on the SpotOn app so your dogs don’t get feedback in the house. However, there’s conflicting info on this—the website says the collar has a patented indoor detection mode to avoid warnings. The SpotOn app says that if you don’t set a home zone, you should remove the collar whenever they come inside, as GPS is unreliable under a roof because the collar's antenna needs unobstructed satellite views for the best performance. (In fact, the antenna on the collar should be positioned upward, on the back of the dog's neck, which isn’t hard because it's designed so that the antenna section is opposite the heavy electronics.) 

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At least once in testing, the app warned me that my testing companion, Clark, had wandered outside the fence—even though the collar itself was on my desk. That lends credence to the need to take it off when inside. SpotOn does not support Wi-Fi or use your home router to establish any kind of safe perimeter like other devices such as the Fi or the Halo.

If you’re going to leave a geofence for a walk on a leash, you have to power down or remove the SpotOn collar if you’re crossing the boundary. Halo has a walk option in the app to make this happen. 

Both the SpotOn and Halo collars are prone to a bit of “fence drift” where the boundaries you create aren’t exact when dogs approach—not too shocking since consumer GPS isn’t exactly needle-in-a-haystack precise. It’s another reason SpotOn and Halo are better for big properties that aren’t close to dangerous areas like roads.

Unlike the Halo, which has several sound options (including recordings of Cesar Milan), the SpotOn will play just a few tones. The first alert sound will happen about 10 feet from the virtual fence, and at five feet, a warning tone is sounded. The latter sounds like the start of the Amber Alert from my phone, which seems a bit much for a dog’s sensitive ears. The volume on SpotOn has been “optimized for dogs and [is] not adjustable,” according to the company FAQ.

Static is not on by default because you must install the contact points that deliver the shock. The SpotOn collar comes with two sets of contact points, one about an inch long for dogs with dense fur coats. There are 30 levels of static, double that of the Halo’s 15. If you don’t want your dog to get shocked, don’t install the tips. 

(Credit: Eric Griffith)

I didn't want to try the static option on my dog, so I used myself as the test subject instead. I tried the included contact point tester, a plastic tool that acts as a wrench to tighten or loosen the tips and also serves up a light to indicate that juice is flowing to the contacts. The light conveys the static level to an extent; it's faint at level one, but just about everything after level seven appears to be the same bright orange. Testing happens via the app by clicking the Test Correction Level button under Collar Options. 

The app wouldn’t let me turn on static correction until I viewed the guide on training the dog with the collar. That’s a smart move. The goal is to get your dog to react to an alert tone first. Once the dog knows the sound, if that doesn’t prevent escape, then you escalate to adding vibration and, for the toughest, bull-headed canines, the static option with the contact points. When I did try it on myself, I didn’t like it. Shocking, I know. 

(Credit: Eric Griffith)

SpotOn offers an off-grid mode that lets you create an offline fence in a location with no cell or internet connection. You have to have your smartphone with you, with Bluetooth on to connect to the collar, and the app running. Upon arrival in a new place, you can walk out a new perimeter and temporarily save it to the collar. The offline fence will then contain your dog even when they are outside the Bluetooth range of your phone. Off-grid works without paying extra for the cellular tracking service; it only uses GPS. You can only create one temporary fence in off-grid mode, and it will not be saved when you deactivate the feature.

Training Is Key

Remember, all the feedback in the world is meaningless if the dog doesn’t understand it, and that’s where the training comes in. A dog won't know what the feedback means without guidance from its owner or guardian. 

Halo has much more information on training for pet owners. SpotOn has less, but still enough, and there are plenty of independent YouTubers out there with instructions and tips. The company claims two 15-minute sessions daily for about a week is usually enough to train a dog on the boundaries, though some canines may require weeks of training.

(Credit: Eric Griffith)

As I did with the Halo, I worked with Clark three times a day, for 10 to 15 minutes each session for about a week. The collar reliably delivered feedback—I couldn't hear it at a distance, but I could see Clark react. With my smaller, already fenced-in yard, it was difficult to gauge entirely if Clark would be safe if the gates were left open, relying only on SpotOn boundaries.

Any success you have with the SpotOn will depend on your dog's temperament and smarts, as well as your patience when training.

Verdict: A Reliable Virtual Fence for Dedicated Pet Parents

The SpotOn GPS Dog Fence comes at a hefty up-front cost, but it offers excellent GPS fencing and doesn't require a subscription unless you need to actively track your dog's location. The Halo Collar 4 supports smaller dogs and boundary areas, but the SpotOn lets you set up unlimited virtual fences at no additional cost, and those boundaries can overlap, allowing you to create keep-out zones within safe areas. Both are solid choices if you want to give your dog the freedom to safely roam a wide-open space. If you're more interested in keeping tabs on your pup's whereabouts in case they go missing, we recommend a dedicated pet location tracker like the Fi Series 3, which remains our Editors' Choice for GPS dog collars.