Seba High Light 80 - Black Inline Skates

Seba High were the first skates designed for freestyle slalom from the ground up and for a good while, THE SKATES to have if someone wanted to compete at high level. It stayed that way up to about year 2010, when carbon revolution hit the market and soon, skates like Seba Igor and Powerslide Hardcore Evo took the top spot. High model proven to be a good choice for freeskaters too, offering a much better precision than more common hardboots while maintaining the good level of durability.

Thanks to being so good all-rounders as well as high level of compatibility with 165mm mount spacing frames (High were among the first skates to offer mounting plates with several threaded holes), these skates remained quite popular even after more advanced freestyle skates became common. Seba High could be found on feet of skaters who practiced slalom, downhill, urban skating and even inline alpine.

After all these years, the skates underwent multiple changes and served as a base for many offshoot models. One of these is High Light, a skate which now essentially replaced original High model, bringing slimmer boot, integrated padding and even better level of control in to play. The end result is a more responsive skate with less weight, without sacrificing any of original’s versatility. Seba scored the goal here – they have managed to create a respectable freetyle slalom skate based of composite shell, something that other brands have tried but most of the time failed. If the price of the full-blown carbon based freestyle models is too step for you, High Light cost about half of that and still bring notable gains in responsiveness and precision over hardboot skates like, for example, FR1.

The ideas that make the skate have been tested thoroughly for almost 15 years by hundreds of thousands of skaters worldwide. Their relatively stiff shell (for a composite material one) have superb durability. The beforementioned metal plates embedded in frame mounting points serve as a reinforcement of boot-frame connection, greatly increasing the solidity of a whole skate. They also offer 7 threaded holes for mounting screw, allowing for a wide range of frame positioning options as well as good compatibility with 165mm mounting standard frames.

Cuff is made from rigid PU material and comes with canting system – the most advanced one found in skates, in fact. It allows for 16 different settings: you can compensate for pronation, put the cuff higher to have more support or move it a bit away from the back of the skate to have more room for forward-back movement.

Outer skin of the boot is made of resistant material with pretty good level of rigidity – it would be insulting to High Light to call them softboots. The key areas are reinforced with rubber-like material cover (toes) and slider (on the outer side) – they make skates longer lasting by protecting them from damage during falls, slides and slalom tricks like toe footgun. The lining foams are shaped to lock the heel in place and deliver excellent level of comfort over the skates. Inside the boot resides insole with arch support. Skates come with shock absorbers (which further enhances their usefulness for freeride).

Lacing holds the foot in place well on its own, especially if lace the boot to the very top. The skate comes with additional Velcro in toe area, giving more snug fit and better control on front wheeling tricks. 45 degree micrometric buckle lock the heel in place and adds a bit to the overall boot rigidity. A solid, high quality traditional buckle with receiver ends the matter of closure.

The frame used in High Light should be well known to any seasoned freeskater – it’s Deluxe V2 frame, one of the best designs available when it comes down to freestyle and freeskating frames. Although the upper shelf skates made by Seba younger sibling, the FR Skates, come with Deluxe V3 frames (which are more delicate design), the V2 is still a great piece of aluminium and performs well in both urban environment and between the cones. As High Light are more of all-rounders than specialized slalom skates, they come with flat setup frame – four wheels on the same level. If you want to skate between cones, you probably want to go for oldschool style rockering achieved by replacing the outer wheels with 4mm smaller ones. All sizes come with 243mm long frame which can fit 80mm diameter wheels.

Ah, wheels – we could say just two words and it would be enough for many skaters: Hyper Concrete. For everyone else – Hyper Concrete were one of the best freeskating wheels, if not the single best freeskating wheels on the market in early 2000’s. A lot of urethane been left on the ground since then and now we have plenty of great options for all skating styles, but the good old Hyper Concretes are still very good option. These wheels have wider, more round profile which rolls a bit slower than “bullet” profile but gives better grip and stability. The freeride fans should be pleased with this selection, but what about slalom skaters? Well, there’s no hiding the fact that HCs aren’t ideal option for this style of skating, but they are not bad either and we can imagine plenty of much, much worse options to have as stock wheels.

The bearings used in current version of High Light are the world-famous Twincam ILQ9 Pro. As far as steel, 608 size bearings go, these are one of the best on the market. They make wheels rolling smoothly and will last for a long time.

If you need any more reasons to add High Light to your basket, know that these are compatible with Seba High custom kits in variety of colours. You can easily make your skates standing out in the crowd!

Seba High Light come highly recommended to all freeskaters who want to have equipment which is “level up” in relation to more popular hardboots, as well as intermediate freestyle slalom skaters who do not want to drop significant amount of money on carbon boots, but still want to have better control on tricks. These skates are versatile, well-made and offering plenty of value. One of few successful attempts at creating freestyle skates with composite boots.