After reading 100's of reviews, I decided on getting this monitor for our soon to be born son. I researched tons of video monitors, and searched high and low, and finally purchased this one and several others. Unfortunately this unit would not work in my situation. We live in a larger 2 story house and i honestly couldn't be any farther from where i needed the camera to where we would be viewing the monitor. Setup was a breeze, video Clarity was AMAZINGLY clear and it blew the sony models we purchased away! None of the units we tried would go the distance we needed, but like i said, this one had the the best video, both day and night.. We contacted the company, they gave us zero hassle about wanting to return the unit, gave us an RA# we ups'd it back and we received a refund check shortly after. The customer service reviews you read on here are 100% right, they stand behind their product and were nice as can be. I wish this unit worked for us.. I would highly recommend this unit to others, as long as distance isn't too great..
While this unit was highly reviewed and probably technically one of the best I've seen, it had a bug that forced me to return it.
Postives: great image quality even in infrared, good price if you need multi camera, extra feature like feeding timer, VOX setting to activate audio and video at separate volume settings, great reseller who was very knowledgable, invested in the product, and helpful, the cameras came preconfigured so if you're technically challenged most of the hard work is done for you. Also all the devices' firmware can be upgraded. This is an important note because nearly all of the negatives I mention below could be remedied with firmware updates.
Negatives: light sensitivity wouldn't adjust in the morning so room registered black even though there was enough light not to need infrared. This ultimately forced us to return it. Not being able to see the kids room in the morning was an issue since our toddler is in a toddler bed and get up in the morning and plays on his own,we need to see where he is. Also, the focal length was not as wide as our other monitor we were replacing. The other one let us see the whole room with the help of a sliding mirror door. This one was nearly 2 times "zoomed" or tighter to use lamans terms. Because the image was closer to begin with it didn't benefit from the zoom feature that could only be accessed by drilling into the menu. Our old monitor may not have been as sharp, but we could digitally zoom by just toggling the volume button to zoom mode to make out where our toddler decided to pass out on the floor for his mid-day nap. This wasn't as much an issue for monitoring the infant's crib, but i imagine it eventually would be when she started to move around as the camera only got half the bed when wedged between the wall and crib rail at the foot end. Also, there was no way to turn off VOX and jut listen to all the sounds in the room. We found it less disturbing to our sleep to just have the noise of the room and hum of the monitor all night long. The VOX was nice when you wanted to turn up the volume so you could hear anything over a movie or something else you might be doing. Also we found the battery to not be as long lasting as our 2 year old model, but I didn't do any real testing so i could be wrong. Improper VOX settings could easily have over used the screen and drained the battery. Lastly and almost just as important as the reason we returned it is that we found the range to be less than half our old digital monitor (yes the old was digital too). We used to be able to visit our neighbors across the street and next door and still hear and if standing in the window watch our baby sleeping. Now i know many would frown on using the monitor as a baby-sitter when you step out of the house even if you are 20 seconds away, however we're not overly protective parents and are also smart enough to know that even 5 seconds away is too much time to stop a toddler from climbing out of his crib. That's why we put him in a toddler bed at 16 months.
If the negatives don't matter to you, i would recommend this unit but you might want to check with the reseller to find out if firmware updates have been made available since I tested the unit June 2010.
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