Summer Infant Sleek and Secure Handheld Color Video Monitor, Grey Review

I would say that I expected a better monitor for the price. The night vision is horrible. If you're interested in one of these video monitors, look at the Summer Best View monitor. It rocks!!
This is our first video monitor, which we got for use with our second child after using a Graco Vibe audio-only monitor with our first child. Having a video monitor is really handy, it does an excellent job of keeping us out of the baby's room. As a concerned parent, it's really easy to want to go in and make sure a young baby is OK, which very often ends up disturbing the baby. Instead, I can grab this monitor and see that my little girl is ok.



Having not used other video monitors, it's hard to make a comparative review, but I did do a fair bit of research comparing other models with this one, there's a few things that made this model an easy choice:

- Small, pocket-size monitor

- Support for up-to four cameras

- Secure audio/video feed



As another reviewer noted, the mounting options are a bit limited, you can either mount it on the wall with a screw w/ wall anchor or sit it on a shelf or another level surface. I chose to mount my two cameras on the wall. Although I chose not to use the cheapy wall anchor included and used a nicer one from the local hardware store. If you turn the volume all the way down on the monitor, you can hold the monitor in one hand and figure out camera placement with the other hand. Like was suggested in the manual, I put a teddy-bear where baby will sleep in the crib. It helps make it easy to figure out placement of the camera. One thing I liked about the cameras and monitor is that they come with pretty long cables. Too many electronics come with shorty cables, not this one.



One thing I was only moderately impressed with was the video quality, the video is a little grainy, washed-out and has an almost slow-mo feel since it's not a high frame-rate, maybe 5 frames per second. That said, the most important feature for a baby video monitor, I think the night-vision works fairly well. I'm able to see that my baby is sleeping, moving or not moving. I mounted the camera 3-4 feet from the baby and if I look closely, I can usually see if her eyes are open or closed, even with the night vision.



We mounted the other camera in my older daughter's room, allowing us to visually check on either child with a push of a button, which is nothing short of awesome. It was easy to add too, press a few buttons, turn on the second camera and voila! You can even use the scan feature which swaps between the monitors every 8 seconds. We have white noise going in each child's room, so when the camera swaps between room, the audio swaps too. The one thing to be aware of is that the audio swap can be distracting if you're trying to sleep. For that reason, we still use the Graco audio monitor in one room and the video monitor with audio in the other.



I've only had this monitor a couple weeks, so I can't comment on the battery lifetime, but the battery seems to last throughout the day of normal use, charging overnight.



I'd probably have given this 4.5 stars if it was possible, but chose to go with 5 to offset some of the other reviews which seem too low due to abnormal breakage or something that doesn't necessarily directly relate to the product features/quality.
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