This is an exceptionally easy-to-use video baby monitor. Plug in the camera and point it where you want it, turn on the monitor, and you're good to go. No complicated menus, no fuss.
Pros:
- Great value - this is a very reasonable price.
- Secure digital transmission that cannot be picked up by the neighbors.
- Good picture image. You can see better the closer the camera is to the baby (obviously), so you're going to get a better image of a sleeping face if the camera is closer rather than mounted on the other side of the room.
- Night vision displays a surprisingly good image, in my opinion.
- Rechargeable lithium ion battery with excellent battery life.
- To accomplish night vision, there is a ring of blue light around the outside edge of the camera. This is an unobtrusive light that should not keep baby awake.
- No flashing lights or anything else on the camera to distract baby.
- Easy to position - just place it and angle the camera - no need for it to be mounted.
- Now comes with a bracket for wall mounting if you want to do that.
- Has a "vox" control that allows you to have the sound and image off until a sound triggers the camera and sound to come back on at the monitor. Good if you have this in your bedroom at night.
- Good transmission from upstairs to downstairs on opposite end of large house, as well as to the backyard.
- Shows transmission signal strength on the monitor just like your cell phone.
- Monitor screen tilts to various angles, so you can put it on the coffee table and adjust it for viewing. Will fit in most pockets.
- Because it really is easy to make this camera mobile (even with the wall mount, it just snaps in), it's useful for parents who don't have baby sleeping in a crib in a separate room. It can be used to watch while baby naps or plays, or if baby goes to bed before you in a co-sleeping situation (obviously, also good for toddlers). It's not limited to crib-mount or wall-mount, so it's functional for a variety of uses.
- Will cycle through channels if you have more than one camera set up.
- Has an internet connection option that you have to buy separately, and which comes with a monthly usage fee. Might be useful if you are operating a daycare and want parents to be able to observe, though?
- Has an AV output to connect to a TV, if you wanted to see baby on the big screen. I haven't tried this, but it might work with your TV's picture-in-picture.
Cons
- The sound is terrible, though this does seem to be a persistent problem for video monitors. The microphone is on the base of the camera and does not point in the direction of the camera, so you are picking up ambient noise rather than noise from the direction of the camera, which could be part of this problem. You will not be able to hear your baby breathing with this camera. It seems to have technology that mutes out low-level repetitive sounds so that you're not getting a lot of noise on the monitor, but this makes the audio from baby's room eerily silent. I had baby asleep in a room with the radio on low, and could not hear the radio even with the monitor volume turned up to max. Oddly, though, I could hear all kinds of sounds from the house through the monitor, even when those sounds did not originate from baby's room. It's extremely weird to hear myself pop open a can of soda in the living room through the monitor, but not be able to hear the radio playing in baby's room. You will be able to hear baby start to cry, but I'd rather hear when baby starts flopping around in bed or making early signs of waking up, so that I can maybe soothe him before he's into full-on crying mode.
- If you want to use the VOX option, you need to turn it on at the camera, not on the monitor, and it's on the bottom of the camera base. This is not user-friendly, because in my experience you probably want to actively watch baby sleeping while you're awake, and then switch to VOX when you go to sleep, but probably do not want to risk waking baby by going into the room to switch the camera over to VOX.
- Would be nice if it had a belt clip. Even though I view it by putting it on a table or counter, for the most part, it's annoying that I can't clip it to me while carrying laundry or walking outside to the yard.
- You do need to remember to turn the volume up each time you turn on the monitor. I get why the volume is always reduced to low when the monitor comes on, because I do like check on the monitor that the camera is positioned right, and you'd get significant feedback that would wake the baby if the volume were up on the monitor. But if you have the camera wall-mounted or always in the same place, I could see that this might be annoying. I do think the camera is advertised as being "mobile," and we do tend to set it up in various locations (even just to point at baby playing in living room while my back is turned making dinner), so this is not a big problem, but it might be nice if the volume reset were an option triggered by a button on the monitor.
- There is some static noise in the picture with the night vision that can sometimes look like baby moving out of the corner of your eye. This is a minor annoyance.
- The battery indicator on the monitor is a bit weird, there's a red light that will start flashing when the battery is low, but the battery indicator on the screen sometimes still shows a mostly full charge.
- Displays a flashing "no signal/VOX mute" message (white letters on black screen) when the camera is off or on VOX mute. On the pro side, it's good to know that your monitor isn't dead. I can see that if you had this in your room at night, though, it might get annoying and you'd probably want to turn it away from you. This one's a toss-up. From a safety standpoint, I think it's good that they have this display, so you don't assume that the screen is black because nothing is going on in baby's room and fail to notice that the monitor's battery died.
We bought this monitor a few months before our 2nd daughter was born. We started using it with our oldest, who is 3. We bought the second camera for the nursery and stopped using the product within a few months. The volume did not pick up sound well, unless my 3 year old was screaming. Each time I turned it on, I had to remember to turn the volume back to maximum. If my husband went into my daughter's room, I could tell that they were talking, but couldn't make out anything that was being said. The video part of the monitor was clear, when it worked. We finally gave up on the monitor after battling with the video freezing to where it held the exact same picture for 5+ minutes, before it would lose picture all together and then come back. It left me with zero confidence that what I was seeing on the monitor was current, and not from 5 minutes ago.
We've since bought another monitor, and although I'm not thrilled with it because of audio, I at least know that the video is good.
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