NTM-910YLW - Sony Baby Call Nursery Monitor
by Sony
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List Price: Our Price: $29.99 You Save: $20.00 (40%) Availability: Usually ships in 6-10 business days Category: Baby Product See more product details |
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Baby Products Reviews of NTM-910YLW - Sony Baby Call Nursery Monitor
Customer Review: Hands down, the best baby monitor
Summary: 5 Stars
February 29, 2004: We've had a couple of baby monitors over the years and this one is far and away the best. We have a 2 story house with full basement and I'm writing this in our basement listening to the baby's room on the second floor. What's good about this monitor:
- Reception is clear, range is long. I haven't found a place yet to make the range alarm go off.
- The voice activated mode is so nice - I've spent the last years of my life listening to the background hiss of the previous monitors. Now it's silent until the baby makes a noise. We keep a sound machine in the baby's room (one that sounds like rain, a stream, etc) and even that is filtered out.
- Rechargable batteries mean no lugging the power adapter from room to room or fishing around for a 9v battery to replace the one that just died. Others have complained about the non-standard batteries being used. I don't know what the problem is - the battery pack is the same as is found in Sony cordless phones and can be found at any store. If you use the monitor as the manual states the battery pack should go a couple of years at least without requiring replacement (based on my experience with Sony cordless phones).
- Easy to change channels. When I saw this had 27 channels I had visions of an tiny dial that was difficult to change. To select a channel you use 3 switches with 3 positions each (red, yellow, or green). The selected channel is visible from the front as 3 color bars so if you can't see the tiny print by each switch you can easily see the colors on the front.
- It's sturdy. At least, it feels sturdy. It appears to be well put together...it doesn't feel cheap.
We have a 2.4GHz cordless phone so this monitor doesn't interfere with the phone. While this monitor is priced on the high side it's definitely worth it. We've been using baby monitors for over 6 years now and will use this one a few more years at least. If you consider how long you'll be using a baby monitor then why go cheap? Get something that will perform well. And not all 900MHz monitors are created equal - we tried one from Safety 1st that didn't work well, even when I had the monitor and transmitter in the same room! That's what I get for buying in the store without researching the models first.
Update: We have a 900 MHz cordless phone and an 802.11g router. We've never experienced any interference between any of the devices. My only complaint is not really a complaint - the thing is so quiet in voice-activated mode that we often inadvertently leave it on all night downstairs, discharging the battery. My wife and I are both still very happy with this monitor and think it's the best we've seen.
Update: August 2005. We're still using the monitor. It still works great. I wish the range was a little better when the receiver is outside (transmitter inside) but it's workable. I still recommend this product.
Customer Review: This is a GREAT monitor !!!! A must buy.
Summary: 5 Stars
We absolutely love this monitor. We've used it since the day we brought our little boy home in Oct. 2003. I knew when it came to monitors I wanted the best so I did lots of research. I was getting extremely frustrated because all of them had terrible reviews.... too much static, hearing other people talking, awful reception... etc... But then I stumbled onto this one and I'm so happy that I did.
It has wonderful reception, I can even hear my son breathing.
There is no static. One time it was kind of funny because all of sudden one day we heard a man and woman talking, and very clearly. I was like, what's going on? We continued to listen and then thought that isn't very nice to eavesdrop :o), so we just changed the channel. Problem solved. ( We had just gotten on someone's cell phone frequency.) And what's great is there is 27 different channels ! You have any interference at all, change the channel.
Also being the 1st time paranoid mother that I am, I had the volume turned almost all the way up in the beginning, afraid that I might not hear him. Mistake! Let's just say that's one sure fire way to not get ANY sleep. We heard every breath, move, and wiggle that he made in dolby STEREO!! So now I have the volume on the second to last . That seems to work perfectly for us.
I also love the display of red dots across the top, to show you the noise your child is making, BRILLIANT! For ones that don't know what I'm talking about, the more noise your baby makes the more dots light up, no noise, no red dots. Because sometimes in the middle of the night, when I'm in my groggy sleepy state, it's comforting for me to look over at the monitor, and see no red dots, then I know my pumpkin is ok.
A couple things I would recommend to SONY :
1. Make the transmitter detachable from the plug-in cord so I can move it around the house with the receiver. Kind of like how you have it set up with the receiver with a rechargeable battery.... that would be perfect.
Because if I want to move the transmitter to a different location in the house, I have to move my crib and unplug it from the wall, etc... too much work.
2. Have a set where you include (2) transmitters. You don't really need another receiver because you can take it where ever you go. The transmitter is what is key. Like I said above, because it's permanently attached to the plug-in cord, you have to unplug it every time to move it. Kind of a pain when it's plugged in behind a crib or dresser.... etc..
Otherwise this is a GREAT GREAT monitor !!
I'd recommend it to every parent with a baby, toddler, child.... etc..
Wonderful product....way to go SONY!!!!!
Customer Review: Weird noises, clicks on and off for no good reason
Summary: 3 Stars
We bought this monitor based on reviews and friends who've had it -- all of whom haven't had trouble with interference. We have a wireless router / home network, two cordless phones and multiple cell phones (some on wifi) in our one-story home, and were worried about finding a monitor that wouldn't have problems with interference from all these devices.
So far, we've haven't had obvious, regular problems with interference from the router or phones. Having multiple channels is a big help, and a major selling point for this monitor.
However, we have had some problems with it:
1. When set to voice activation mode, every so often the monitor decides to click on and off every 5 seconds, regardless whether there's any sound in the nursery. This is a major annoyance at night when we're trying to sleep, because we can hear it clicking on and off. It doesn't happen all the time -- maybe one night out of three. We thought it might be interference from our digital weather station, which receives a signal from the transmitter outside every so often, but haven't been able to fix the issue by turning the weather station off or by changing the channels on the monitor. There's nothing about this in the instructions, so I'm not sure how to troubleshoot it.
2. Every so often, the monitor randomly emits a loud screeching noise. It's not the noise for being out of range, and it's not feedback from being too close to the monitor in the nursery, because the receiver is halfway across the house when this happens. It happens maybe two or three times in a week, but again, this is a huge annoyance whenever it happens, but especially if it happens in the middle of the night. Again, there's nothing in the guide to help troubleshoot.
3. The volume is very touchy. Somewhere in the middle of the dial it suddenly goes from pretty loud to very soft -- not gradually, but at a breakpoint on the dial. This always worries me when I'm adjusting the volume -- if I've crossed that point without any noise coming from the nursery for me to be able to tell, it can be too quiet at night.
4. Battery life isn't great -- if left on all day for a day or two, the battery will run low, and it takes 22 hours to fully charge.
If we were better able to troubleshoot this monitor, I'd recommend it wholeheartedly. No monitor is perfect, of course, but I do wish Sony had better support on their website to deal with issues not mentioned in the instruction guide.
Customer Review: Very good if you stay within about 100 yards
Summary: 3 Stars
This is a good monitor, but I'm not super happy with the range or the way it does multi-channel. I live in the suburbs with each house having about 1/2 acre, so it's not like we're competing with a lot of other city radio traffic.Here are things I really like about it:
- Works perfectly inside the house and within close range.
- It beeps when you take the receiver out of range. Very nice because you know when you've gone too far. Many other monitors don't do this.
- The voice activation feature is awesome. The monitor is completely silent until the baby makes noise. This works great!
- Battery life has been very good. (Ours is usually just plugged in in the house, but we sometimes take it outside and use battery.)
- Very easy to use.
Things I wish it had or wish were different:
- It has 27 channels, but you have to change the channel both on the transmitter and the receiver so they match. Problem is that if the baby's sleeping and I go outside and the monitor starts beeping, then I've got to go back inside, try a different channel on the transmitter, then match it the reciever, then go back outside and see if it's any better. I'm not going to do this 27 times. I really wish you could just push a "channel" button on the receiver and it would autosynch with the transmitter. (Like most cordless phones)
- The reciever is kinda big. Too big really to carry on your person when you're walking around.
- There's no belt clip making it even less useful when out and about.
- There's no vibrate mode also making it bad for when lawn-mowing, etc.
- Needs much better range. Should work perfectly for 1/4 mile. That's really not too much to ask.
Additional features that would make it cool:
- Would love it if it had 2 rows of lights: 1 that represents instantaneous noise level, 1 that is highest-noise-level-achieved-in-the-last-two-minutes. That way if you couldn't hear or see it for a moment, you could look at it and see if your kid had cried in last little while.
In summary, I think this is a good monitor, but could be way better and I would be willing to pay twice this much for a monitor that was really cool and had a small carryable receiver. Hey, guys like gadjets and we don't really care what they cost. Sony, you could do so much better. Get on it!
Customer Review: this monitor is AMAZING!!
Summary: 5 Stars
this monitor is so AWESOME!! i had received the sweet dreams monitor by fisher-price ($39.99) when my oldest daughter was born - i had registered for it on my bru baby registry because of the "talk" feature the parents receiver had (the newer ones now don't have this feature), as well as the music and the projection features. my daughter was soothed by the music and projection, as other reviews have mentioned, HOWEVER, the horrible static the parents receiver had was too much to bare - i had to have the volume up as loud as it could go just to be able to hear my daughter when she cried, and even then i could barely hear her. so when my youngest daughter was born, i decided my sanity couldnt take it any more, and i researched all the monitors i could find to see what other moms were saying about them. of the monitors my local tru sold, this had the highest reviews, so i decided to give it a try. WOW, i am so glad i did! the parents receiver is perfectly quiet - no static at all - when you use the "voice activated" mode: this allows the monitor to only activate when you child is crying/making noise, rather than having to hear any background noise that may be in the room - for example, since this monitor doesnt have any music to soothe my daughter, i went out and purchased a cd player and i play soothing music the entire time shes sleeping, that way when she wakes up, she hears the music, and falls back to sleep on her own. so when the parents receiver is on the "voice activated" mode, i dont hear the music playing, it only turns on when my daughter wakes up and starts making noise. there is also an "on" mode, which allows you to hear any background noise that is in your childs room. an added bonus is that this monitor comes with its own rechargeable batteries for the parents receiver. the only thing that would improve this monitor is if it came with dual receivers, but that wasnt enough for me to give it anything lower than a 5. the parents receiver does come with a belt clip, so you can always carry it around with you AND unlike other parents receivers, the antenna is rounded, so you can hang it on a hook in the bathroom while you are taking a shower! for ten dollars more ($49.99), it is well worth the added investment.