Summer Infant Deluxe Day and Night Handheld Color Video Monitor with 2.5" Screen, Blue
by Summer Infant, Inc.
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List Price: Category: Baby Product See more product details |
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Baby Products Reviews of Summer Infant Deluxe Day and Night Handheld Color Video Monitor with 2.5" Screen, Blue
Customer Review: Excellent monitor and customer service
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this monitor to help me keep tabs on my newborn son as I am a deaf individual. It has been a complete God send as now I dont have to make a trip back and forth to my infants room to ensure he isnt crying.
Pros:
- Screen is 2.5" and plenty bright.
- Nighttime illumination is excellent.
- Monitor has a sleep mode which helps save battery when not plugged in.
- There is a sound meter below the screen which illuminates when a sound is heard by the base unit. THis meter signals the intensity of the sound helping to discern if the child cooing or really screaming. This is also helpful as I dont need keep the display on fulltime thus letting the battery last longer.
- Battery lasts several days if the unit is turned off when not in use.
- Excellent customer support. My first unit was actually defective, a simple call to customer support was all it took and they immediately sent me a replacement unit.
Cons:
- I actually receive images of another infant asleep in its crib from another unit somewhere in my neighborhood. Switching to channel B from channel A fixes this, but its creepy thinking someone else could be watching my child sleep from an outside unit.
- The power cord plugs into the underside of the camera unit, which doesnt let the unit sit completely flat. This probably wont affect users who choose to mount the camera. Its not really a major problem but more of an annoyance.
- The sound meter is very sensitive and will show sharp sounds coming from another room. This is kind of annoying as I work in the kitchen a lot while baby is sleeping and clang pots and pans and whatnot which all are received by the base unit in the back of the house. This constantly makes me turn on the video to verify baby isnt awake. I've begun to figure out which sounds are mine and which belong to the baby.
All in all I am very pleased with this monitor. and would purchase again.
Customer Review: Good monitor - short battery life
Summary: 4 Stars
We are probably the opposite of a lot of parents with our use of the monitor. Some think the video is frivolous and all you need is the audio. Others find the audio monitors to be too sensitive. We were more to the latter. The microphone on the monitor is soooo sensitive that any sniffle, whimper or cry sounds 10 times worse than it is. Our house is small enough that we can hear our daughter cry without a monitor so we keep the volume turned off. Still the led lights give you an idea of how much noise is in the room, and we feel very reassured by the video. Being able to see her without going in and disturbing her more has been a great help in deciding when to give our daughter a chance to soothe herself and when we need to go in and help her calm down. Her body language tells as much about her needs as her cry.
The monitor is decent. It isn't a great picture, especially in the dark. The color in the day is lousy, but we didn't need pretty pictures in this monitor. We wanted mobility. For this it has been good.
One down side for us is the short battery life. The auto-off screen when the monitor is running on battery is a good feature, but the monitor still runs out of juice really quickly. We have had it 4 or 5 months, and it gets worse as time goes by. Still, it does the trick.
Another downside is the mount. It isn't a very solid mount for the camera. So far, we haven't even hung it on the wall. We have it taped to a tripod away from our daughter's crib which makes it portable.
All in all, we like the camera.
UPDATE - 10 Nov 2010
2+ years later we are still using this camera. It was a good buy. I bought a $10 replacement battery and have not had trouble since. The picture is not what it used to be, but it still does the trick. Of course, we don't use it nearly as much now.
Customer Review: Video monitor is a must have and this one is awesome
Summary: 4 Stars
A number of people told me that having a video monitor was unnecessary and kinda made me feel silly for wanting one for my first baby, but I am SO glad we have it and that we picked this one. My baby has had some health issues, including acid reflux, and being able to see his behavior when sleeping has been very helpful in gauging how he's feeling and if his medications should be adjusted and whatnot. Even when he slept in his bassinet in our room, I used this monitor so I wouldn't have to get out of bed to check on him (I'm blind without my glasses.) I could just roll over and look at the monitor even though it was dark in our room. I also love being able to see how cute my baby is when he's sleeping. He sleeps on him tummy now with his butt in the air, and it's just so adorable. It's also very nice when we're watching TV, we can have the volume completely down and still be able to monitor him visually. I also use it when I shower so I can keep an eye on my baby and not worry that I can't hear him.
My only complaints are the somewhat poor range on the monitor. You can get static (both audible and visual) in certain parts of our 2,000 sq ft home. But, if I just turn it one way or the other, it usually goes away. Also, my baby sleeps with a fan in his room and I wish the microphone had a gate on it that would allow you determine how sensitive the microphone is. But it doesn't have one, so at night we have to hear the whir of the fan through the monitor. It doesn't sound horrible and I sleep with a fan too, so the sounds just blend together.
One thing to keep in mind is how easy it is to adjust the volume on this brand. I noticed that some of the other styles have menus you have to go into to adjust the volume and I think that would be very annoying.
This monitor is awesome and well worth the money.
Customer Review: Reliable and durable
Summary: 5 Stars
We bought this monitor with some debate due to it's cost and some of the negative reviews that were on Amazon. But we decided to take our chances and get it. We are very glad that we did.
This monitor has been a trooper. Our little guy is over a year old now and not only did this monitor survive some superficial roughing up when he got hold of it, but we are very sure we could use this for our second child if we have one. The battery is still the original that came with it and it has never died on us even when left on for a hours at a time. We leave it on and unplugged when he's napping and when he goes to bed up until the time we go to bed, a good four to five hours.
The picture clarity is great when there is enough light, but when it gets dark it can be a bit hard to see the baby in the crib, but you CAN see them. Hey it's a low grade form of night vision, what do you expect? There is very little static and the picture comes through anywhere in the house and even outside the house; noting we have a poured concrete and steel house, wireless internet and 900 and 2.4 Mhz cordless phones. These things do not deter the transmission of the picture.
The fact that you can attach this monitor to your side is a plus as well. And getting a video monitor is so much better because you don't have to walk into the room to check on your baby and disturb it's sleep. Or, god forbid, wake the little monster. They need their sleep...and so do you. All I can say to those who had issues with their units is that either they got a defective one, or they didn't read the directions. We are very happy with this monitor and it's performance and would certainly buy it again. Very much worth the money.
Customer Review: It's great if you want to see the neighbor's baby instead of yours
Summary: 2 Stars
We initially purchased this item shortly after my son was born. At the time we lived in a one-story small house (2400sqf) on the outskirts of town. Since we didn't have any neighbors close by and the house was small, the monitor worked flawlessly. Several months ago we moved into a larger two-story house in the middle of a neighborhood, with our bedroom on the ground level and the nursery on the upper.
This is where it became spooky. The day we moved in, we were positioning the furniture and monitor in the new nursery. We plugged in the camera, and checked that hand-held to make sure the viewing angle was okay. We then decided to unplug the camera to use a different outlet, and the instant we unplugged it the picture of our child disappeared (obviously) but we were then able to see one of our neighbor's babies lying in their crib. Needless to say, that was a bit disturbing. We switched frequensies, but we couldn't get over the fact that someone else might be able to see our son.
Even if the other baby had not shown up on our monitor, we soon found that we couldn't use this monitor in our new house due to the fact of a high amount of interference when we tried to use it in our bedroom. With the layout of the new house (the nursery is on the opposite side of the house and on a differnet floor) the unit just isn't strong enough to cover the distance.
On a positive note, while in our old house we had very little interference and the picture was great. If we cranked the volume up, we could easily hear our baby breathing. In the new house, the video of the neighbor's child that first night was crystal clear. Just thinking about it, though, creeps me out....