This is such a fantastic monitor and camera pair and I’m honestly pretty astounded by both the quality and features, especially when considering the very reasonable price point. Cliché to say I’m sure, but when comparing monitors over the generations, I feel very lucky to be a parent right now with all this super cool tech gadgetry.
The battery life has been pretty great so far but I frequently plug it back into power instinctually anyway. The range has been great in and around our home. I’ve been able to bring the monitor with me outside for yardwork, in the basement for laundry, etc. and the signal has remained great. The automatic night vision is fantastic and I’d say the clarity in general of the image is really great – perfect for our needs. We haven’t used the lullaby settings much, but there are a bunch of lullabies to choose from (8 or so?). I’ve zip-tied the camera and mount to the end of the SNOO that we are using and I couldn’t be happier with the result.
Took me a sec to figure out the VOX mode, which allows you to set the sensitivity of the monitor turning itself on automatically when it senses audio at the camera source (e.g., a baby crying). By default, the VOX mode is turned off and as a result the monitor will continuously relay audio from the camera, regardless of whether or not you turn the video on/off. When VOX mode is on however, the monitor will automatically put itself into a “sleep” like mode where it turns off both the video and audio relay but then will automatically turn itself back on again once some audio is loud enough to pass the threshold setting – High or Low. These two VOX mode settings – High and Low – are fairly self explanatory but for ease of a scrambling parent: the High setting means the monitor will react with “High sensitivity” to any audio (meaning it takes very little to trigger the sensor – low decibel threshold); the Low setting means the monitor will react with “Low sensitivity” instead (like when a baby is actually outright bawling).
The way I’ve used the VOX setting is roughly this flow:
1) After putting the baby to bed, I’ll turn VOX mode OFF if the baby is still stirring a bit so that I can monitor actively how she’s doing.
2) If she’s settled a bit or if she was pretty well conked out when put down, I put VOX mode to High so that I can monitor for a while any early sleep interruptions.
3) At some point, if I notice the monitor is automatically turning itself back on with false positives, I then set the VOX mode to Low so that I can maximum the monitor’s battery life (if it’s wireless) but still get alerted to when she needs me.
Wish I could find the cameras being listed individually so that I could add more to the series, which the monitor itself allows (up to 4). But it seems like you can only buy them together as a pair (monitor and camera) as of this writing.
Overall, I would highly recommend this monitor and camera to any parent.
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