Baby Moby Mini-review: Safety 1st Video Monitor
By Ben Robinson on Thursday, June 4th, 2009 at 2:21 PM PST In UK News
Continuing on the Baby Moby category (something I started to discuss how the use of mobile can both impact and enhance life looking after a little ‘un), I wanted to bring you a mini-review of the Safety 1st Video Monitor – something I recently purchased to watch over our baby.
Most of you will know through my previous posts that I was not very happy with the quality of the audio monitor we had – it is a VERY popular brand, but frankly, the tech in it was 10 yrs old! It’s single biggest failure, for a portable product, was the battery life – less than 1 hour!
So when the Safety 1st video monitor came along touting impressive specs (see below) I was skeptical:
- 100% private, no static, no interference
- Remote digital zoom and pan
- DataLock technology means no dropped picture or sound
- Indoor/outdoor range: 650+ ft.
- Auto-night vision
- Auto channel selector
- Secure sound lights
- Low battery/out of range indicators
- Rechargeable parent unit with belt clip
- Baby unit is battery operated or can be plugged in
- WiFi-Friendly Digital 2.4Ghz Frequency
- 1.8″ High-Def Color Screen
- H.264 video encoding
- Remote Digital Zoom & Pan
- Battery Conservation Mode
- Background Noise Elimination
Rather good list, isn’t it!
Overall I’ve been very impressed by the unit – fantastic battery life, even when left for days – the video is good too, and with zero light in the room it can still put together a very reasonable picture. The zoom, although just digital, is very good also.
Minor gripes: well firstly, when it’s in use, there’s a green flashing light around the power button on the baby unit, which means it looks like a beacon in the room – easily remedied with some tape though. Other than that, just the fact that I am having a hard time getting a second camera unit on it’s own to monitor our second baby is a bit of a pain to say the least! If anyone from Safety 1st happens to be reading this, mail me, help me out here with a UK distributor!
In summary – great bit of kit – the secure, WiFi friendly signal is spot-on, not giving my networks any problems at all – I’d say it could be a 9/10 for this unit – a glowing recommendation indeed!
You can pick one up in the UK from Kiddicare or Boots, for example.
If you want to check out the Safety 1st site, check here.
