Safety 1st High-Def Digital Video Monitor

I recently purchased this video monitor for use in our home, to replace the Summer Infant Handheld video monitor we were NOT happy with. I spent hours reading reviews of all the monitors I could find online. I am happy with my purchase. I believe this monitor was a good choice, although it's not perfect. Here's my review:

1. PICTURE. This monitor has by far the best picture of any baby video monitor I have seen. That being said, it is NOT "high-def" to the standards of a high-def television. It is high def compared to other monitors currently available. 5 STARS.

2. SOUND. The sound quality is very good. There is a soft "whoosh" of interference that is constantly in the background when the receiver is on. I have never seen a monitor that didn't have that interference, and this is better than most. The microphone appears to be very sensitive and picks up my child's smallest sounds. 4 STARS.

3. RECEPTION. The reception is unparalleled in my opinion. There is only an occasional blip of interference on one side of the picture that resolves quickly. We walked three houses away on either side of our house before we lost reception. Needless to say the reception inside our home and in our yard is flawless. Even several houses away the reception didn't degrade in quality - it was perfect until it was lost, displaying a lost connection symbol. A few steps back toward our house restored perfect reception again. Additionally, the monitor does not appear to conflict with our wireless internet in any way. 5 STARS.

4. PAN/TILT. This monitor advertises the ability to pan and tilt. If you are picturing being able to remotely control the camera to move in any direction, that's not what it does. From the remote parent unit, you can zoom in on the picture 2X to 4X. While in a zoomed view, you can move right, left, up or down within the picture, just as you would if you zoomed in on a picture from your digital camera. You're not actually seeing anything outside the original view, and the camera is not actually moving. The zoom feature does produce fairly clear images, however, and for us we like being able to see both our kids in their bunk beds in the zoomed out view, and then zoom in on each one individually. I find it slightly irritating that to move within the zoomed view you have to keep pushing the right, left, up or down buttons repeatedly, moving only slightly with each push. I wish you could hold down the button and have it move smoothly until you released the button or reached the edge of the picture. 4 STARS.

5. TIME OUT and OTHER FEATURES. This monitor has an on-screen menu that allows you to set your preferences for the Time Out feature, AUTO level, Night vision (infrared) and adding other cameras. TIME OUT allows you to set how long your want the screen to be on before it automatically shuts off to save battery life - 5 seconds, 15 secs, 25 secs, or OFF which leaves it on until you turn it off. I really like this feature because you can hit the view button to see the picture and then just set it down and it will turn itself off. The sound continues after the screen turns off unless you have set the AUTO LEVEL, which turns the sound off and then turns it on if there is a sound in the room. You can set this to OFF, which keeps the sound on until you turn the unit off, or to level 1, 2 or 3 which makes it more or less sensitive to sound, i.e., it will turn the sound on for smaller noises on level 1 or wait for bigger noises on level 2 or 3. I like this a lot because then you don't have to listen to the "whoosh" of background noise, but you know if your child starts to stir it will turn back on. I am satisfied with how sensitive it is with my 3 year old, I will wait and see how I feel with the baby coming soon, knowing I'll be more paranoid about every noise with him. But so far I like how this works. For NIGHT vision you can turn the infrared on, off, or to auto. I don't know why you would use anything other than auto but I guess it's nice to have the choice. I only have one camera so the part about adding other cameras is not something I can comment on. I will say the menu was only partially intuitive for me, but it didn't hurt me to read the instructions for once and all my questions were answered there. 5 STARS.

6. OTHER. In the area of nit-pickiness, there is a Safety 1st screen that comes on every time you turn the screen on, as if it shows while the unit is booting up. Whether this is necessary or not I don't know, and it does bug a little, but it's only on there for 1 second so it's not that big of a deal. The screen does return to the view you had before, like if you were zoomed in on a certain spot it returns to that, which is nice. You don't have to find the view you want all over again. The screen is pretty small, smaller than our old one, but the picture is so much better it makes up for it. I would rather have a smaller, but better picture than a bigger crappy one. I do like that the handheld receiver is small and portable, easy to carry in your pocket or use the clip provided. Finally, the power button on the camera blinks brightly when the camera is on, which can be annoying in the dark. I taped tin foil over it to cover it up.

Overall, I would recommend this monitor to family and friends without hesitation. I am sure that future models with improve upon this one, and there are some things I would change if I could, but I am convinced this is among the best if not the best baby monitor available today. I love it. Shop around for the best price.

We love this baby monitor. We had an audio monitor for the first 7 months, and I found it frustrating to not be able to see my daughter in her crib--- especially once she became more mobile because she would wake up and stand up in her crib without making much noise. The video monitor has been really helpful- we can see if she's standing or sitting or lying down--- if she's still or moving. The screen is so small that I'm not sure if the high definition feature makes any difference. However, I love that the monitor is small and light enough to slip into my pocket while I move around the house. The rechargable battery works well. I plug it in every night when we are in bed, and I try to plug it in when I'm not using it, but it seems to be able to run on battery power the whole day, even if I don't--- by nighttime it needs to be plugged back in again to recharge, but that works fine for us. There is NO feedback on the audio--- the sound is MUCH better than it was on our audio only monitor. We love this purchase--- my only regrest is that I didn't by this sooner!

So far this has worked as promised. Have not noticed any interference despite multiple wireless devices in my home. It is expensive, but if you only want one that works well this would be it. The only negative would be the small screen size, though this also makes it portable.

Overall the video monitor works great and has no interference. I have the summer infant one & we love it but it's NOT the digital one so it only has 2 channels on it so we can see our neighbor's child on it on the one channel. We didn't mind nor did they BUT when we had our 2nd child, we needed the ability to see both kids from 1 camera so the summer infant one was no longer an option although we LOVED it.
So this camera had a better picture quality than the Summer Infant digital one. Also the Summer Infant digital one was too too bulky and big and the screen size was small.
The one drawback to this monitor is that the screen is not 2.5 like our old Summer Infant one but because it has a nice zoom feature, it made up for it. We really like it so far and there are no interference issues.
The other drawback to this monitor is that when you use it with just the rechargeable batteries, it only allows you to view the baby for a breif few minutes (maybe like 1 or 2 mins max) when you hit the view button. Our Summer Infant one used to keep it on for a bit longer than that so I'm not constantly having to hit the "view" button to see the baby. On the other hand though, you can plug it into the AC adaptor and then you have the ability to view the baby nonstop and the screen doesn't shut off. I suppose they have the auto screen shut off to save batteries.

This video monitor was our 3rd purchase. We first bought Summer's Video Monitor which was returned even before we had the baby. The first reason was because we would pick up or neighbors baby room, second the monitor screen broke very easily.
Next Monitor we purchased was Graco's, we actually used this monitor for the first 9 months, the video clarity was poor, and the parent unit of the monitor would turn off unexpectedly. At first I thought the rechargeable battery was just bad so I purchased a second plug in cord for the unit only to realize that was not actually the issue. After 2 months of dealing with their customer service they gave me a full refund for the return of my unit.
Moving on to the Safety 1st monitor when I first received the monitor the parent screen I though was really small compared to my other two previously owned. However once I turned on the camera and observed the clarity of the unit I was impressed! I would Highly recommended this unit above all other video monitors.
There are some negatives about the unit when hanging the video camera the power cord seems to be located in the wrong spot. It is located on the bottom part of the unit so there is no way to hide the cord. Second is I am still a little confused on how to switch between options.
But even with these two negative factors the video picture by far is the best quality out on the market. Hope this helps. Good Luck!