Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
675 of 688 people found the following review helpful.
This monitor is a MUST have! I am a picky Mom! Read here to see what others didn't post.
By maxdmia
Ok, I have a type "A" personailty and I reserched the heck out of several monitors. I have been shopping around for the "perfect" monitor for months buying and returning until I have found what I want. (My son is 6 months old) I have tried several brands/types of video monitors such as Sony, Summer Infant monitors, and a Costco brand that can be used via the internet and Iphone/Ipad2. This Motorola monitor is the BEST that I have found. Money was not an issue for me as I wanted a video/audio monitor that just worked well. I do recommend spending a little more and buying the 3.5 inch monitor.Ok, what to say that has not been covered in other positive posts.....The resolution at night is awesome as I can see my baby breathing. (VERY important) I can see everything in great detail. The camera views best when mounted on the wall close to the crib-this way it can scan straight down and straight up viewing the entire crib and room. I originally placed it on a "wall shelf" but when I scanned down I could see a bit of the shelf instead of the entire crib. Also important when you have a child that rolls all over the crib as they sleep! You need to see every inch of the crib. (On the back of the camera is a tiny hole to hang on a nail or screw.) I hung mine on my wall just above a shelf and to blend it in I placed stuffed animals on either side-very nice looking and discreet. I painted the white cord to match the wall to blend it in. When scanning from the monitor it makes absolutely no noise and doesn't wake the baby. The sound is great!I am a light sleeper and wake at his every roll and whimper at night. I used to get NO sleep. With this monitor I can put the volume up loud to hear every little move or put the volume down low to only wake when he cries loudly. The monitor has a light indicator on top to inform you of the "loudness" of the baby's cry. Also, I live in a two story home with wireless everything (my house is Grand Central with all the wireless technology.) and this monitor does great with cell phone, wireless router, and computer reception. There is no interference at all. The battery on the monitor, when fully charged, lasts 8 to 10 hours but I recommend it plugged in to the power cord at night. There is no delay. What you see is what is happening, allowing you to get to your baby fast!The only thing I would add is a clip to the monitor to be able to strap it to you and the time. Sometimes I like to know what time it is for feeding purposes. Awsome monitor and well worth the money as now I finally get some sleep and peace of mind at night!!!Update****02/16/13I have now owned this monitor for year or so, and have recently encountered more problems.- The night vision on one of the cameras has. I can barely see my son anymore, and if he didn't have dark hair, I am not sure I would even know where he was in the crib.- The battery life of the parent unit is also dying. It used to hold a charge for about 5 hours, and now the charge lasts maybe 1 hour.
164 of 166 people found the following review helpful.
Best monitor on the market
By J. D. Robinson
This monitor is amazing. Over the last 3 and a half years I have bought and returned probably 5 monitors. We ended up with a Summer monitor for the first 2.5 years, then it finally broke and replaced it with a Summer Bestview. The only problem is that model (bought in January 2011) is discontinued and with a second baby on the way we need a second camera which is no longer available. I have been researching for weeks now, reading every review on Amazon and other sites and decided to order the Motorola MBP36.When I wrote this review a few weeks ago, a second monitor was not available anywhere. Although they are not available on Amazon yet (as of 9/1/2011), they are available online at other major baby stores where you "buy" stuff for babies (hint hint). I just ordered one today, which now makes this the perfect monitor.PROS- LCD UnitFirst of all, the LCD screen is huge. It is 3.5" diagonally. For reference, and iPhone is also 3.5". The aspect ratio is a bit more square than an iPhone, but you get the idea. The unit is very thin, its about as thick as a typical men's wallet. It is lightweight, has a nice kick stand that seems very sturdy and nice, grippy rubber feet on the bottom that are very unobtrusive but work great. There is an antenna across the top back that can flip up if you need it to get better reception, but we have never needed it, even when two floors away. There are 4 buttons on each side of the screen, 4 directional that control camera, volume, menu navigation, a menu button, an "ok" button, a video on/off button and a microphone button. They are well placed, it is not a huge problem to have to hit the menu to get to volume, we had to do the same on the Summer Bestview and it is the first menu option (i.e. hit the menu button and it is already in the volume option, so just hit up/down from there).As you can tell from the pictures, the unit has pretty good industrial design too, which seems to be the trend in baby monitors now. Battery life is decent, it works enough to have a daytime nap and then use it again in the evening without charging in between. Your not going to get more than 3-4 hours out of it if you use the LCD a lot though. There is a series of LEDs across the top that indicate how much noise your kids are making, and there is a very accurate temperature display (based on reviews, sounds like Samsung temp is off by 10 degrees, but this unit matches the thermostat outside the room so I'm assuming spot on).- CameraThe ability to scan and pan is great, very quiet and no likely to disrupt your kid. There is a small green LED on the front of the camera, but you can't see the infrared lights in the dark (unlike our Summer Bestview which looks like 10 little LEDs in the dark). The zoom is not great, kind of hard to get to on the menu and it is only a digital zoom that crops the center of the picture and doubles it. It is small and can be placed pretty much anywhere. The picture that it sends to the handheld unit is great (as far as baby monitors go). It isn't going to win a technical Oscar, but it is very clear. The huge LCD screen helps. In daylight it is incredibly crisp and vibrant. I haven't noticed any interference with WiFi, but haven't really tested either. It operates at 2.4GHz and we mostly have 5Ghz 802.11n devices, so we are in a different bandwidth that doesn't conflict.If you have additional cameras (up to 4), you can set the monitor to manually scan through them, it will stay on each one for 12 seconds based on what it says in the manual. You can have up to 4 cameras, but there is no ability to see multiple ones on the the screen at once (like the Lorex).CONSI guess a minor quibble might be that you can't put batteries in the camera, but the old monitor had this functionality and we never used it in 2.5 years so not an issue for me. One other possible thing worth mentioning is that the monitor unit takes a proprietary battery, very similar to what a lot of cordless phones have. One other minor thing worth mentioning is that the infrared LEDs at night are not very bright from 10 feet away, we are just going to put a shelf near our 3 year olds bed so that it will be closer (think of the LEDs around the camera as flashlights for night vision).I can say without reservation that this thing deserves 5 stars after a 3 full weeks with it. My wife loves the size of the screen, the light weight monitor, the portability, ease of use etc. Its a very cool product.*Update 8/24/2011* minor spelling correction (sales to sails) and added clarifying point in final paragraph "even though it supports 4 cameras", which was already mentioned above but needed reiterating.*Update 9/1/2011* Removed comments about additional cameras not being available since I bought one today. Added a few minor updates to the review.
85 of 92 people found the following review helpful.
This is the winner after trying two other similar monitors
By Babyboojk
First of all, I've tried 3 different baby monitors with the screen. What I expected/wanted from the baby monitors are these:1) Good quality of the screen so I can see my baby (even breathing: chest going up and down at night)2) Easy of use (I just hate anything that is a pain to use)3) Camera pan/zoom option (My baby moves around and I like having camera close to him, so this is a really good feature to have)So, let me explain how those three monitors performed.First one is Motorola Digital Video Baby Monitor with 3.5 Inch Color LCD Screen (At Amazon regular price: 229.99)This one is the winner. It has a good picture quality, zoom in, is really easy to use. That's it. It satisfied all those three categories. Other feature I also liked but not necessary are,, talk back, lullaby (well, kinda useless for my baby). I wish it was made with a little better quality plastic (compared to other two I've tried) and wish it had clock on the screen, which is very helpful at night when the baby wakes up! One thing I noticed though, was that battery of parent unit goes out SO QUICK when it is not plugged in, and use rechargeable battery.Second one is Samsung Wireless Video Security Monitoring System w/ 3.5" LCD (At Amazon regular price: 179)This one,, sigh... I really wanted to love it... I always trust Samsung quality. and YES, it comes up to that quality standard (both physical material that is made out of, and some great added features) that I look for. BUT there are a few cons that I just could not live with.First of all, this one is LOADED with FEATURES. It has the best quality screen (almost like a digital camera! which is very impressive for a baby monitor! Both day and night time, it showed consistent great quality), talk back, Date/Time, viewable from the computer, etc etc... Just a lot!However what threw me off was that vibration/beep when the parents unit wakes up from the sleep mode. Basically this thing goes to sleep when the baby does not make a sound or makes a sound that's not too alarming. It is trying to give parents some time to sleep unless baby cries so much. HOWEVER, I noticed that it did not pick up small cries that I also wanted to hear. And that VIOLENT vibration would just startle me every time the unit wakes itself from the sleep mode. I almost had heart attack every time it did it. I mean it is VIOLENT vibration. It is way too powerful and hear this, you can not control it, nor you can turn it off. You can either choose between vibration or loud beep, which is also annoying. I guess they did not test this out themselves. If they had a baby, they would know that just sound of a baby crying will wake parents up.Another thing that made me return this unit: lack of zoom and pan feature. OK. I should have read before purchasing this one, but so sad it did not have this feature, while having all other useless ones?! weird.The Last thing I wanna point out on this: freaking annoying to go around the menu and hard to use! This thing is loaded with features (a lot of not so necessary) and but failed to organize it successfully under the menu. Also, it has way too many buttons around the parents unit that I do not think are the "most-used" buttons for parents. Once again, did they really test this thing with real parents with real babies?!! It's like having a cell phone, trying to figure out where/what category the feature I want to use might be hidden under. A lot of them were where it did not make sense to me. Basically, very annoying to use.Third one is Summer Infant Best View Handheld Color Video Monitor (At Amazon regular price: 199.99)I had a high hope for this one, as I heard good things about Summer Infant baby monitors. I will make it short. It has the best "Ease of use" amongst all three. The parents unit had buttons (shapes and placements) that made most sense out of three I've tried. Plastic (or any other material that were used) quality was great. It does not have bells and whistles as other ones, such as talk back, lullaby, etc etc. It also has zoom in/panning feature that is very helpful.BUT, this is why I returned this thing: the BAD, BAD, I mean BAAAAAAAAAAAD screen quality, especially at night. It made my baby look like those "ghost pictures" people take. Like those grainy pictures that people claim that they have captured the ghost in the picture... Get what I mean? It is super grainy I could not recognize my own baby's face! My baby's face filled up the whole screen (I'm saying this to say that I did not have the camera far from my baby) but still I had to guess, oh those two black blobs would be his eyes.. and another one below them is his nose?? no,, mouth??? Yes, basically, if you are looking for a baby monitor with a screen, why would you waste money on a screen that is useless? Move onto other monitors.Finally, after using three, I realized that Motorolla had to be the winner, and I've been using it over a month and very pleased with it. Hope my review helped.
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PROBLEMS WITH FOSCAM F18905W
Good nite vision
Not a real PTZ, software lacking
