Having a baby monitor with a camera sounded exciting. We could check on our little guy on the monitor before coming in the room to make sure he was really awake and not just talking in his sleep. Checking on him if he was too quiet would have been nice also. Unfortunately, we did not have the great experiences the other reviewers had. Although we really wish we could have said the monitor was super, we cannot.First, the monitor came to us broken. It had a white screen and only could be turned off by taking out the battery. I called the customer support line a few times and they were trying to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong to give it a white screen. On my third call, I finally got them to send me the return authorization form by email so I can get the monitor repaired. I promptly filled it out and sent it to them (having to pay the postage myself).
Did someone email me to let me know if/when I would be getting my replacement? No.
Did I have to wait over a month to get my replacement? You bet!
My monitor came back to me without the piece that is used to load the pictures on a computer. Disappointing, but it gets worse.
When we tried the monitor out it was really cool. The monitor worked for about four days before breaking again. We turned it on one night only to find a big black blob in the middle of the screen. Only the bottom 10-20% of the screen was barely visible and the top was whitewashed, save for the big blob.
I emailed, waited two working days (they are supposed to get back to you within one day) and then called. I was told it looks like the baby monitor was dropped and has a crack in it, so the warrantee would not cover this. I told the lady that it did not fall but she told me "you have to see it from our point of view that it looks cracked."
Let's imagine it did fall. Would falling on a thick carpet really damage this monitor? And if it would, is this the type of product you really would want to have? Of course, no one tries to drop their cell phone, but if they all broke from falling once, we would be more than dissatisfied with the quality and durability.
Instillation was fairly intuitive. The battery was already partially charged on the monitor so I was able to plug in the camera and get an image right away. Lorex is easy enough, too, but with Lorex you have to pair the camera with the monitor, and it takes a bit of time to read the instructions.
The Levana camera is small and pivots and rotates quite well, giving you a lot of flexibility with placement; but darn if it didn't give us the angle we needed, which was to be placed high on a shelf aimed down into our son's pack `n play. We settled on placing it on a night stand and seeing through the side netting. Lorex actually does well on placement, too, but not quite as many option as the Levana.
The Levana has a zoom lens, but don't make this your buying point. The zoom feature doesn't work like a camera zoom. Here you press a button and the monitor thinks for a long moment and then zooms in super close into the center of the screen and probably not where baby is, or what you even want to see; I'll never use it.
When you put the Levana monitor on audio to hear if baby is crying, talking, etc, you have to crank up the sound to hear properly. We have a sound machine playing in the background, but our Lorex is able to give us clear audio of our son when he's awake even at the lowest setting.
The Levana monitor is quite clear, even at night. Our son looks like he's bathed in sunlight even though it's completely dark in his room. Both Levana and Lorex have good night vision pictures.
The Levana model you can use to talk to baby... but not really all that great, it sounds muffled.
Levana has music options to sooth baby to sleep; not all that great. The three songs sound like there's static, and there's an annoying buzzing sound to all the songs that would actually keep me awake. This makes me think there is something wrong with the speakers on the Levana monitor they need to work on the sound quality.
You can take pictures with the Levana that are stored on the camera. The pictures are okay, but don't expect picture quality.
You can pair the Levana to multiple cameras, as you can with the Lorex monitor.
You can turn on the nightlight from the monitor, as you can with the Lorex. The Levana nightlight seems a bit softer than the Lorex.
The Levana includes a temperature gauge so you can see what the temperature is in baby's room not all together accurate. It usually registers about 9 degrees off from the thermostat in the bedroom. Still, this is a nice feature.
The sound indicator on both cameras is good, but the Levana shows sound so easily. For example: our sound machine is on all the time in the kids room, so the Levana monitor constantly shows sound like the kids are talking. The Lorex model doesn't pick up the sound machine, only when the kids talk and make noises.
Battery life on the Levana monitor lasts longer than the Lorex but it's a turn off for me. It takes a LONG time to charge the Levana monitor, and for the length of time to fully charge the battery it should last a lot longer than it does. If I had to guess, I would say it takes a solid 6 hours to charge and lasts about 90 minutes. I do notice that sitting off the charged the Levana monitor will drop down to 2 bars pretty quick. It beeps at you when the battery is about to die.
You can turn the Lorex camera off to conserve battery life when not in use. You CANNOT turn the Levana monitor off to save the battery. You can turn the screen off, and you can turn the screen and audio indicator off, but if you do this when the camera isn't plugged in, and go to use it again, the battery will be dead and you will have to plug it back in. I really dislike this. As it is, I have to keep the camera plugged in all the time and there isn't a docking station for it.
THREE STARS: Overall the Levana is a nice baby monitor. It does what it needs to do, which is help you keep an eye on baby. If that's all you need then this is a good monitor. But the inability to turn it off and save the remaining battery life for future use really turns me off, because sometimes I forget to plug it back in, or am not in a place to plug it in; being able to turn it off would be a great help. Also, the audio is kind of poor and the temperature guage though nice, isn't accurate. I'd suggest looking at other models for the price, but if your set on this monitor you'll probably be happy with it. For the price, this definitely has a lot of features and is a good value. You can add more cameras to this set up and have a total of 4 cameras. It can play lullabies, take pictures, talk to the baby with PTT, temperature monitoring, timers, nightlight, etc.
Here are the pros and cons I found with it.
Pros:
The setup is extremely easy. After charging the handset, I was able to turn it on and be connected to the camera right away.
The night vision is actually pretty good quality and I was able to see my baby in pitch black.
The overall quality of the picture is decent. It is clear enough that I can tell what my baby is doing.
The LED sound bar is a very nice feature. If you have the volume turned way down, the sound bar will still come on and show colors depending on the intensity of the noise. If the baby is crying out loud, the color would be red.
You can expand the system and buy additional cameras.
You can mount the camera to the wall and it was easy to angle it so it will show the baby in the crib at the proper angle.
It can also be a camera and you can take pictures of the baby.
You can play lullabies for the baby. My baby doesn't really care for the feature but it's a nice feature to have.
It comes with a SD card so you don't have to buy one for storing pictures.
Cons:
The battery life is horrible. Even with the power saver on that would turn off the screen after 1 minute, we were lucky to get 4 hours. Imagine the first night when we didn't have the handset on charge and waking up to realize that it was dead. If our baby had made any small noises, we wouldn't have heard it.
While the PTT is a nice feature, the quality of the voice coming through the camera is not great. It almost doesn't sound human and the first time I tried it, my baby seriously seemed scared of the voice.
The temperature monitor, while a good idea, seems to be always off. We would have the A/C set to 69 and the temperature would still show as 86 even after the A/C running all night.
There's not really an easy way to take pictures of your baby. You have to go to the menu to turn the camera feature on and then proceed to snapping the picture. This can mean missed moments.
The digital zoom, while a nice feature, takes about 5 seconds before it will zoom in and it can only zoom in so far and zoom back out. Also, in the 5 seconds that it takes to switch views, the sound is off so you can't hear what is going on in the room. This isn't as big of a deal but I like to be able to hear everything while she's sleeping.
Reading the manual, if you do decide to expand the system, you can only talk to baby on camera 1 and none of the other cameras. It would be nice if it gave you an option to choose which camera you would like your voice to come out at.
Overall, there are a lot of nifty features in the device and for the price, it is a great deal. However, do realize that some of the great features are fair in quality.
EDIT: A little bit after 1 month, the screen on the monitor started to fade and disappear. You could not see the baby anymore. It's pretty much overexposed and we tried to turn it on and off but still, even the logo is white washed out. I had to change the star rating because it is defective. We tried to contact customer service and they are making us pay to return their defective unit to them, wait 2-4 weeks for it to be researched and then we will get the unit back and return postage will only be paid for if they find it to be defective. Unfortunately, we have determined it's not even worth the trouble especially when that means we would be without a baby monitor for almost a month. We will be looking elsewhere. This is a wonderful baby monitor. It has tons of features and worked just right out of the box. I didn't have to pair them as it does it automatically.
Pros:
+ You can have a two-way communication when the baby wakes up. I think this is a big feature to have in a baby monitor. That way you can assure the baby that you are there if you are in the bath room or somewhere where you cannot attend to the baby immediately.
+ Video is clear and in color.
+ Automatically switches to night vision when it is dark.
+ Long range signal. I tried it on from the 2nd floor of a brick building while I was inside my car parked at the back of the building. The video came out clear although starts to skipping frames and choppy audio.
+ Sensitive, I can hear anything happening in the baby's room at night.
+ You can control most of the functions through the parent unit which is the size of a cell phone. You can activate the LED light (with changing colors), start the lullaby music, change the volume, and take pictures.
+ The parent unit can be carried through your pocket with its own built-in battery.
+ SD card is included.
+ You can charge it even on a PC or any standard USB charger.
+ Expandable to 4 cameras.
+ 100-240V
Cons:
The battery is only for quick sojourns around the house, a couple of hours on the porch, in the kitchen or in the bathroom; it is not intended to be left on throughout the night.
The battery compartment cover is almost impossible to open. I needed a bread knife to help me open the top and place the battery.
It doesn't have control via the parent unit to move the camera angle.
You cannot view it on the internet.
The sound from the tiny speaker on the camera is puny
Interface is fine but can be improved. My definition of a perfect interface is that you won't need a manual to operate.
Considering all the cons that I listed are mostly available to higher priced cameras, this baby monitor is fully featured and does a great job.We have bought this monitor twice. Both monitors did not charge. Levana will take orders all day, but when it comes time for someone to help you try to fix it, they aren't there. They won't honor their warranty....actually, they honored their warranty by telling us to buy a new one. Don't waste your money on this company that won't stand behind their product!
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