Thursday, September 12, 2013

Motorola Digital Video Baby Monitor with 1.8 Inch Color LCD Screen

Motorola Digital Video Baby Monitor with 1.8 Inch Color LCD ScreenGreat value monitor, screen size is perfect for my needs and it's 100% digital and secure. Has a belt clip and I really like just walking around with the base unit and watching the baby.

Sound quaility and night vision all what you expect from Motorola. The 2 way communication feature was also a big plus. Love taking to my wife while I am in the other room, makes life easy.

Hope Amazon has the additional cameras soon

All in all it's not a $300 monitor and I am very happy with what I got for the money. I would recommend it to anyone.

I got this monitor shockingly! to check on my son while he sleeps. I didn't need anything with any frills or a huge display since I was kind of on the fence about ordering a video monitor anyway. But I'm quite happy with this monitor. I especially like that it shows the temperature in the bedroom. The night vision works very well and the range of the mobile unit is good; although in my small house, it doesn't get tested to the limits of its abilities. The picture is a bit pixelated, but it's clear enough to see my son and if he's wiggling or screaming. The video unit also has brackets on the bottom so you can hang it on a wall if you wanted to.

The only complaint I have is the mobile unit drains it's battery fairly quickly. My son is still sleeping in our bedroom, so I only use this unit for 2-3 hours maximum a day, and I still have to charge it every other day or so. You can turn the screen on the mobile unit off and it will come back on when baby moves or makes noise, so that saves the battery a little, but it still seems to run out more quickly than I expected it to.

Other than that, it's a great unit for the price and I'm glad we got it.

Buy Motorola Digital Video Baby Monitor with 1.8 Inch Color LCD Screen Now

Overall, this monitor does the job. You can see your baby, the night vision works great. Before this I never had a video monitor, only audio. My biggest complaint is how the sound cuts off. At first I was very nervous to sleep using this monitor because I noticed the sound would go off completely, I thought maybe it broke. Turns out to reduce background noise, the sound turns off until the baby cries/whines. BUT I have seen my baby moving around, and cannot hear it on the monitor since she is not crying. I do not like that, since she sometimes wakes up and does not make any noise it is difficult because I feel I am constantly watching the monitor to see if she is awake but not crying. The "color screen" also, is not much of a color screen. The actual settings on the monitor are in color, but the picture looks black and white to me. And the music from the video unit cannot be controlled on the parent unit, so if you want it turned off you must do it from the video unit. In the end, it works..you can see your child, and hear the baby when he/she is crying. But if you have a child like mine who sometimes just lays in their crib without making noise, this probably is not a good idea. 3/5 stars, I will continue using it but I probably would stick with my audio monitor next time since I cannot always watch the screen to see if shes moving I would rather hear it.

Read Best Reviews of Motorola Digital Video Baby Monitor with 1.8 Inch Color LCD Screen Here

I found this on Groupon and paid $99 for it including shipping.

It is NOT high quality video, and audio is only fair, but it does give peace of mind and does an ok job for the price.

Having two cameras is nice. I have one in the baby room and one in the play area.

The ability to talk back and forth is nice (i often use it as a walkie talkie with my wife).

I wish the picture was better and audio was clearer, but it's not a spy cam it's a monitor.

I still may return it and go with a network wifi cam of some sort, but those seem more of hassle to setup and monitor. I like having an easy handheld monitor.

Overall and OK review.

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This is THE WORST video monitor EVER. I could go on and on about what a disappointment it was right out of the box but held off because I had a newborn and a 2 year old and no time to sit and rant when my days were consumed with getting either or both to sleep... but I digress...

Eight months pass and the worst monitor ever decides to go ka-put. Just up and stops working for no reason at all. Okay, wait, I shouldn't exaggerate... only one of the 2 cameras gave out--the one that happens to be in my baby's room (aka THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE). Sure it was a fluke. But seriously, I hate this monitor so much I think it did it on purpose.

Top 10 reasons to hate this monitor overall (in order):

10. Remember those sketchy pixelated 80's security cam stop motion videos that were so grainy you wondered how they caught the guy? Yeah, this is worse.

9. The battery life. This is a misnomer. Think "battery life support." The second you unplug it, no matter how long it has charged, you get maybe 45mins until you hear the dreaded low battery beep. This is the monitor version of someone coding in a hospital. You need to rush in, ideally with a team of people who know the monitor cord's most recent location and the nearest outlet, so that you can revive the monitor STAT. Sometimes you win, and keep the main monitor going for a little longer. Sometimes, well, you have to go into the next room where the camera monitors are, take off your mask, and slowly shake your head. There was nothing you could do. There just wasn't time. So don't plan on taking the monitor outside with you or anything. Patients in the ICU shouldn't go on walks.

8. The beeping. Oh my GAWSH the BEEPING! For every little stupid thing this idiot monitor beeps warnings so loud it often disturbs the sleeping babe in the next room. I understand that you want to know if you lose connection...but when it loses connection multiple times an hour at random, when nothing has moved in either location, my patience wears thin. Imagine you have finally gotten two kids to sleep. You crawl into the living room, sink into the couch, hoping for fifteen minutes of the rest you remember from long, long ago. You pour a glass of wine, check the monitor again and put it down next to you. Your muscles relax, you draw in a deep breath, and...BEEP BEEP BEEP. It's lost connection. No, wait, it found it again. Ahhh...BEEP BEEP BEEP. Lost connection. Wait, I thought it found the connection, just a moment ago? What Motorola hasn't told you is that the main monitor and the camera monitors aren't on speaking terms. Turns out the camera monitors are passive-aggressive, so they tend to get really defensive just when the main monitor wants to talk. You are now a part of this broken family dynamic. Welcome.

(Note: There is no way to turn all the beeps off--just the one that tells you it's going to die. Then it dies on you and you have no idea).

7. Someone reviewed that you "get what you pay for." You do not. I did not pay for this thing, and I regret the zero dollars. I could have done it pioneer woman style with no monitor and been less frustrated.

6. The "switching camera" feature. This monitor doesn't have a side by side view, it "switches between them every few seconds." This isn't the end of the world, but it doesn't switch directly from one to the other. In between, you will enjoy anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds of black text on a white background, reading "Switching to Baby Camera 1." So if you hear a thump in your little one's room, get comfortable, because you won't be seeing what's going on in there for a while.

5. The talk-back feature. You press and hold the "talk" button. In case you holding down the very large button wasn't enough of a clue, the picture goes away and the word "Talk" shows up, in the black text on white background to which you've become so familiar. So say your piece fast if you want to know what's going on in there.

4. The video quality. It's so terrible I have to mention it again.

3. It says it's a color monitor. It isn't. Even in the brightest daylight it uses night vision. Liars.

2. If you own a computer, or a television, or a radio, or a cell phone, you're going to want to keep that on the other side of the house from this thing. It needs its personal space to function.

1. It stopped working after 8 months. Unacceptable at any price.

There you have it. You have been not only warned but saved from an added frustration on top of the daily real challenges of raising kids. You're welcome. Motorola, no thank you and never again.

The End.

PS I was forced to give it at least 1 star to "rate" it on Amazon but really it deserves NO stars.

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