The Levana Clear-Vu digital baby monitor does exactly what it says it does, and it does it well. It sets up easily and transmits a clear picture in both light and dark. It's a cute little unit that is attractive and easy to use. The nightlight feature is pretty and soothing.However... i feel it is lacking in a few features, and could use a few basic design adjustments.
First, the quietest sound level that it will adjust to is still VERY loud. I don't need to hear EVERY SINGLE breath that my baby takes, i just want to know when she's crying.
Second, the switch for turning the video on and off is very tricky to do at 2am in the dark. It would be far easier if it had a push button on the front of the unit than the slide click on the side. It's such a pain that i've taken to just sleeping with the unit tucked into my hand so that i don't have to fumble around in the dark to turn on the video.
Third, the switches on the camera are all on the bottom of the unit so that once you have it mounted in it's holder on the wall it's extreme;y difficult to change the settings.
Fourth, and probably THE most annoying is that the monitor unit has no stand other than the charging unit. It needs a belt clip and/or pop-out stand like the other Levana models have.
Additionally, I would like to purchase another charging base, but cannot find one anywhere, not on Amazon and not on the Levana website. You'd think they'd be more than willing to give you more things to spend your money on.
But maybe I'm nit-picking, because honestly, it's a very nice product that i will keep and continue to use. But if I had to pick a "perfect" monitor, this would not be it.
There is no "kickstand" to stand the monitor upright. You either have to have it on the base, or lay it down flat.
There are no "sound LED lights" like the Summer Infant monitor, so if your baby is crying, there is not way to tell with the volume lowered. You have to have it very loud to hear the crying. There are no lights at all on the monitor to detect sound like on other video monitors.
LASTLY AND MOST IMPORTANTLY:
During the night, about twice a week, the unit completely malfunctions and stops working. I've called about this and they have had me run tests such as trying different outlets, checking the battery life when it stops working, etc., and they still cannot tell me why this happens.
Basically, the monitor, in the middle of the night, just completely shuts off, even though it is on the base. The LED light on the monitor and the base are glowing green. If I remove the monitor from the base, the battery is fully charged, so it is not dying on the base (and why would it, if it is on the base and running from the outlet's power?!) If I take it off the base, move the switch to "off" and then back to "on" it goes back to working. My baby cries and I cannot hear him because the stupid monitor shuts off while I sleep.
This is happening more and more frequently, and I've called Levana. All they can do is have me ship the monitor to them for testing for 2-4 weeks, but what do I DO IN THE MEANTIME without a monitor?! DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND STAY AWAY FROM THIS PRODUCT!!
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As several others have stated, this monitor flat out does not work!! I thought I would try another brand since we had a Summer model for our first baby...wish I hadn't. It only worked for a few weeks. Now we've tried every trick in the book to get it to function properly but to no avail. The monitor will not turn on even when plugged in &, one time when we actually did get it to come on briefly, the screen froze up & there was no sound. Completely unreliable & very cheaply made. Unfortunately we purchased it before our baby was born so by the time we started using it & realized how horrible it is, we are beyond the return period with Amazon so will also be trying to deal with Levana directly now. After reading what other people have posted, I'm not looking forward to this experience. Don't throw your money down the drain on this product like I did!This monitor was on our registry and we're happy to get it until we used it. The video is great, nice features, night vision, clear picture, etc... but the AUDIO IS HORRIBLE.The monitor (video and audio) uses a 2.4Ghz transmission. What does this mean? Any device using 2.4Ghz transmission could and most likely will interfere with each other causing static or bad reception. Here's the important part...most WiFi routers use a 2.4Ghz transmission. If you don't have WiFi chances are your neighbors do and their WiFi will interfere and give you static.
I did an online chat with Levana and they suggested I remove any devices that could operate on 2.4Ghz transmission. I don't think my neighbors would appreciate me asking them to disable their WiFi so I can use my baby monitor.
So what are we going to do? The video/audio monitor will now become a video only monitor and we'll need to buy a separate audio monitor, preferably at 900Mhz.
Hope this helped!
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It looked like a good monitor and I liked the feature list, but as soon as we turned it on we were greeted with a constant hiss of static that was unbearable. I don't know if it was interference from something or just a faulty unit. We don't have a house phone and I turned off the wireless router but the problem remained. There didn't appear to be any way to adjust which channels it used, and the product documentation didn't say that it automatically tried using different channels. Even though everything else worked great, we couldn't get the static to go away so we returned it.
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