Lorex LW2003 LIVE 'snap' Video Baby MonitorSince the video review is not very detailed, I want to add a few more comments. First, I absolutely recommend this monitor. I've listed some specific strengths and weaknesses below.
What I liked:
1. Good range. In my two story house I got decent coverage throughout. The signal was a little weak when I stretched it to its furthest possible range, but I never lost the picture.
2. On the small screen the picture is crisp, with good color. You will never have to wonder what you're seeing. Look carefully at the image on the video I took of the outdoors and you'll see a crisp blue autumn sky with colorful foliage.
3. I think the portability is a key feature. The monitor can be removed from its base and slipped into a pocket as you move around your house. Very nice!
4. You can add cameras, all of which show up on the monitor. You can then select which camera you want to "zoom" to on the screen. Hopefully you won't be monitoring four babies at once, but the capability is there.
What I would like to see improved:
1. Customer service! I always try to test this during a review, since it tends to be the "Achilles Heel" of modern commerce. I first let the customer service rep (Asian, but very understandable) know I was writing a review and had a specific problem I needed solved (see below). It became clear immediately that the rep was not familiar with the product. After about 20 minutes he admitted he could not solve my problem, but he promised I would receive a return call or email within a couple of hours. After ten days I have heard nothing. Unacceptable!
2. The monitor is promoted as a camera which can take snapshots of your baby, and the advertisements feature beautifully lit photos of babies. This is bogus. The camera has a whopping .3 megapixels. This is perfectly fine for the small monitor screen, but trying to use it as a camera to photograph your baby will result in a blurry, pixelated photo if you try to even print it 4x6. It puzzles me that Lorex even included a microSD card and adapter for you to transfer your pictures to a computer. You wouldn't really try to photograph your beautiful baby with a .3 MP camera, would you? Which brings me to another point . . .
3. The reason I called customer service was the image from the camera when I took a snapshot was not only rotated (easily fixed) but reversed. For instance, any printing would look backwards. I'm not sure if this is peculiar to the sample I received, but it's annoying to be sure. Yes you can fix this in a photo editor, but you shouldn't have to. I have no idea what's going on, and neither did customer service. The image is fine on the monitor screen, and the problem only shows up when you transfer a picture, which you are unlikely to do anyway given the poor resolution.
So let's sum up: I really like the Lorex Baby Monitor and I would definitely buy it. I take off one star for the failure of customer service to respond to my problem and the misleading pictures which imply the monitor can be used to take good quality pictures. If you purchase it with the idea that you are only monitoring your baby (pets, etc) and not capturing lifetime memories, you'll be very happy.
First, we have previously owned a Summer Infant video baby monitor with our first child two years ago. We were not happy with it. The sound wasn't great and the video eventually went out on it after about a year of use. With our second kid we decided to get another video baby monitor and looked for one that supported more than one camera. Let's just say that there isn't a high quality video baby monitor out there that I have found. I'll start with the pros.
Pros:
Video quality is as good as its peers. It won't wow you, but it serves its purpose. At night it has pretty good range and is more than adequate.
Little interference. We have cell phones, wi-fi, cordless phones, an audio baby monitor and many other wireless devices and we have not had any interference.
Range. Pretty good. We had the camera at the front of the house and were able to get a signal at the back. It was probably 35 feet away and had 4 5 walls in between.
Usability. The buttons are laid out well and intuitive. We like the form factor kind of like an old school candy-bar-style cell phone.
Two-way communication. It works when you can get the 'up' button to work (see cons).
Cons:
Build quality is subpar. The plastic is kind of cheap. The buttons are not responsive. The menu button and the up/talk button take multiple attempts to activate. It is as if the plastic buttons do not align properly. It can take 4-5 attempts to activate the menu at times. Very annoying. When scrolling through the menu the down button works perfectly but the up button works erratically. Often I just end up scrolling through the entire list using the down button. The other buttons, 1-4, left/right, power don't seem to have a problem so it may just be this particular unit. It makes me wonder if we will get a full year of use out of the monitor before it goes belly up, though.
VOX does not work. The monitor has a setting called VOX that only turns the monitor on after it detects a noise. It doesn't work on ours. We have power save off as the instructions indicate. We have put it in an empty room (i.e. quiet) and turned on the VOX to its lowest sensitivity (highest noise required to activate) and it just cycles on almost immediately after turning off. It just cycles on/off continuously. When setting it to its highest sensitivity we see no difference. We have turned VOX off and just use the power save feature (video turns off after a preset amount of time).
Audio. It is ok. Without VOX there is a constant light hum since the audio is always on. It doesn't get super loud either (not a big deal for us). No interference in the audio is a plus, though. The speaker is placed on the back of the unit. When you don't have the receiver in the cradle, the speaker can be muffled when you set it down. It will not stand up on end, so you either set the monitor down on the speaker or on the lcd screen.
Cradle. The cradle is a little annoying. The cradle has a male end of a mini-usb that the unit plugs into to charge. The slot the unit slides into on the cradle isn't really tight so it takes a little finesse to get the mini-usb to line up on the unit. Not a big deal but isn't as easy as we would like when checking out the monitor late at night.
The monitor is ok. Not great. I wish there was a high quality video monitor out there. I would definitely pay up for one instead of going through a new one every year.
Buy Lorex LW2003 LIVE snap Video Baby Monitor (White) Now
So far I like this baby video monitor.The video quality is great
Night vision works well
It works even with my WiFi 802.11g, 2.4 GHz cordless phone, 2.4 GHz wireless speakers and a microwave oven.
Battery life is good. I've had the receiver on for 5 hours and the battery indicator is down to 33%. This is with VOX and Power Save both off.
I dropped this 2x on our (hard) floor and it still works (phew).
I expecially like the 2-way communication. I don't use it a lot to talk to our baby. I found it to be useful when my wife is with our baby and needs to tell me something. Not only can I hear her through the handheld monitor but I could reply! It's like having a video walkie-talkie.
Uses a micro-USB (I think) connector for power. This is the same connector used by some electronics (like my old Garmin nuvi 350, my Logitech Harmony 550 remote, etc). If you want an extra charger in another room you could likely use one you already have that came with another product.
The camera has a rechargeable internal battery. I find this convenient when I want to temporarily move the camera (i.e., to keep an eye on our baby when in her swing) without fussing about power cords. I don't know how long the battery lasts as I only use it like this for a few tens of minutes.
Wish list:
Support multiple handheld receivers (so more than one parent can monitor the baby). I have not seen any digital video baby monitors support this.
It would be nice if the camera can be mounted on a tripod to make it more portable (i.e., bring it to my home office when bring the baby's bassinet there, etc).
I wish the handheld had a flip-out stand so I can prop it up while away from the charging base. This would be nice to have but not that critical for me.
What I don't like:
The plastic looks and feels cheap
The silver logo (not red and black as shown in product pictures) looks even cheaper -sort of like it was just spray painted on it (like an engineering project or a cheap Chinese knockoff... heck those even look better sometimes). I know this is less important than the technical features but still, appearance does matter. The monitor gives off a cheap vibe in my opinion.
Volume on the handheld monitor is kinda low
A crib mounting bracket would be nice to have. I considered mounting the camera on the wall but it was too far from our baby (and she does not typically face the wall!). Instead, I strapped it onto the crib myself but will have to move it once the child gets older and can reach it.
What I hate:
Sales and customer service is a joke! I have never seen live sales chat active and I've been checking for a month or longer. I sent an e-mail to customer support and nobody replied. I also left a voice mail for sales support and again no reply. [update 11/22/2011: Now tech support seems to be more responsive. I inquired about a replacement charging dock and received a prompt reply]
Recommended?
Sure! I still recommend the product but all bets are off if you need technical support.
Read Best Reviews of Lorex LW2003 LIVE snap Video Baby Monitor (White) Here
I felt that I had done the research and that I made a good choice. I should have known that with all wireless technologies there are weaknesses. This unit operates on the 2.4-2.6 Ghz band the same as all the wireless routers and phones in my neighborhood. Lorex also stated that going through walls would be different for each application, This was the case for me, I am in the next room and only have drywall and doors but the signal was weak. It was so bad that I would only have intermittent reception at best. The video was clear when it did work but the audio was choppy.My old fisher price monitor was clearer. When I called Lorex, all they had to offer was to move the camera around which made no difference. Since this is a safety monitoring device I had to opt to return it and to do more research on video monitors. I also noticed people mentioned in other reviews about the speaker being on the back. This is a problem when you set it down because you can only face it that way when out of the charging craddle.Want Lorex LW2003 LIVE snap Video Baby Monitor (White) Discount?
After our second daughter was born September 14th, 2010 we decided to purchase a video monitor. After several hours of reading reviews and researching online I decided to go with the Lorex LW2003. The primary factor in deciding to go with the LW2003 were the good reviews of its predecessor, and the many features the product description touted, primarily the distance it advertised from the base unit.Upon un-boxing it I felt as though I had made the correct choice. It appeared to be well built and the design just seemed better than our neighbors several year older Summer "night and day." The screen size was certainly much larger at 2.4 inches and the display unit was more like a cell phone than the larger unit of the Summer night and day. Upon turning it on I discovered that the underside of the glass covering the screen either had a piece of something in it or the screen had dead pixels. It was difficult to tell which, but I think it was probably something under the glass. I could have lived with the display issue and had planned on it. However what I could not deal with was that the advertised 450 ft of distance capped out at closer to 15 feet out our back door, approximately 30 feet from the unit. I realize that the 450 ft is labeled as (clear-line-of-sight) notwithstanding this my neighbor's much older, and much less expensive Summer "night and day" unit gets reception from several hundred feet away, across the street, through two houses and into our kitchen. Juxtaposing the performance of that unit with my newer Lorex2003 is very discouraging, particularly because the Lorex advertises a greater distance, and yet just a few feet beyond our back porch the monitor display reads, "searching for base unit." I can only assume that the wireless technology utilized for its "interference free digital signal" does not transmit nearly as strong of a signal.
If distance outside your house is not important this may be an ok unit for you. For my family with a new born and an active 3 year old who likes to play in the back yard it is not sufficient. For us it is nice to be able to step out of the house and have our monitor with us in case the baby wakes up while we are watching our older daughter play. This unit does not allow us to do that, while others, namely the Summer unit discussed above clearly does.
So I boxed it up today and I will be dropping it off at a UPS drop off tomorrow. I am thankful for Amazons return policy, but I won't be purchasing another Lorex. It looked like a good design, but when it comes to electronics function is always more important than form in my book. I will probably go with a Summer unit, or maybe the phillips unit.
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