I bought this monitor because of a friend referral. I also bought the Summer 3.5 Touch, and the Motorola MBP35 (3.5 screen). I originally bought the Summer Touch but wasn't 100% sold on it. That is why i purchased the other two.First off, the good:
Screen Clarity Seemed better than the Summer and about the same as the Motorola.
Night Vision This monitor had the best vision at night of all of the monitors. Everything was much brighter and easier to see. (also listed in the Negatives later).
Battery life It seemed to get around 5 hours on a charge. About the same or a tad less than the Summer, but about 2 hours better than the Motorola.
Ability to record and save. I only played with this feature, but I thought it would be great to have if a nanny or babysitter was over and you could keep track of the actual happenings with your baby. Neither of the other two monitors had this feature.
Lullaby function I'm not sure how much this would actually be used, but I thought it was a nice feature to have. The Motorola also had this.
Night Light Again, not sure how much it would be used, but another nice feature. Neither of the other two monitors had this.
VIDEO STAYS ON when off of the charger. I thought this was a great feature because on the other monitors you have to keep pressing the video button after it automatically times out after about 2 minutes to be able to see the screen and what is going on. They do this as a power saving feature but it is more aggravating than anything. The Lorex stays on and makes it easy.
The ability to add other cameras and be able to view them all simultaneously. The other two monitors allow you to add cameras, but have to view one at a time. Again, not sure if most parents would ever need this, but it is a nice feature.
Now, with the BAD.
No Zoom feature on the Lorex. Both the Summer and Motorola have this ability. It has a pretty clear picture, but there are times where I want to zoom in on my child and could not.
No Panning feature on the Lorex. Both the Summer and Motorola have this. While this may be ok with some who just want to see a certain area of the crib, or don't mind leaving the camera in a fixed place, it could be an issue for others. I thought I could easily get past this, but I couldn't.
Audio When compared to the Summer, you practically had to lay your ear on the back of the monitor (where the speaker is) to be able to hear the child. The Summer picks up the swing going back and forth, and allows you to adjust the volume to hear much more than the Lorex.
The Talk function. If you put your mouth right on the microphone, it works ok. However, testing it with my wife and the Summer, she continuously said the Summer's sound quality on the other end was much better.
Audio Alerts. a great idea for a feature, but it randomly worked and was more irritating than anything.
The Auto Mute, and Scan features. While these are great features to have, they did not seem to work. They randomly chose when to turn on and it usually had to come from a loud noise, but sometimes chose not to even come on then. And YES, I did adjust the sensitivity on the side.
Skype while this is a GREAT selling point, it has its flaws. First, you cannot plug the monitor into a Mac computer to use this feature. Second, even when plugged into a PC, the video is so far behind and lacking once on Skype, it takes away the usefulness of the feature all together. Sometimes it would not even show movements that clearly happened.
Inability to connect the monitor to a TV or other video source. The Summer allows you to connect the monitor to a TV through RCA/mini usb so that you can view it on a larger screen if desired. The Lorex and Motorola do not.
The Night Vision. While stated as a positive earlier (which it is), it also has a slight negative. The LED's on the camera are red and clearly visible at night, whereas the ones for the other monitors are not. This may bother or alert some children/etc., and may not for others. It is just a point I thought I should mention.
After wanting to love this monitor and replace the Summer with it (already sent the Motorola back due to lack of technical support and inability to plug into another video source), I am afraid I am going to have to send the Lorex back as well. I wish someone would take the good parts of each of these monitors and combine them, but as of now, they have not. For now, we are sticking with the Summer monitor because it had the least negatives of all 3. I think the main reason I wanted something instead of the Summer monitor is because they specialize in baby clothes, products, etc. Motorola and Lorex specialize in communications and surveillance, therefore I figured there products would be better. I was mistaken.
The setup only took a few minutes. It started beeping right away. It turns out that it was the alert that the child is making noise. The loudness of that alert is configurable. It stopped once I stopped touching the camera.
The camera is small, about 4 inches tall. It pans and tilts, no zoom. The resolution of the image seems fine. I did see some noticeable color shifts (hue). I will try it again in daylight and see if that is still true. Given how far it tilts, it strikes me that it would work well with a wall mount (bracket not included.) I placed it on a tall dresser right next to the bed. Because of that, and my unwillingness to move the bed or dresser, I had to put a small box under the rear to get the 20 degrees I needed. Someone setting it on a lower table or one just a little further from the bed would not have any issue at all getting a full view of the crib/bed. The camera has an on/off switch, volume for two-way talk and a sensitivity control for how loud the child must be to set off alerts on the monitor. The IR LEDs are visible as very dim red lights. My daughter noticed it, but it did not keep her up. They are barely visible.
The monitor is a convenient size, about the size of a smart phone. It has dedicated volume buttons. Button placement seems well thought out. There is a mini-joystick for pan/tilt/menu nav, press to accept. The power adapter can be plugged into the cradle or the monitor directly, which appeals to me. There is a great deal of leeway when setting it in the cradle... Placement doe not have to be exact for it to charge. There is a stand so the monitor can sit upright without the cradle. There is a swing out antenna which does add a bar of reception, but I have not needed it yet.
It seems to be playing well with my wireless router, but I would not want to guarantee there is no interference at all until I run a few more speed tests.
The camera and monitor are made of the same white plastic that most nursery products are. It is lighter than it looks, which I know does not alway convey a sense of quality, but it seems solid enough and I would not want them to add weight just for that.
Pros:
System performs out of the box as advertised.
Has features of systems costing a lot more.
Night vision works well
Sound is clear
Cradle and charging well thought out
Temperature is always visible on monitor and is proving to be accurate.
Menus are simple and easy to navigate with thumb controller
Reception is great
Volume can be turned all the way of if desired.
Video can be turned off if desired.
Lots of buttons and functions
Cons:
Operating pan/tilt or moving through the menus causes beep which may wake spouse
Sensitivity control for alert that says child is making noise is on the camera, not monitor.
Would benefit from a few more configuration options such as turning button beep off.
My voice sets off the noise alert when using the two-way talk feature, so I have to wait for the 3 beeps to end before I can hear the person on the other end. That meeans I miss the first word or two of the reply.
No zoom other units that offer this supposedly get very graining, so I do not care for it.
The monitor has been runing for over 4 hours, so the battery performance seems quite good.
My experience so far has been excellent.
Buy Lorex LW241 LIVE sense Wireless Video Home Monitor Now
There is a SERIOUS lack of reviews on this fine product, so I'm writing my first Amazon review to give people more information before they buy. I would give this a 4.5 because of the few CONS listed below, but since I can't, and there are so many PROS, I'm giving it "5 Stars"We received it in the mail today and the camera is MUCH smaller than we thought it would be, which is great because it fits well on the shelf above our daughter's bed. The monitor is cool, sleek and feature filled...too cool in fact, we had to have a firm talk with our five year son old about playing with the features because it wasn't one of his disposable toys.
The last monitor we had was simply a static radio wave audio monitor which had not worked for some time, and with a new baby on the way we needed something. We had originally purchased the Motorola MBP36 which seemed great, but as a protective dad, I wanted something to watch how the baby sitters handled my two hellions while we were eating Thai Food. After hours of reviewing iPhone apps, cameras, monitors, etc, this seemed like the perfect fit. What sold me was the video: easy to use, set up, and was MAC capable. The camera doesn't have to be plugged into the computer (like some other baby monitors) but the monitor does (which is great because that's when we'd use it as a nanny cam).
With regards to the first review, you CAN actually turn the beeping of the buttons on the monitor down by turning down the Alarm Sound. So now my five year old and I can geek out swinging the camera around while not waking up the rest of the family. I wish the camera could be controlled from our iPhones, but as an engineer and a pilot, I think this product is overall pretty sleek. Here's the breakdown:
PROs:
Pan/Tilt all around the room
Auto IR night cam (no need to turn it on like some other cams)
Good quality video day/night (unlike other cams. Example footage from the Amazon product video is accurate)
Intuitive monitor and simple controls (My five year old gets it)
Camera Skype account was easy to set up with set-by-step directions
No white noise when monitoring. Just comes on when the kiddo starts cranking.
-Nifty features:
Talk through monitor (to sooth baby or freak out the dog...both work great!)
Musical soothing tunes
Skype dial up for mom & dad, or aunts, uncles, grand parents...but they can't see inside your house unless you hook in the monitor and turn on Skype.
Record onto a mini-SD. Don't have one, but neat.
Expandable to four cameras, can be the LW2400 ($50-$70) or LW2451 ($91-$150) prices from Amazon, any other cameras?
See all four cameras at once (control them one at a time if needed!).
Auto-sound detection so you don't hear static while you're trying to sleep.
Temperature monitor and alarms
Timer alarms, if you need it.
Extendable monitor antenna to walk down and get the mail.
CONs:
Green light is always on the camera (nothing a little electrical tape can't handle)
Auto-sound detection sensitivity is on the camera, not the monitor
Musical tunes rhythm is a little quick, and songs change automatically which is a bummer
Lack of zoom
Lack of tilt/pan through Skype (obviously. Hopefully Lorex will push a native app as a software update)
3 Steps to view on Skype as Nanny Cam (not bad, but if you do these out of order, and open Skype first, the Skype camera defaults to the iSight and you have to go back into PREFERENCES and re-select the Lorex camera):
1) Plug in Monitor
2) Then open Skype to that account
3) Call the Lorex Skype account your set up to view
Again, I understand the third party app requires help, but I think code could easily be added so that Skype automatically opens when the computer detects the monitor and closes down when the monitor is disconnected.
However, these may be considered Nit-Noid CONs to some, and, in fact, they are small potatoes, but some factoids that some may find interesting. Overall, great camera and system! I have to go, my son wants to play with the Monitor again!
Read Best Reviews of Lorex LW241 LIVE sense Wireless Video Home Monitor Here
I don't even have a baby -what I do have is a teen and a tween. I also have a finished basement where my kids hang out and I like to monitor what goes on down there. I can clearly hear and view from 3 floors up! The clarity is superb, the features are great. As the description states, you can hook this up to skype so you can even see what's going on if you are not even home. So when my teen is babysitting, I can see what's going on from my iphone via skype! How cool is that?! There is also a "talk" button so if you choose, you can use it as an intercom system. I have been playing around with it and so far, I'm super impressed with what this can do. If you have any place in your home you want to monitor, this is the item. This is not just a "baby monitor", it's an in-home surveillance system and can even give you peace of mind when you aren't home. I would think this would be a great item to keep an eye on a puppy as well. Highly recommend. It is expensive but the quality and features make it worth the price.Want Lorex LW241 LIVE sense Wireless Video Home Monitor Discount?
First child is on the way and we needed a baby monitor for the home the Mrs. gave me the task of picking one out, and based on the specs, this one seemed to be exactly what I was looking for.Set-up was super easy you just plug in the camera and the base charger, and the two instantly find each other. Picture quality seems good, I like the temperature display, and the ability to hear what's going on in the room with the camera.
Now for my one gripe: I chose this particular camera in large parts because of the Skype integration. Our entire extended family lives at least 8 hours from us, so I really, really wanted a way for them to be able to log in and see the baby whenever they felt like it. After getting the camera all positioned, I went to set-up the Skype part on the computer. You plug the monitor portion into your computer via the included USB cable, create a new account, tweak a few settings, and viola! your camera is now broadcasting to Skype. BUT it will only do that when the monitor is synced to your computer via the USB cable. As soon as you unplug it, the connection is lost and you can only see the video on the monitor.
I was pretty bummed out when I realized this, to be honest. Yes, if grandma calls and says she wants to see the baby, I can easily hook the monitor back up to the USB cable, but that's not what I was looking for. And forget about the new Dad being able to just take a quick peek at his sleeping baby when he's back at work.
I'm going to keep the camera for now, because I like everything else about it. But if I do find one that has all these features, plus real Skype integration, this one is going back.
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