As a new parent, you will never want to be away from your child for too long. While away you may experience anxiety because you don’t know what is your baby doing all by itself. And then the images come into your mind of them hurting themselves, and in most terrible ways. Luckily, that’s why people have invented baby monitors. Even better, baby monitors have evolved into top surveillance systems, providing both best quality video, and best possible audio.
Today, we review one of the best value products, the Summer Infant Wide View Digital Color Video Baby Monitor. Take a look at what it has to offer, and you just might find it to your liking.
Design and Features
Like the title of the review says, Summer Infant Wide View Digital Color Video Baby Monitor is a video baby monitor. That means that the baby unit is a camera, and the parent unit an LCD monitor. But what sets this monitor apart as compared to other baby monitors of its class is that it has a much larger screen. Compared DRX-8, a baby monitor that we’ve recently reviewed, has a 3-inch monitor, Summer Infant Wide View Digital Color Video Baby Monitor has a 5-inch screen. This effectively increases the quality of the video and allows you to spot top level detail on the video feed.
Summer Infant Wide View Digital Color Video Baby Monitor also operates with 2.4 GHz digital signal technology, which effectively increases the strength of the signal, and adds to the range of the signal. Summer Infant Wide View Digital Color Video Baby Monitor has a range of 600 feet – but this applies to when there are no obstacles. Compared to an enclosed space like a house or apartment, the range will be significantly reduced, to about 150 feet. Even so, this is a decent range, and you’ll be able to have a decent reception from all corners of your house (unless you live in a Victorian style mansion).
One of the most prevalent features video baby monitors have, and a true sign of a top quality baby monitor is the optical zoom. Comparing Summer Infant Wide View Digital Color Video Baby Monitor, and DRX-8 baby monitor and HB24 baby monitor, we found that Summer Infant Wide View Digital Color Video Baby Monitor’s zoom is just like DRX-8 baby monitor’s and HB24 baby monitor’s – Summer Infant Wide View Digital Color Video Baby Monitor has a 2x digital zoom. This is a top feature for parents of active babies, who move around a lot and like to explore underneath tables, chairs, and beds, as you can spot them more easily.
Another top feature Summer Infant Wide View Digital Color Video Baby Monitor has is the night vision. For parents of babies who are more active at night, or who move around in their sleep, this feature is the best security measure, as they can watch the baby during the night as clearly as during the day. The night vision is in black and white – the feed is very good, and the objects and persons are clearly visible.
Furthermore, Summer Infant Wide View Digital Color Video Baby Monitor lets you stay in touch constantly with your child. The device features a two-way intercom. This way, you can talk to your child and assure them you are there at any time.
But Summer Infant doesn’t stop there. The device is able to have more baby units controlled by a single parent unit. If you do live in a Victorian style mansion, you will want to cover more area with cameras, and now you can. Summer Infant parent unit can connect up to three other cameras/baby units, allowing you to be in more places at once.
As for battery life, Summer Infant is slightly behind its “peers”. On a single charge, the device can operate continuously for 6 hours. However, you are given the option of turning the screen off and leaving just the audio on. This allows you to be more efficient with the battery. In addition, the device will try to pick up sudden changes in volume, and if it picks them up, it will turn on the screen to alert you.
The monitor also offers you another feature that is very useful. The device has a wide lens that increases the viewing angle up to 4 times. This is especially efficient, as camera placement is made easier, and you will have fewer blind spots, which is sure to please you.
But perhaps the best thing about Summer Infant is its price. Usually, the products of this kind are on the expensive side, as they have more features and offer better surveillance than audio monitors. However, Summer Infant keeps its price under $100 making it very competitive. This does result in shorter battery life, but the monitor has many features the best monitors on the market have, and at less price. This makes the product highly sought after and frequently purchased.
Bottom Line
Overall, we think this is a top class baby monitor indeed. It has all the features that appear on other high-level baby monitors. In this way, Summer Infant Wide View Digital Color Video Baby Monitor fulfills any conditions you might have as a parent, and you might have many. You get the night vision, optical zoom, strong and encrypted signal, wide viewing angle, and many other features, but at a more affordable price. The only downside is that the battery may not last you that long, as compared to similar baby monitors. Even so, the product has many more positive sides than it has flaws.
Ultimately, would we recommend Summer Infant Wide View Digital Color Video Baby Monitor? Yes, we most certainly would. This is value baby monitor, and as such, it has the best balance of what it offers and how much does it cost. It still costs more than even high-end audio baby monitors, but it offers more too. All in all, if video baby monitors are the name and low price is the game, Summer Infant Wide View Digital Color Video Baby Monitor is the right one for you.
