Worth the money in my opinion.
Written: Jul 17 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Accurate movement sensor, good audio monitor = new parent piece of mind.
Cons: Receiver has no low battery indicator & amplifies electrical noise if plugged in.
The Bottom Line: Worth the money, buy one and sleep better!
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| whitesahara's Full Review: Bebesounds Ac201 Angelcare Baby Movement Sensor Wi... |
As a new parent I am now part of the worrier's club. It's amazing to me that less than four months ago I wouldn't of been able to justify spending $110.00 (CDN) on a baby monitor let alone all the other stuff I now think we need. Now, in a new frame of mind, here's why we did and we're happy to have.
My wife and I chose a Fisher Price "sight n' sounds" monitor on our baby registry prior to the birth of our daughter. We chose that specific monitor based on the "sights n' sounds" features it offered to entertain our baby, and the Fisher Price name. To our disappointment that monitor turned out to be great for baby entertainment but was horrible baby monitor and hence did little for our new parent nerves(if we'd only read the Epinions review prior to asking for the monitor).
We decided we needed a better baby monitor when we were moving our little girl into her own room, and out of her bassinet. A few minutes after our daughter was born she stopped breathing for a minute till we noticed. The doctors and nurses checked her out and concluded all was fine, but to keep an eye on her and possibly consider buying a movement monitoring baby monitor such as the Angel Care Movement Sensor. Thankfully we never had such another episode, but when looking for a new monitor I really though we should purchase a movement monitor just to be safe.
Ultimately we were replacing a monitor that had reception issues, and this AngelCare monitor was not advertised as a 900 mhz, or 2.8 Ghz super reception monitor, it's niche is obviously the movement monitor feature, but in the back or my mind I still wanted much better reception than we'd previously had. The package really doesn't focus on the reception abilities. It explains the movement monitoring, the rechargeable batteries and battery back up parental unit, regardless we bought it after confirming with Babies-R-Us that we'd be free to return it if we had reception issues.
Setting up the monitor is quite easy. There is a parental unit & a base station, the base station has an automatic battery backup feature to prevent outages in power failure scenarios. A ridged plastic sensor pad is placed under the babies mattress and wired to the base station. The unit comes pre-calibrated for movement sensitivity, in our case the unit came set correctly. The front of the base station unit has a movement indicator/warning light. base station & parental unit have an antenna and a/b channel selector for alternate transmission options. The parental unit comes preloaded with replaceable rechargeable batteries (nice option). The front of the parental unit has audio level lights, speaker and volume control.... the whole parental unit resembles an angel, hence the name AngelCare I assume.
Performance:
Audio monitoring - Our house is a side-split 2300 sq/ft home, reception is great seemingly everywhere in our home. We sleep with the monitor in our bedroom at night and even as a light sleeper the receive doesn't make any noises it shouldn't when running on the rechargeable batteries. While plugged in, the receiver unfortunately picks up the frequency of the electrical outlet (60hz). Including basic noise filtering would be a nice addition. My only other negative observation on the receiver is, if the batteries die there is no indication aside from the power light, if your sleeping and the receiver's batteries die, you won't know until the morning when you realize the monitors off. Adding a low battery audible beep might be another good addition.
Movement monitoring - It's amazing to me that the sensor pad can pick up the touch of my finger to the mattress that it lies below. I was skeptical of the movement sensor; looking at a sleeping newborn it's sometimes impossible to even see them breathe let alone have a rather inexpensive sensor pick up that movement through a mattress! Guess what though... it does, it really does. In the even the sensor picks up no movement for 15 seconds it has an audible warning beep, if it does not sense movement for 20 seconds an alarm sounds. We've been using this product for two weeks now and not once has there been a false alarm. I can't think of an improvement for the motion sensor.
All in all this product definitely provides piece of mind for my wife and I. I'm concerned that we'll run into a false alarm that'll wake us in a shock, but if such a false alarm is only occasional (still yet to happen) it seems a small price to pay to sleep restfully! The product is built well, easy to set up and aside from a few small suggested improvements I still think I'll give it an excellent rating.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
whitesahara
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Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 0 members
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