For the past month I have been trialling a new baby monitor, BabyPing. I was sent the monitor to trial but have to return at the end of testing. What makes BabyPing different to other monitors on the market is that you use your iPhone or iPad as the monitor.
BabyPing is a secure Wifi baby monitor that allows you to use your iPad or iPhone to monitor your baby/child whether at home or away. I found this idea fantastic as it would mean one less unit to carry around with me. I could carry on with my work and be alerted if my daughter stirred.
I have to say the image quality is fantastic. Even in pitch black I could see my daughter clearly, and discover that she does move around, she was put in with her feet at the bottom of her cot
.JPG "video feed")
The other really great feature for the video is there is no light from the unit in the baby room, which means no annoying little green light that wakes up your baby, I have had this in the past.
The audio as well was crystal clear, I could hear her breathing which was very reassuring and we had zero interference. Previous monitors have picked up static.
I loved how simple it was to set up, download an app, add unit to Wifi, it was so quick and you can do it all without a computer. I think the instruction booklet is about 4 steps. It is very easy to do, even I managed it! Everything is secure to your Wifi network so even if next door purchased a BabyPing they cannot see your video.
Another great feature is that you can continue to use your iPad/iPhone as you would normal and BabyPing runs in the background, alerting you if needed.
I did find a couple of downsides and the first is the size of the camera, its is a square 8.5cm x 8.5cm. This is rather big and its also not the lightest of units. I suppose for the technology though it might be to be expected but its still a large size for a baby monitor. As far as I was able to tell there is also no temperature monitoring on the unit.
There was a delay between the noise in my daughters room and it appearing on the monitor. I appreciated this is down to our wifi, but often I had heard her cry before it came through the iPad. This sometimes meant when I had got to her she was upset, as had been left longer than normal.
The final issue for me was that often I would be unable to use BabyPing at all. If I sat upstairs I had no issues whatsoever but as soon as I went downstairs, it lost connection and was unable to reconnect. This left me frustrated on a number of occasions. BabyPing can therefore only be as good as your wireless signal, so if you are in a room with weak signal your BabyPing signal will also be weak. Whilst it does alert you to this fact there is little that can be done when the signal is weak. I was however still able to use the Internet so the signal was strong enough for Internet use but not BabyPing which was rather frustrating.
If you have a good wireless signal and don't mind the size of the camera unit than I cannot recommend BabyPing enough. The audio and video quality are the best I have ever seen of a baby monitor. The downside for me was the lag and the unreliability of signal. BabyPing will be available soon on other ios as at the moment it is iPad/iPhone only.
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