Customer Reviews

BébéSounds Angelcare Movement Sensor w. Sound Monitor w. Two Parents' Units

5 star:		(300)
4 star:		(44)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

We have used it with the movement sensor for my son's first year and without the movement sensor for the last 6 months. (My son is now 18 months old.) We love this monitor for several reasons.

1. The monitor with movement sensor can be used in a basinet, portable crib, or a regular crib. Just make sure you put a plywood board under the sensor pad if the bottom of the basinet or crib is soft or just a spring base. This helps prevent false alarms. The sensor also packs easily in a suitcase for travel.

2. The monitor has a good range and is clear. We have a large house and yard. This monitor works at the complete opposite end of the house and throughout our yard.

3. Our son was a preemie and this monitor gave us the piece of mind to sleep at night, especially with the fear of SIDS. It truly detects movement and not just weight. (We tested it with a large dictionary and the sensor went off after a few seconds.) It picks up your child's movement from breathing even in the sounded state of sleep. When our son started rolling over and became a tummy sleeper (even though we put him to bed on his back) the monitor was the only reason I slept at night.

4. You can use this sensor in several modes. It has one mode that give an audible beep with each movement as well as detecting sounds from the nursery (for extra piece of mind and so you know it is working if you are really nervous), another mode that detects movement (and sounds) and sets off an alarm if baby does not move for 15 seconds, and the last mode lets you shut off the movement sensor and use it just as a sound monitor (great for an older baby or toddler and you don't need to buy a new monitor). We also liked that before the alarm went off, it gave a warning beep. This gave us time to go in and check on our son, before the alarm went off and woke him up. We had no false alarms with this monitor when our son was an infant, and a few when he started really moving in his sleep because he would roll off the monitor pad. It just took a little experimentation with pad placement to fix this situation.

5. Baby slept better with this monitor because we were not constantly going into his room to check on him and accidentally waking him up.

6. The monitor also has a light display that lights up more lights (in a row) when your child makes more noise. I can visually look at the monitor in the middle of the night and tell by the display if he is sleeping soundly.

7. The monitor has two bands (a & b). You can switch bands on both the nursery and parent unit if one band is getting a lot of static or interference. If you have two small children you can also use two monitors, one set to each band.

We love this monitor so much that we are planning on purchasing a second unit before the birth of our second child.

I got this after considerable research on baby movement sensors. I compared features, false alarms, etc. And I can tell you can I have been VERY pleased after using this for 2 months after bringing home out baby from the hospital.

Our little 2 month sleeps for 10 hours straight through the night! Why? Because with the Angelcare Movement Sensor, we're not afraid to let him sleep on his belly. Of course, we remove all blankets and the pillow to reduce the chance of SIDs. But I have complete faith in this product.

We using the sensor in a basinet for now. Make sure the sensor is under a wooden board. I think the people who have had bad luck with this product maybe didn't follow these directions.

The sensor has gone off twice. Once when he was 2 weeks old and later when he was 6 weeks old. We came running to check him out and he was fine. We'll never know if it was a false signal, but again, I trust my son's life with it. It's eased our sense of fear of SIDs and let's us get a full night's sleep. I highly recommend it.

PLEASE READ>>>>>>
It was Sunday, January 15 and my husband and I were sound asleep. All of a sudden a hear the alarm from the monitor go off and when I went into my daughter's room, she was facing down on her crib (she turned on her own; she does not sleep on her belly) and I went to turn her and she was blue.

It was the most horrific experience my husband and I have ever been through. I screamed for my husband and he came in and gave her rescue breathing (CPR) and with his first breathe, she came back to life. I was on the phone with 911 as he was performing his second breathe and she came back to her normal self 20 minutes later.

We don't know how long she was without breathing, but thanks to the monitor, we were alerted in time to save her life. We only have had 2 false alarms since she was born (she is 4 months old) because she was deep sleeping. Two false alarms is nothing compared to the fact that you can feel comfortable knowing this product does work and can save your baby.

PLEASE LET EVERYONE YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS FANTASTIC PRODUCT! IT IS DEFINTELY WORTH THE $99 and more than anything, your baby can be saved, just like my baby girl was.

This monitor is the #1 product that I think any new parent should have! When my daughter was first born, I was awake ALL NIGHT!!!! Not because she was, but because I was constantly checking to see if she was breathing! I got this monitor and used it in her bassinet for 4 weeks until we moved her to her crib where it is now. I placed weights in the crib, all sorts of objects to test it out and NOT ONCE has it gone off due to a faulty product. Twice it did go off when she was in the crib, but that is because she scootched herself into the corner of her crib and the sensor could no longer sence her breathing. The sound monitor also works great...never had a problem
with it..the sound is crystal clear! So, if you want to sleep easy, this is a great product. As for the other reviews with negative feedback, they should have returned it and gotten a new one. This product is FANTASTIC!!!

We've started using this for our newborn son, and there is no doubt that the device works well in terms of core functionality. However, its commonsense design is poor, and on that basis, I've downgraded it from 5 stars down to 2, as some of these design flaws hit you between the eyes at 2am in the morning, where you really dont have the patience to deal with them.

Here are the flaws in its design as I see it, all of them could have been easily fixed if a little more thought had gone into it.

1. Volume of movement alarm is linked to the volume of the microphone. The alarm if movement doesn't happen should be as loud as possible, as I want to cover the distance between waking and fixing the problem as soon as possible - however this device has linked the volume of the alarm to be the same as the volume of the baby monitor part. The end result is that if you don't want to get blasted in the ear by your baby's every grunt at night, then you may miss the important movement alarm. Same goes for if your trying to enjoy a quiet (and rare) moment alone with your partner - you might be interested in seeing only the lights to indicate baby's noise level... but this means that the SIDS alarm cannot be heard. Needs at least two volume controls - one for the microphone and another for the alarm (or default the alarm to maximum).

2. If you're using the Tic function, with the microphone level turned down, then you can't tell whether the lights flashing is due to movement or sound.

3. You need to switch off both ends of the device to deactivate it. Why? If you switch off only the base unit, the parent unit will lose its channel and a stream of static will issue from the parent unit, which will wake your partner. If you don't switch off the base unit, then as soon as you take bub from the cot, 15 seconds later the alarm will sound. At 2 am in the morning, I'm not lucid enough to remember to switch off both ends of the device. The best solution is to switch it from the "movement and sound" setting (called "Tic off") to the "sound only" setting... at least your partner won't get blasted by the alarm or static, just a screaming baby as you try and change the daiper.

4. Use of AAA batteries in the parent unit. The device is large enough to use AA batteries that can then be recharged easily in the same charger as used for digital cameras, etc - but unfortunately you can't use them, because they've chosen to use AAA size. I don't want to fork out another 50 bucks for a AAA size charger - I'd rather use the far more common AA size.

5. Critical switches are on the back of the base unit - so the unit is always on the shelf with its back facing out.

6. Poorly labelled three way switches, e.g. "Tic Off" doesn't say whether it includes sound or not. Fair enough, easy to work out, but why cut corners this way? Have two two way switches - one for sound, one for movement and make it all clear.

7. The ring on the top of the parent unit looks as though it will fit over a standard door knob - it doesn't though. Rather than a stylised angel's halo, I would have much preferred a functional belt clip.

8. It would be nice if the "tic" feature could be turned on from the parent unit, just to give a little reassurance, and then turned off - but you can't. The switch is on the base unit, meaning you'll need to go into bub's room to activate it - sort of defeating the purpose.

Having said this, we've found that the parent's unit receives the transmission from the base very well within the confines of our house, and we've yet to have a false alarm with the movement sensors... so in this respect, I think you can rely on the device despite its annoying drawbacks.

Of course, it would be well worth investing in a first aid course for children should you be concerned enough regarding SIDS - as there would be little point in being alerted to the fact your child's heart and breathing had stopped if you didn't know how to perform infant CPR in an effort resuscitate them. That would be horrific.

I wouldn't rebuy this device; there are other baby monitor/alarm systems that I'd investigate before getting this one. Maybe they don't work as well, but its worth investigating.

If someone told me I could buy only one thing for my newborn it would be this monitor! This is my first child and it just so happened that he was born 3 weeks early and weighed only 5 1/2 pounds when we brought him home. He would never cry or make any noise at all which scared me even more because a "SOUND" only monitor would tell me nothing. I received this monitor as a baby shower gift and I must say I wondered if it would do everything it promised. I can honestly say that it did everything it said PLUS!!!! I have never had a false alarm and I get great audio. The best thing is that I am comfortable enough to sleep at night between feedings. The monitor makes a little "TIC" sound each time your baby breaths. You can turn the "TIC" off if you wish but my husband and I love to hear it. At first it is a little wierd but after a few nights you don't think about it, you just sleep like before you had a baby :-)

(...)

If you've read some of the reviews and are concerned about ceiling fans interfering with the sensitivity.....we have a ceiling fan and a window unit air conditioner in the baby's room and it doesn't bother the reception at all.

My baby had RSV at 7 weeks old, and was sent home from the er as not being sick enough to admit him. That night he was having such respatory distress that he quit breathing at 3am. The alarm went off, and we were able to start him breathing again. Needless to say, he spent the next 8 days in the hospital on breathing monitors, but if he didn't have that at night, he would not be here now. He's now 20 months old and doing fine! I would definately buy this monitor again.

We bought this product thinking it would give us a little extra piece of mind at night so we wouldn't worry about SIDS as much. The alarm went off several times when our baby was about a month old. At first we thought it was malfunctining because our son always seemed fine when we checked on him. One night the sensor alarm sounded and we ran over to check on him and he was not breathing. We gently shook him and he woke and took a huge gasp of air in. It terrified us-- Turns out he was waking up from apneic episodes when the alarm went off -We called our pediatrician, who ordered a pneumogram -

Our son ended up having over 44 episodes of sleep apnea during the pneumogram ranging from 12-18 seconds in a ten hour period. He also had one lasting more than 27 seconds-- which is very scary. Although they consider anything under 20 seconds "normal", his having 44 episodes was considered quite excessive. So our Angelcare sensorpad WAS accurately detecting his sleep apnea - it was catching the episodes that went 20 seconds or longer. I believe that it saved him from possibly becoming a victim to SIDS.

Our pediatrician enrolled our son in the infant monitoring program and he was placed on a portable heart/lung monitor until he was 4 months old. Every night we kept BOTH alarms on-- the hospital grade portable heart and lung monitor, as well as the Angelcare sensor monitor. The respiration light on the hospital monitor flashed AT THE SAME TIME as the Angelcare monitor-- every night I checked it and every night the lights flashed at the same time. This monitor is a GODSEND. Even my son's pulmonologist was impressed when I told him the story. Our son is now 4 1/2 months old and is off the hospital grade heart/lung monitor. Our Angelcare sensor lets us sleep soundly at night knowing that he is okay.

Not only does the sensor pad work, but it is portable. We take it with us when we go on overnight trips - we have used it in friends' cribs that we were using on trips, as well as our own Pack N Play. It also has a sound system with two monitors, which comes in VERY handy.

I have told everyone I know with children about this monitor-- it works and is a must have for anyone having a baby!

We bought this monitor before my son was born, unsure if it was worth the price. Now we are completely sold. I would have paid more for it because the peace of mind it has given us is priceless!! When our son came home from the hospital, we became paranoid about SIDS. (They bombard you with so many warnings about it now.) This monitor is the only thing that allowed us to sleep at all. I'm sure my husband and I would have gotten up repeatedly during the night to make sure our only child was ok if it were not for this monitor. We actually did that during the first week, before we realized we could truly depend on this montor. I have known people whose children died of SIDS and it is so devastating. Knowing that this monitor would warn us if he weren't breathing in time to still save his life is more valuable than I can express!

I have read others' complaints about reception and false alarms, but I haven't had that much trouble. We have had one alarm where our son just rolled off the pad, and one that we couldn't figure out why it went off. It might have been a freak thing, or maybe he wasn't breathing and the noise startled him into breathing again. The only other times it has ever gone off is when we forget to turn it off when we pick our son up. That is our little way of accidentally testing it...and it works! Other reviewers are right, the reception is a little staticky for the sound part of the monitor. However, you can still easily hear what you need to hear- crying, cooing, or whatever your baby is doing. That is in no way enough to keep this from being a wonderful monitor. The good far outweighs the bad! You will especially appreciate it if your baby is premature/low birth weight, has GERD or apnea, or learns to roll early. All of the above applied to our son, and this thing has been a life (and sanity) saver. Buy this thing; you'll be glad you did!

I reccomend this monitor to any new parent that would like a peaceful sleep at night. This monitor was not available for my first child and I was up every 5 minutes making sure she was breathing. The only thing I did find was not to use it with the ceiling fan on. The monitor still works but the sensor picks up the ceiling fans motion and not babys breathing.