Customer Reviews

Graco Ultra Clear 49MHZ Baby Monitor

5 star:		(84)
4 star:		(39)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

Excellent little monitors. I've had no problem with static despite the number of electrical appliances running in and around my house. The sound is very clear and I rarely have to turn the volume up higher than the minimum. The light meter is very accurate and defines between baby noise and other noise (radio, fan etc.) well. I've read complaints about this model that you can't mute the sound completely which is true, but I don't know why you'd want to do that anyway, you might as well not bother having a monitor if you're not going to listen to it. Amazingly for such quality it's one of the lowest priced monitor sets on the market even at full price, and can often be found on sale so you really can't beat it.

Edited to add: Units seem very durable. I have dropped one of the units several times while using it as a portable and it still works fine, the battery cover has stayed in place and the casing hasn't chipped or cracked. Note: I've seen these priced at anything up to $100 from independent retailers. Be careful and shop around as they should sell for around $30.

I had a Fisher-Price monitor that I bought for my daughter five years ago, and it finally started failing (we had it on pretty much 24/7 for 5 years). I decided to buy a new one and found this Graco one with really good reviews and at a great price. It is really quiet! At first I was afraid it wasn't working because I couldn't hear my 7-month-old baby, so I tested it by having someone stay in a different room while I went and scratched the main unit and it was working just fine. I guess I was so used to the static I heard for years, that this incredibly quiet monitor really surprised me.

The main unit has a nightlight that stays on for 15 minutes. I really haven't used it much, but I guess that if you need a little extra light at night for an emergency (i.e. change a quick diaper or find a pacifier that fell on the floor) it would come handy.

I really recommend this product.

I bought this monitor for use with my new grandson. Granted, he is only 2 months old, and have not had a lot of time to use it, but I have used it, and it's appears to be a very good monitor for the price. I don't have a problem with static. It has a volume control on each handset, so you can control "too much noise." It is very clear, so you will get extra noise if it is turned up too much. Just turn the volume down a little and you will be fine.

I especially like the fact that it has the lighted scale that runs across the top, to let you know new noise (baby noise), versus "just" noise. One light will appear when the baby is just slightly grunting, then the louder he/she gets, the more the lights appear. By the time it's all lighting up, you're already there! Bottom line on the volume, if you're sleeping in the other room, you will hear the baby on this monitor, without having to turn it up completely and won't have to hear extra noise "static." Which is not really static, but just a hum from the monitor, because it's set to high.

The only downside to this monitor, in my opinion, is that the adapters for the handsets are not designed to work with the main unit. The baby is not always in the exact same place when he falls asleep or is just in his swing. So I have to move the main unit to go where he goes, which would be easier if I could plug it into one of the handset adapters. The main unit also does not run on batteries if need be.

But all together, this is an excellent monitor, at a good price. You just have to get familiar with it's ablilty to pick up sound, and adjust the volume on the handsets accordingly.

Excellent buy for the money, provides both the sound signal and flashing lights when baby is crying. Receivers also make noise when the main unit gets unplugged - good safety feature. Easy to operate.

I have tried several monitors over the years, having six kids. This one is my favorite. I like that I can have one monitor on the first floor and one in my bedroom and can have them both on at the same time and hear the baby from both. The sound is clear, no static and the volume can be turned up fairly loud so if your house is as loud as mine can sometimes get, you can still hear sounds coming from baby's room over the noise on the first floor.

I would recommend this and would buy again.

My wife and I bought this monitor for our newborn son's bedroom, and we are highly disappointed for a few reasons:

1. Excessive Static: We live in a new 3-level home (lower/main/upper), and we found that both channels offered on this receiver have too much static. What's worse is that sometimes the static gets even louder and more annoying than the constant buzzing static we hear the rest of the time. The louder static usually comes from walking too closely to certain electrical fixtures, such as our fluorescent torchiere lamp. Other times, however, the louder static comes simply from the handset being in a bad location. We move it a couple of feet in a different direction, and the loud static becomes quiet static. Any way you cut it, there is too much static for our liking.

2. Battery Hogs: The one handset that works on batteries (the second handset arrived broken, and it works only with the A/C adapter plugged into the wall) uses them up way too quickly. With just a few days of usage (several hours of usage each day), the handset completely drains brand new Energizer batteries (4 AAA batteries required). I tried rechargeable batteries, and they lasted ONE DAY! With such poor battery life, this monitor should have come with an A/C adapter for BOTH handsets. Instead, it came with just one.

3. Broken on Arrival: Only one of our handsets worked on batteries when we first opened the box. Therefore, the other handset always needs to be plugged into the wall, which is highly inconvenient. That said, the mobile handset burns through batteries way too fast (see #2 above).

Even for the price, I think this monitor is a poor value. I would not recommend it to anybody. I have done a lot of research, and I have decided to return this monitor to Amazon and purchase the Sony 900MHz BabyCall Nursery Monitor with 2 Receivers. It gets excellent reviews. In addition, it has 27 channels (as opposed to 2), built-in rechargeable batteries in both handsets, and 2 A/C adapters as standard equipment.

This monitor does the job of a simple audio monitor. In today's world with all the fancy, high-priced video monitors out there this one is a good basic audio monitor. My only complaint is the battery life...tends to go through a set of batteries pretty quickly. We usually just use the adapter to plug ours in the wall and save the battery life for when we really need it (out in the yard, etc.). I would recommend investing in some rechargeable batteries for this monitor...otherwise you'd spend a small fortune buying replacement batteries. Good solid product overall.

I am a full-time caregiver and I bought this to monitor the bedroom where my uncle sleeps so I can hear him during the night if he needs anything. All I got was static, and could hear a woman talking to her friend what is unusual about that is we live in the country and I should not be able to hear someone's conversation. Anyway, I tried for 2 hours and could not get the static to go away so I shipped it back and went to Radio Shack and bought their cheapest 2 room intercom and that solved my problem.
I am not saying this baby monitor is not for you, it just did not work for me.

I walked into a baby store one day to buy a baby monitor and was blown away by the various available models (and the prices too!). Who spends $250 on a baby monitor? Anyways, I browsed through the available monitors on Amazon and thought that this one was well reviewed and was not expensive and decided to buy this one.
Well, so far, it has been working like a charm. Others have mentioned about the lighted scale on the handset and it is truly effective. The lights help you identify, even in a noisy environment, whether the baby is just making sleep sounds or if he/she is actually awake. We live in a three level house with the baby on the top level and the units work fine on all levels and outdoors as well.
I haven't used any other baby monitors to make a comparative analysis, but from a cost and functional perspective, this one gives you the best bang for your buck.

Things I like about this monitor:
- Price is reasonable
- I've had no quality problems -- no problem hearing our daughter in the other room.
- Works much better than the Safety1st monitor I tried. That one had non-stop static.
- Fairly light and portable.
- I like that it runs on 49Mhz -- if you read any of the stuff online about electromagnetic fields, etc., the lower Mhz is supposed to be safer than the 700 or 900Mhz digital versions.

Here's the problem with this monitor, and if you know how to fix it, please respond in the comments section. The parents' unit is able to have batteries in order to make it portable. So your baby could be sleeping in one room, and you could be walking all over the house (or the yard) doing work. That's great.

However, wouldn't it also be great if those same batteries could be used as a battery backup in case of a power outage. Unfortunately, they can't. The way it should work is that if the power goes off, the parents' unit's batteries would kick in, and you'd hear a loud static noise of it having lost the signal from the now powerless baby unit. However, the act of having the power cord plugged into the parent's unit seems to disable any battery use.

So, if you lose power, both units go dark, and your baby is crying in the other room and you can't hear her, as happened to us last night. :-( It seems it would be so simple to wire the batteries much the way the batteries on an digital alarm clock serve as backup-- there, ready to take over, in case of a loss of power. Maybe Graco can fix this in the next version of this monitor.