Customer Reviews

Graco imonitor Vibe 2 Parent

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(34)

 

 

We bought this graco monitor as a replacement for our useless fisher price monitor (we used the fp monitor once and then put it away for a month when we needed it again the receiver was dead) and the difference is something big.
PROS:
1.- Auto Channel selector: Great feature just turn it on an it will set automatically the channel on both receivers, if you feel it has lots of interference just press "ch" button and presto!
2.- Vibe function: good but nothing i couln'd live without. It's too sensible, almost any noise will activate it.
CONS: THE channel button: It should be on the parent receiver and NOT on the baby's transmitter, Here is how it goes, imagine yourself sleeping, and the monitor begins to sound with static are you going to go to baby's room and to try to change the channel at the risk of waking up your baby? so the channel button should be with the parent unit! (HEy the baby is not going to change the channel)

I bought this monitor for to use for my second child since I was so unhappy with my first monitor, the Fisher Price Sounds and Lights monitor. I love this monitor so much! It has exceeded my expectations. We get no interference, which is really saying something because we have so many wireless electronics (phone, internet, etc...). The sound comes through clear as a bell, and the vibrate feature is great. I carry one receiver around with me during the day and the quality is always crystal clear no matter where I am. This was worth every penny, in my opinion.

I tried several monitors before finding this one and none were as clear. This one works perfectly even in our 3 story home. We also have wireless internet which does not seem to affect it at all. The battery life is long and the connection is clear. These are great!

I'll give you the basics first and then a little story. If you don't care to read the story you don't have to (which is why I'm giving the basics first).
What you need to know about my house:
I use a wireless internet connection, two cell phones, a CGM (which is a medical device that is constantly communicating wirelessly with my insulin pump), and blood glucose monitor which also sends wireless communication to my pump.
It's a two story house (three if you count the basement and you should because I use these monitors down there all the time while my daughter sleeps on the second floor) which is rather large and has a 150 foot (in length) back yard. I also don't live out in the country; I'm in a small town, but I'm also surrounded by plenty of homes with wireless internet access and babies.
In other words there's lots of possible interference where I use these monitors.

Pros:
1)Excellent sound quality. I've used three other brands of monitors which were much more expensive and none of them even came close to this wonderful little device.
2)No interference from outside sources. We can hear a slight crackle when my medical devices are communicating with each other and I'm close to the monitor, but that's all.
3)Good battery life. It lasts exactly 4 hours and 15 minutes before going dead (do you really need more than that? How long are your baby's naps?)
4)Great range. It works in all rooms and all levels of the house without the slightest loss of signal or sound quality. It also works perfectly all the way to the other end of the back yard (I don't know when it loses signal permanently because I've never gone far enough to test it).
5)Extremely durable. I drop this thing about 2-3 a day (every day) on hard wood and concrete floors from about 3 feet off the ground (and more sometimes) and the monitor has never suffered for it (besides some scratches and dents). Also, I did forget it outside once and didn't remember it until after the storm passed. It got wet, but not soaked, and it still worked perfectly.
6)Excellent choice of sound volume and vibration. It goes from annoyingly loud to barely audible and everything in between so you can choose what fits you best. If you want the sound off you can turn the vibration mode on so you know when baby needs you by feeling rather than hearing the monitor.
7)It's perfectly sized. Fits well in your hand, has a loop for one finger carrying or wearing it around your neck with a cord, and a clip in the back for wearing it on your belt (though the clip will be mentioned in the "cons" section).
8) It has just the right amount of "white noise" letting you know that it's working even when baby and room are completely quiet. For more on this read the story coming later which also contains a comparison with the other brands.

Cons:
1) While the battery life is good, the warning sound (a loud beep every 30 seconds or so) comes on far too soon. Like I mentioned the battery lasts 4 hours and 15 minutes before complete death, but the warning starts at 2 hours and thirty minutes of use and continues until the monitor dies an hour and forty five minutes later. Do we really need a warning that long before it dies? The beeping is also extremely annoying.
2) The receiver, or is it called the transmitter? (the one placed in the baby's room that acts as the microphone) has several channels to choose from (by pressing up or down without any indication what channel you're on). If you ever unplug it you will have to go through the channels one by one and wait a minute or two each time before pressing the button again to make sure the monitor receives communication from that channel. This can be a pain in the butt sometimes when it seems that none of the channels work and you don't even know if you're simply repeating the same patterns over and over again. Not a big problem though since I rarely unplug the receiver/transmitter (the microphone in any case).
3) Loses reception in certain "dark" spots outside the house. I don't know why or what causes this to happen, but there are a few spots where the reception just goes dead. It's very simple to fix as you only have to move the monitor over by an inch or so and it works just fine. Fortunately all those "dark" spots are outside the house and never inside.
4) The clip on the back of the parent unit is too short to be of any real use. This is why I drop it so often. If I'm cleaning or moving around with both hands full I tend to clip the monitor to my belt. The clip is so short that it comes off far too easy and falls to the floor. It's a good thing they're so durable or I'd have broken them long ago.

That's all. Now for the story.
We bought this monitor from Target before our daughter was born. At the time we knew nothing about monitors or what to look for in one so we bought the most expensive unit they had (besides the video monitors). It worked perfectly and I never imagined that other monitors could be better or worse. Then, when my daughter was 11 months, we took a trip to Greece and took the monitor with us.
In my stupidity I plugged it into the adapter and then the wall. Adapters don't work as converters so the 220 volt current that is used in Greece fried the internal mechanism of one of the bases (which work on 110 volts and can't handle anything more). Long story short when we came back we were down by one charging base. This proved to be very annoying because we liked to have one base upstairs in our bedroom (for when we sleep) and one downstairs (for when she naps or we aren't ready for bed yet). With only one base we had to remember to plug one monitor in while we used the other one and then run upstairs to make the switch every time the beeping started.

I tried to look for a replacement base on their website, but after entering all the asked for product numbers and serials it couldn't recognize the unit and I didn't feel like doing it over the phone. So instead I decided to buy a new monitor. That's when I first started reading up on these things and found out all about digital versus not, HD versus not, interference problems, people listening in on you from other homes with the same monitor etc. After reading so many negative reviews about this monitor I decided that maybe I just got lucky with my specific model and so I bought a different brand. Big Mistake #1!!

The new monitor was absolutely horrendous. The biggest problem was the reception which was full of static, crackling, popping, and mechanical wheezing that when we tested it my wife had to speak very loudly from very close to the microphone so that I could hear her over the interference. It had other problems which I won't bore you with because I'm not reviewing that brand.
I exchanged it immediately with another brand (and paid extra for it) that claimed to be HD sound quality and digital signal. The sound was amazing . . . when you were 15 feet away, and non-existent when you went further than that. The monitor would actually light up with the "out of range" warning light after 15 feet. Someone managed to convince me that I had a defective unit so I replaced it with the same brand name and had exactly the same results. Customer service told me I had too many wireless transmissions in my house which is why it didn't work. Just to test it I turned off most of it and sure enough the range increased . . . but only enough to make it halfway down the stairs. Keep in mind this Graco unit worked just fine with all my wireless transmissions turned on.

So I replaced it with yet another brand that had a feature that sounded good to me at the time. This monitor was the kind that would only turn on when a loud sound was made from baby. So my wife and I would be sitting in the living room downstairs wondering if the thing actually worked or not because it was dead silent and didn't even have a light to indicate it was on or not. Then out of nowhere the thing would light up like a Christmas tree and we'd hear our daughter screaming through it. And to think some people actually like that feature! It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of in my life. I'd rather hear my daughter waking up and get her before she has tears in her eyes than not know what's happening until after it's already too late and she's panicking.

Think of it this way: as a firefighter would you rather get the call that said there's a brush fire so you could get to it before it grew or would you rather get the call after the brush fire turned to a forest fire out of control? I pity the children living with parents who ignore them until after they are panicking and screaming because they woke up and nobody came to check on them. And what if they were choking on something? Those monitors wouldn't alert you because the sound wouldn't be loud enough to activate the parent's unit. With this Graco you can hear the tiniest whisper in the room. Granted I can't hear her breathing, but the sound of a struggling child would definitely be loud enough for the Graco to transmit. And you know it's working because 1) it has a green light to show you if it's on and a red to show you if there's a problem and 2) it has a faint "white noise" that's constantly there so you know it's listening to something without the "white noise" being a distraction. To tell you the truth, after the first couple of weeks I didn't even hear the "white noise" at all as my brain seemed to have blocked it out completely until I wanted to hear it.

So I returned that ridiculous monitor and decided to call Graco for a replacement base to the one I fried in Greece. Before I could do that though my in-laws apparently got tired of hearing me complain about these other monitors and having only one base for the Graco so they bought us a new Graco just like our old one for Christmas.

How do I know I didn't get lucky with my first purchase? The second one works just as well as the first one.
I've seen all the negative reviews about this unit here and I really can't tell you why others are having so much trouble with it. In fact, as an added bonus, I recently became friendly with one of our neighbors (lives next door to us) because we were both outside holding the same monitor so we started talking about it. We were both concerned that the other might be able to hear us with their monitor (since the frequencies could be the same) but that wasn't the case. And she reported to me that she was just as happy with hers as I was with mine.

This is the first review I have ever written and it's because I feel so strongly about how BAD this monitor is. Another review complained about the same issue where it blinks red and beeps for no apparent reason even though it is fully charged AND/OR plugged into the wall. It's one thing to be up all night because the baby isn't sleeping and another to be up all night because you are moving the monitor around the room trying to get it to work in a different spot! Oh and don't get me started on the static..

This monitor seemed to have good ratings on other websites so I bought it for our firstborn son. The vibe option was great at first once I got used to it. The vibration is unmistakable and simetimes startling. I started turning it off after being jarred out of sleep constantly. It pickes up the slightest noise excellently. It vibrated just from hiccups! (which my son had constantly). The monitor itself was wonderful and worked really well for about a month and a half. Shortly after the first month the battery would die quickly when taken off of the charger. I didn't sleep well due to the glow it produced so I would put it under my pillow and charge it the next day. Now, not only does the battery die easily, the monitor is also making awful crackling noises and ahs static often. I also noticed that the light on one monitor would blink red and beep at me even when the battery was supposed to be fully charged. Now both of them are doing it and are staticky all the time. I had to return the monitor after only 3 months! I do not recommend this monitor if you are looking for something with longevity. It's only good for short term!

I liked this monitor while it worked. After one year, however, the battery packs fail to hold their charge for more than 5 minutes. You can buy replacement battery packs for $10, plus shipping. After replacing both batteries, I might as well buy a whole new monitor. The other issue I have is the lights. There are so many lights on the parent unit that my husband put tape over them because he found them annoying to sleep with.

We have had two sets of these (returned the first one after a few months). Each performed beautifully for about three months. We kept the monitors in the base for recharging the vast majority of the time. Slowly, each set began getting worse and worse reception until neither would make a connection unless you held it at a certain angle, in a certain direction, without anyone moving in the room! Too bad, because it really did work well initially.

I bought this unit as a replacement for our first monitor that broke. I thought that by paying $90 I was going to get what I paid for but boy was I WRONG...
This is the WORST monitor I have ever used (comparing it to my first monitor and monitors at my sister's houses that I have used while watching my nieces and nephew). There is constant, and I mean constant, feedback and you are constantly losing connection with the nursery unit. The final straw for me was during a little rain storm in the middle of night when the parent unit lost connection with the nursery unit for minutes at a time more times than I could count. So I called Graco and asked if there was anything I could do to fix this, such as getting a replacement nursery unit if that would help, and the woman I spoke with told me the only thing I could do was "return it"... So that is what I did.
DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY!!!

This monitor works somedays and doesn't on others. It is highly unreliable. Our bedroom is directly across the hall and it loses frequencey often. It beeps constantly and either from loss of frequency or the battery dieing. It doesn't work outside or inside reliably. It surely doesn't work up to 2000 ft. As well, the lights are bright and keep you awake. I can't say anything beneficial about this monitor, it is horrible!