Reviewing the Zopid Monintor is very difficult because somethings it does very well, but in some critical areas, it fails.
The key functionality for most people is that is is guaranteed not to get interference. To this point, it performed perfectly. For many, this is the key attribute and so if this is important, then it will perform well.
But now the negatives (and there are plent)
#1 It is very lightweight. For some this is good, but for me it seemed like it would easily break if dropped. It never did, but sure seems like a big risk
#2 The sound only kicks on when there is noise from the baby in the rooms. In theory this is good, but in practice it doesn't work. Many times it never kicked on. By there own admission, sometimes you need to turn it off and reboot if it locks up. Obviously this is a huge risk when you are sleeping at night and all the sudden can't hear because it quits working and you don't know it. To me, this is a big safety concern that could lead to an unfortunately lawsuit in the worst of circumstances
#3 Volume is not easily adjusted. You must navigate into a menu screen to adjust volume. This is nearly impossible to do when half asleep.
#4 The battery life was terrible, just a few hours at best
This should have been a good product, but alot of engineering "problems" seem to plague this device. I think the manufacturer should pull it from the market and resolve the points I have listed above and then relaunch. These are serious issues to have on a $200 baby monitor but I think they are all correctable
To their credit, they took the return and refunded my money without any issue. They did try to resolve the problems as well, but it was simply too difficult and I am not going to reboot the monitor multiple times per day to make it work the way it should.
I recommend the
Summer Infant Best View Handheld Color Video Monitor with 2.5" ScreenIt works well and also has a camera that you can move remotely from the handheld...which is really nice!
<<<<<<***<<REVISIONS>>***>>>>>>>>
The manufacturer of the Zopid sent me the following email in response to my "review". In fairness, I will post their email in it's entirety as it does address some of the negatives I mentioned. However, regardless of the fact that they think there are ways to fix this monitor, I think the point is that I should not have to. For $200 it should work perfectly out of the box. It should not require contact with the manufactures and I should not have to download a firmware update to make it work. And although they did say they could help with the "locking up" issue, this simply scares me. On several nights it simply quite working during the night and we never know our baby was crying. The only way to make it start working again was to turn it off and reboot. Again, here is their response below.
Hello,
We are sending this email regarding the product review you have written on amazon.com.
This is the first time we are contacting any customer regarding the product review written for any of our products, because we feel that some of the information is misleading and is an effort to scare other customers so they do not buy this product.
We are certain that if you had responded to our email below instead of returning the product, we would have been able to address most of concerns outlined in your product review.
We have cut and pasted part of your review below and tried to respond to each issue you have mentioned in your review:
'But now the negatives (and there are plent)
#1 It is very lightweight. For some this is good, but for me it seemed like it would easily break if dropped. It never did, but sure seems like a big risk '
Response: Not sure how lightweight can be a negative point when the other product you are recommending through this review states "ultra-light" as one of the key features. Also, you "think or it seemed like" it will easily break if dropped just because it's lightweight!
"#2 The sound only kicks on when there is noise from the baby in the rooms. In theory this is good, but in practice it doesn't work. Many times it never kicked on. By there own admission, sometimes you need to turn it off and reboot if it locks up. Obviously this is a huge risk when you are sleeping at night and all the sudden can't hear because it quits working and you don't know it. To me, this is a big safety concern that could lead to an unfortunately lawsuit in the worst of circumstances "
Response: We are certain that we would have been able to address this problem if you had responded to our email and answered few questions we asked you in our email in an effort to resolve this problem. The Audio is always ON on this baby monitor but due to noise cancellation feature the camera starts ignoring low level sounds that last more than few seconds. Audio and Video Sensitivity settings on the monitor also determine when audio alert is sent to monitor and when monitor displays picture, which is Voice Activation feature.
What makes you think that we as a seller would take a chance on selling a product with safety concerns. We are not sure what you meant by "By there own admission..." we understand there is a typo but whose admission are you referring to?
"#3 Volume is not easily adjusted. You must navigate into a menu screen to adjust volume. This is nearly impossible to do when half asleep. "
Response: If you had mentioned this in your email, we would have emailed you a newer firmware version (takes a few minutes to upgrade the firmware using your computer) which would have allowed you to use the up and down buttons on the monitor for volume control - it's a new feature we have added based on customer feedback.
"#4 The battery life was terrible, just a few hours at best "
Response: The product details have listed ~ 3 hrs (camera) ~ 3 hrs (monitor) continuous use ~ 4-6 hrs (with power save on) did you find the battery usage to be less than what's stated in the product description?
"This should have been a good product, but alot of engineering "problems" seem to plague this device. I think the manufacturer should pull it from the market and resolve the points I have listed above and then relaunch. These are serious issues to have on a $200 baby monitor but I think they are all correctable "
Response: we believe it's an excellent product in it's current form and as stated earlier are pretty certain that we would have addressed or corrected all the issues you had with this product.
We find amazon.com review process to be extremely valuable for both buyers and sellers. We would really appreciate you either removing this review or at least removing or revising the text highlighted in red.
Thanks in advance for your help and cooperation in this matter.
Regards
Customer Support