How to turn your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad into a baby monitor
One of the most innovative digital video baby monitors we’ve ever seen, the Withings Smart Baby Monitor, was released to the public this month. Here’s why it blew us away…
A few weeks ago, MFM HQ was given a sneak preview of one very shiny new baby monitor, created by French company Withings. Called the Smart Baby Monitor, it turns your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad into the parent unit, while a chic, wireless Apple-esque baby unit stays in the nursery. We had a play with it, ohh-ed and ahh-ed at its cleverness, and then we were sworn to secrecy. We hate keeping good gossip to ourselves, so it’s been tough start to November! But, finally, as the product goes on sale online, we’re allowed to tell you all about it…
As you can see from the images, the Withings Smart Baby Monitor wouldn’t look out of place in a flagship Apple Store, and its £269 price tag certain puts it in the “premium” category. The app you download to your device is free.
This minimalist baby unit connects to your phone/pod/pad via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or Ethernet. The baby unit has a 3-megapixel hi-res camera, wide-angle lens and night-vision. You control this from your parent unit, zooming in and out and moving it around as you like.
The baby unit can also monitor the temperature, humidity and motions in the room. There’s a mic to give you audio as well as video monitoring, and a speaker, for you to talk and soothe your baby from a different room. You can quit the app on your phone/pod/pad but keep the audio monitoring going, to just listen in. You can also set alerts up, be it for sound, motion, temp or the humidity, which means you needn’t stay fixated on the screen.
One feature that really won us over was the night-light. You can smoothly control this from your device, changing shade and intensity from a rainbow-coloured circle on your device’s touch-screen. A small thing, but one that reveals just how much attention to detail Withings has paid.
But that’s just our initial impressions. We all know what looks great at first glance can reveal some real niggles over time. So we’ve already had the Withings Smart Baby Monitor take up residence in the home of one of our most seasoned reviewers (again, sworn to secrecy until now!). A digital video monitor veteran, we can’t wait to hear how she and her baby and toddler get on with this promising, world-first bit of baby kit.
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