Review – Foscam 3.5” Pan-Tilt Wireless Baby Monitor

Emily is 3 months old now, and getting much more active. One of her new tricks is to roll over onto her tummy, which she loves for about a minute, and then cries when she realises she’s stuck there! I spend countless hours turning to poor mite onto her back, only for her to do it all over again.

Now that she’s not so tiny, I’ve taken to putting her into her cot in the nursery for her daytime naps (she’s still in her Moses basket with me and David during the night, until she’s big enough to sleep through the whole night by herself).  When I first put her in there, I would place a blanket over her, as I did in her Moses basket, but as I couldn’t tuck it in very well, she would either pull it over her head, or roll onto her tummy and wind up with her legs poking out through the bars. Neither ideal when I can’t be with her all the time. So I had to think of a solution quickly. I bought a couple of sleeping bags, so that she was safe from pulling blankets up over her, and her legs were covered up so that they couldn’t escape through the bars of her cot. But I was still a bit worried, as the ideal solution would to be to know when she was awake, and therefore eliminate any issues of her moving around too much when I wasn’t there. What I really needed was a baby monitor.

Emily doesn’t cry straight away when she wakes up or wants feeding, so I decided to look at monitors with cameras. And the one that struck me straight away was the Foscam. 

I really liked the simplicity of both the camera and the monitor – no fancy gadgetry to clog up the design. The only button on the camera is the on/off switch, and the few keys on the monitor are neatly placed along the top. 

To set it up, you simply insert the battery into the back of the monitor, and plug it in to begin charging. You will see a message telling you the device is out of range, which means that the camera can’t be read. Once you plug in the camera, the screen will immediately show you what the camera is seeing. 

Unlike some of the baby monitors out there, you can move the camera lens via the arrow keys on the front of the monitor. My only complaint about this is that in my opinion, it doesn’t pan quite low enough – I’ve found it quite difficult to find a suitable place to put the camera, as it can’t be very much higher than the object you want to view. I wanted to be able to look down on Emily’s cot – instead, I had to put it lower down and view her through the bars. However, you could overcome that by attaching the camera to the wall via the fittings on the base.

Another great feature is the zoom. If the camera isn’t close enough to see her face, I can zoom in to make sure she is sleeping. And the quality of the image is really clear – it even switches automatically to infra-red when the room gets dark. 

When Emily makes a sound, the device picks it up really well. So well, I can even hear her breathing! You can also see when there is noise thanks to the lights on the front of the screen, so you don’t always have to have the volume up loud. And you can set something called VOX, which puts the monitor into standby until baby makes a sound, then it automatically comes back on for a few seconds. That’s really useful, as the battery life isn’t all that good.

And speaking of the battery, I found that it never fully charges up. I think that’s probably just a fault with mine, but it is a pain as I have to keep it plugged in pretty much all the time. However, I do get about 3 hours out of it just running off the battery.

Running along the keys on the top, you’ll find:

• The Power key
• The VOX key (See above for description)
• Volume – this allows you to alter the speaker volume on the monitor.
• Microphone – When you press this, you can talk to your baby. I suppose this could be useful, although I found that Emily spends a few seconds looking for ‘the voice’, and then commences fussing/crying. So I don’t use it.
• Home key – By pressing this, you are presented with 6 options:

1. Cam Select – you can add more cameras if you wish, although I believe that you can only buy them separately in the US. Might be wrong though.
2. Feed timer – You can set the device to sound an alarm at 2, 3, 4, or 5 hour intervals, to let you know it’s feeding time. Again, I don’t use this, as Emily lets me know when she’s hungry, and she doesn’t always follow such a rigid schedule.
3. Temp Setting – I find this really reassuring. You can see what the temperature of baby’s room is like.
4. Cam Setting – To set up more than one camera.
5. Brightness – To brighten the screen.
6. VOX sensitivity – This allows you to alter the microphone for the VOX, depending on how far away the device is from baby.

All in all, I’m delighted that I chose this. Despite the glitch with the battery, it does everything I need it to, and it’s made a huge difference to my stress levels when I have to put Emily down for her naps!

I rate it pretty highly, and I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending it to other mums, or carers.

And at £89.99 from Amazon*, it’s not all that expensive.

*At the time of writing, the item was no longer available on Amazon.
Note: This is not a sponsored post. All opinions are my own.