The Sunday Review – Samsung SEW-3030 Wireless Video Baby Monitor

In the first of two

baby monitor reviews

Today we tried out the very stylish Samsung SEW-3030 wireless video baby monitor. It looks great. The parent unit is black, sleek and still ipod-esque. groovy. The parent unit houses a 3.5-inch LCD color screen that displays a bright, high-resolution image. Featuring infrared technology, this video baby monitor features night vision so you can monitor your baby's movements throughout the night. We found the image quality to be really impressive - the color in the daylight image was a little washed out, but the clarity in the black and white infrared image was sharp enough so that we can see Lara squirming and squirming in her bed, from a camera placed about 2 meters away. The wireless video signal is secured so that only the parent unit can access the signal. This prevents interference and prevents other people with wireless devices from seeing the baby monitor images. The wireless signal is good up to 100m and we had no problem using it in and around the house. Some of the features provided by the Samsung SEW-3030 are high on our wish list when choosing a baby monitor. We find the ability to play lullabies from our

the existing baby monitor is invaluable in helping Lara settle in - the parent unit on the Samsung wireless monitor lets you turn on the music remotely, but we found the music to be a little tinkling and scratchy (and not terribly soothing).The other feature we love is the ability to “talkback” so you can whisper soothing words to your little one if they move (or, like me, you can laugh while insulting your partner if you look on the monitor and can see they fail miserably at getting your child to fall asleep). One feature that disappointed us was the room temperature monitor - it kept telling us the room was dangerously hot so we had turn off the alert. Only for a flashing second or two does the temperature match our normal nursery thermometer(s). In general, we found the sound quality of the monitor to be poor. It's definitely more focused on picture than sound. We found it quick and easy to set up and charge, but difficult to use at night .We like to run our baby monitor through the night so it wakes us up if Lara starts to turn gray - we just couldn't find a combination of settings on the SEW-3030 that worked for us,

the light from the screen lit up our bedroom, or we used the sleep setting which we had real trouble configuring so that it would wake the unit up if it heard Lara stir. For this reason, we didn't replaced our existing monitor with the Samsung video monitor, but instead we use both side by side. You can easily integrate the Samsung Wireless Baby Monitor with your PC or TV with plug and play technology. For more technical users, you can use the bundled software to integrate video chat apps so that if you're far away from home (for example, if you or your partner have to work away from home), you can remotely monitor your child. Get this, you can even set up Skype to automatically answer an incoming call from a number given with the Samsung surveillance system! The Samsung SEW-3030 wireless baby monitor costs around £149.99.