First off, I have to say that this video monitor is fantastic. Period. Great picture quality, quiet operation for remote camera control, and Summer Infant customer services are also very good – they care about problems that their customers experience, and work hard to solve them. Having done lots of research, I think this is the best video monitor you can buy.

I wish I could give it five stars though, but to be honest, they need to lose two because of various issues: the battery life for video, problems with wi-fi interference, and a high temperature readout. The wireless issue clearly does not affect everybody, but be careful in particular if you are an O2 broadband user, before ordering this (see below for details). We have the O2 Wireless Box IV.

To save power, the device switches video off automatically after a couple of minutes when you are not on the mains stand. Even then, it will not go a whole night without being on the charging stand, if you try to view the video image more than a handful of times. Battery life is excellent if using as an audio only video monitor though, and you do get a clear readout from green, orange and red LED’s to show how noisy the baby is being, if you have the speaker switched off.

I probably would have gone for four stars were it not for the fact that the temperature readout also runs 2 or 3 degrees centigrade high, compared to two dedicated thermometers I have tested against, though this may be because we have the camera wall-mounted. I think the sensor picks up warmth from the camera, leading to the high reading.

We also initially had a couple of other problems out of the box – the battery pack that you can attach to the bottom of the camera, for non-mains use, would not attach properly, and kept switching the camera off. The power supply for the monitor charging stand buzzed noisily. And as I said, the monitor interfered with our wi-fi signal at home, such that Apple TV would not work, and wireless printing would not work when the monitor was switched on. Data transfer rates were also much slower in general when the monitor was switched on.

I told Summer Infant about these problems, and in a heartbeat, they sent a replacement monitor. This took care of the first and second problems, which were clearly just a one-off manufacturing fault. But the wireless problem persisted.

They tried to help, but in the end gave up, instructing me to get a new wireless router, which I didn’t intend to do, unless it could be proven that the 50 pounds investment would fix the problem. Besides, the Summer Infant Baby Touch is supposed to avoid wireless interference.

I am still considering switching my wi-fi provider to BT, which offers a router that avoids all wireless interference automatically, though in the end, I have discovered that a workaround is to try and play something via Apple TV, then switch the camera for the Baby Touch off, then back on again. This manually activates the Baby Touch’s automatic wi-fi avoidance, and lets us carry on as normal. Apple TV starts playing, and the interference goes away.

I think Summer Infant need to look at a firmware update to make the wireless avoidance more robust, and have suggested this to their product development team. It will be interesting to see how they respond.

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