BT 150 Digital Baby Monitor; a review by a father
What I like
The sound
The most important thing about a baby monitor is the ability to pick up sounds of your baby and transmit them to your parent unit as clearly as possible. The sensitivity of BT 150 Digital Baby Monitor![\"\"](\"http://www.assoc-amazon.co.uk/e/ir?t=domjan-21&l=as2&o=2&a=B000T4YB66\")
BT 150 also has capability to transmit sounds from parent unit to the baby unit – so called talk back. You just press a button and use the parent unit like a walkie-talkie. The sound quality is equally high as when listening to the baby, but I can’t comment on the usability of the feature yet, since we always have to caress our baby a little or adjust the pacifier when he’s unsettled – just talking to him won’t do. But supposedly talk back is useful when the kids grow up a little and you can settle things out just by talking to them.
The lullabies
BT 150 can play five different lullabies and while I was playing them for the first time as I was changing our baby\’s diapers, I wondered why I wasn\’t annoyed by the songs. Then I realised these melodies were not your ordinary greeting-card-beeping tunes, but more of a good mobile-phone-ringing-tone quality. It actually says so right there on the box: polymorphic lullabies.
There is more: you can record your own song or connect your mp3 player to the baby unit, and even set a timer to stop playing after arbitrary time. We don’t use this feature because our baby doesn’t have trouble falling asleep and he actually prefers peace and quiet. But every baby is different any if yours needs lullabies to get to sleep, the BT 150 has great options to set it up.
The parent unit
At the first glance the parent unit doesn’t stand out. It looks and feels nice; it’s the right size; has its own charging cradle and a small display with the temperature of the baby’s room. But very few baby monitors come with a built-in torch! BT 150 has a relatively weak LED light – just perfect for lighting your way on a night trip to the baby room. We use our baby monitor for just a couple of hours in the evening because the baby is sleeping in the bedroom for now, but I can imagine we’ll be very grateful for the torch feature, once he’ll be sleeping in his own room.
You can do much more with the parent unit than just listening and talking back to the baby. One can set the sensitivity of the microphone on the baby unit; the volume of the receiver; you can switch the nightlight and the lullabies on and of or set the timer to switch them off. You can’t however set the intensity of the nightlight – only baby unit has this option.
Lastly, both the parent and the baby unit have a clock display but somehow it got reset every time I set it up.
Miscellaneous
Most of below features are not that important and majority of parents will not care about them. They are not unique to BT 150, but they do build up a picture of how well it was designed.
- The baby unit has a nightlight with three intensity levels.
- In addition to the timer-off feature described above, there is also a timer-up that warns you when to take medicine for instance.
- It’s pretty. Don’t underestimate this – a lot of baby monitors are tacky or just plain ugly.
- You can load the baby unit with backup batteries. They enable continuous operation of the unit when the mains power supply fails. However, they can’t be recharged (in the unit).
- Just the right amount of buttons and relatively easy-to-navigate menus.
What I am not happy about
The temperature sensor
I though a temperature sensing feature is a nice one to have, but I am slowly realising the obvious: the temperature is more or less the same in all the rooms so I don’t really need another thermometer. Anyway, it bothers me that the BT 150 seems to have a measuring bias of two degrees. I don’t know whether this is due to a faulty unit or design flaw.
The alerts
I can’t figure out how the alerts work. The parent unit can warn you with beeping and/or vibration when there is something you should pay attention to. The vibrating works for the temperature-out-of-bounds warning, but not for the unit-out-of-reach warning. I also expected that if I mute the sound the unit will warn me by vibrating, but it only flashes its lights. Again, I don’t know if it’s bad design or just a faulty unit.
Audio feedback
If parent and baby unit come within a few meters of each other a loud whistle comes out of the parent unit due to the Larsen effect. We thus have to mute the parent unit before entering the room with the baby unit. I don’t know if other baby monitors have an audio feedback filter, but it would be a really nice feature to have!
Why BT 150
I was happily bragging to a colleague what a feature-packed baby monitor I bought – I was genuinely pleased with the product. But he pointed out that most baby monitors are overkill, since anything you really ever need from one is to listen to the baby and maybe talk back to them. After a bit of discussion on the subject I basically agreed with him (bringing my good mood down a little) and if I had another chance to choose, I’d find the cheapest model meeting said requirements.
However, now that I have BT 150 Digital Baby Monitor I admire the good design, abundance of features, easy usage, good build quality and the pretty looks. I recommend it.
![\"\"](\"http://www.assoc-amazon.co.uk/s/noscript?tag=domjan-21\")
Useful article – I’ve just got one of these monitors. Mine doesn’t vibrate when the volume is on and muted but does when the sound is turned down to zero. Its not easy to spot as the speaker switched off symbol appears either way.
Thanks for the comment. I tried it like you described and it works. Now I can’t decide whether this is a bug or a feature… 🙂
We had the same problem. supposed to vibrate or beep if sound is muted in the instruction manual. However, as you say, it doesn’t, but does when volume is turned down to off.
rubbish programming if you ask me. Also poorly written/researched manual. Without this site i would have given up on the alarms.
Cheers
Hi.
I wonder if anyone could help. Last night the parent monitor flashed its lights – right up to RED – this happend on a few occasions. The thing is the monitor was not on mute – and there was no noise coming from the parent unit. Just flashing lights. I checked on the baby and she was asleep.
Im wondering if this is faulty?
The room temp was low – and it had flashed the parent unit screen (this is how it always alerts).. but I have never seen the lights flashing – especially when there is no noise interference?
That never happened to me. Try removing all the batteries for a few minutes to reset the monitor.