Babysense Video Baby Monitor Review

We purchased the Babysense Video Baby Monitor so our expert reviewer could thoroughly test and assess it. Keep reading for our full product review.

Whether they’re a month old or running around as a toddler, there’s little in the world that can give you peace of mind when you have to step away from your little one for a moment. Fortunately, a baby monitor like the Babysense Video Baby Monitor can help put some of your fears to rest. It’s a more basic model, but it’s affordable and offers solid video, audio, and great battery life to make up for its paucity of features. To see just how much value it offers for the price, we spent more than six weeks with the unit testing how well it performs in a number of areas. Read on to see our thoughts. 

Design: Functional, not fancy

The design of the Babysense Video Baby Monitor as rather mundane, with both the infant unit and parent unit looking like nearly every other compact solution on the market. The infant unit features a base for the camera to pivot on, a camera module, an infrared LED array and a port on the rear to plug the device in. The parent unit, on the other hand, is compact enough to fit in a pocket and offers a 2.4-inch screen and a set of seven buttons to control various functions and navigate the menu. The lack of any physical pan/tilt function on the infant unit isn’t ideal, but considering the price point of this system, it’s to be expected. 

Setup Process: Quick and painless 

Setting up the system is extremely simple. After removing the components from the box and plugging the battery into the parent unit, it’s simply a matter of plugging the infant unit (the camera) into the wall and pairing the two devices. The process made simple using the menu onboard the parent unit. 

Video Quality: Near-perfect silence and crisp audio 

For being an entry-level video baby monitor, the Babysense punches above its price point in the video department. In our weeks of testing, it didn’t seem to matter whether our little one’s room was full of sunlight during the day or using the onboard infrared LED lights to light up his room at night—the video quality proved much better than we expected for the asking price of the system.

Occasionally, there would be a bit of lag between the image capture and what appeared on the parent unit (mainly when we were far away from the infant unit), but when the image came through it was clear and sharp. This could be due to the 2.4-inch display on the parent unit compared so a few larger displays we’ve seen on other units, but it was a welcomed surprise.

Sound Quality: Good things can come in small packages

Like the video, the audio quality of the Babysense video monitor also surprised us. Audio came through loud and clear, and the speaker on the rear of the parent unit projected sound well—something other units have struggled with. As with similar units, the two-way talk-back audio quality was poor, but we’ve yet to find a video baby monitor system that doesn’t disappoint in this department.

Babysense also includes a number of lullabies that can be played back on the infant unit to soothe your child, but the subpar speaker makes this functionality borderline useless, so it seems more for show than anything else. 

Wireless: Could use some work

Babysense rates the range of its Video Baby Monitor at 900 feet, which is roughly the same as other systems at its price point. However, we found real-world usage slightly less impressive. If you’re only a room or two over, you shouldn’t have any issue, but once you have four or five walls between the parent unit and the infant unit it becomes clear that transmission isn’t up to snuff. Video and audio both lag a bit, but even with the lag, the content stays clear, which was a surprise.

Battery Life: Plenty of power for all-day monitoring

Babysense doesn’t offer an estimated battery life, but we tested the unit for weeks and took thorough notes on its performance. Over the course of our testing, we found the parent unit lasted 9 hours on full video mode and roughly 12 hours when using only audio. Considering the size of the device, this was beyond impressive, outperforming other units that cost quite a bit more. We did notice that the battery life drained quicker the further the parent unit was from the infant unit, but that’s been the case for nearly every video monitoring system we’ve tested.

The 9 hours of battery life proved to be more than enough for all-day monitoring. At night, we simply plugged in the unit and it would be charged and ready to go in the morning. 

Price: An absolute bargain for what it offers

The Babysense video monitor has an MSRP of $69.99, making it one of the most affordable video monitoring systems on the market. As we’ve noted above, the system punches well above its asking price in terms of performance, even if some of its auxiliary features left us unimpressed. Babysense also offers add-on camera units for $29.99, which makes it a nice modular system for times when you need to keep an eye on multiple rooms at once.

Babysense vs. Letsfit

Although the Letsfit 2.4GHz Video Baby Monitor looks entirely different from the Babysense monitor, the two feature similar specifications and functionality. The Letsfit Baby Monitor retails for $99.99. This puts it in a slightly higher pricing tier than the Babysense Video Monitor, but for that extra $30, you get an included night light with multiple colors, soothing music samples, and a unique mode that will keep the parent unit’s screen off until a noise is detected. 

The parent unit also features a 2.4-inch screen and a rechargeable battery rated for up to 8 hours of battery life. Overall, the Letsfit monitor does cost a bit more, but if the added features sound interesting to you, it might be worthwhile to spend a little bit extra.