owletbabycare.co.uk
Owlet Baby Monitor Duo at a glance
The Owlet Monitor Duo combines the award-winning Smart Sock with the Cam for the most complete picture of your baby’s well-being. Track your child’s heart rate, oxygen level, and sleep trends, while streaming live HD video to your phone. View your child’s readings in real-time, from anywhere, in our free App and receive notifications if readings leave preset zones, and sound and motion notifications to stay informed of your child’s needs.
We spoke to these real parent testers to get their review...
How did this product make your life easier?
Kirk: Initially the sock brought comfort to me and my partner by knowing that our baby was safe during the night. When we left the hospital and would lay her down, she was so still it was hard to tell if she was okay or not. Using the sock therefore just meant we knew she was ok.
Nicole: This product really is a state of the art monitor providing you with vital information about your baby at the touch of a button on your phone. The data it records helped me to better understand my little one’s sleep habits and provided reassurance overnight, particularly when they were unwell. All of the information can be accessed via the app.
Katie: This product makes my life so much easier by always knowing how much baby is. Every time my baby naps I know through a simple little touch of a button how my babies heart rate is and how their O2 levels are. This gives me such peace of mind when they are napping in another room that I'm not in but also being able to set the camera to any position makes it so helpful.
Letitia: I really did not get on with this product so therefore didn’t make my life as a mum any easier. We found that this product really lagged and when watching baby sleep it kept freezing for a few seconds each time. We switched WiFi off and reset it many times to see if that was the problem but it was not.
Would you recommend this to other parents?
Kirk: I would only recommend the sock to parents who are very cautious and have the money.When I received the product I was pleased with first opening the product with the number of different parts which you expect from a luxury product. The camera was very easy to set up and with plastic covers for the wires, it looks great in the nursery. I did by a different baby monitor camera which did not look half as good in the nursery due to the dangling wires.
Using the baby monitor was easy to set up using my mobile phone. Once set up I found the quality of the picture not great considering the price of the product and compared to a cheaper alternative. The zoom on the camera is also just a digital zoom so when zooming in it becomes more blurry. Having previously used a monitor with a dedicated monitor I found using my phone slightly annoying as I would have to unlock it every time instead of being able to keep the monitor on and just be able to glance over at it. The previous baby monitor I had also did not require wifi so the quality of the image did not depend on the internet. This isn’t a problem most of the time, however as I enjoy playing computer games online it can make the connection poor.
When I first fitted the sock, it worked very well and we received the data on my phone. However, there were a couple of times when the sock had come loose which triggered the alarm on the hub which in the first couple of nights after coming home from the hospital was very annoying as it disturbed our short periods when we could sleep, but at the same time can totally understand the need for this.
We then decided to not use the sock for a few days and then started using it again. We found the sock gave good insight into our babies sleep pattern and if it was deep or light sleep which helped us better understand her sleeping pattern which was great use. I did try to research ways of changing the alarms on the hub but found no way of doing this so I would find personalisation for this would be helpful.
Nicole: I would recommend this product to parents who feel they need extra reassurance when their little one is sleeping. We were impressed by the technology and design of the smart sock enabling baby’s vital signs and sleep patterns to be monitored and recorded. I can appreciate for many parents this could make for a more restful night, knowing that you will be notified by the base station alarm if anything could be wrong. In our case, we personally found that the alarm was triggered too often and the colour coding system was complicated to interpret (a different colour denotes various reasons the alarm has been triggered). We found it increased our anxiety levels, and so I would not choose this as a monitor unless I had an additional reason (such as health concerns) to need the smart sock function. The camera quality was not as good as other monitors on the market, but was certainly good enough and came with all the accessories required to fix it to the wall for perfect positioning.
Katie: I would recommend this product to a fellow parent because of the peace of mind it gives you and how easy it is to use. In less than 5 minutes you can set the camera up which tells you if the room is too hot or too cold as well as the sock being set up you can tell if your baby is moving, if they are upset or if anything is wrong with your baby so quickly.
Letitia: I would not recommend this product just because of the lagging. I also didn’t like the fact that we had to close the app whilst on your phone so think a handy feature would have been that you could minimise the screen and be able to see baby sleeping on a smaller screen, maybe at the top of your phone.
Would you choose this product above all others on the market?
Kirk: In terms of the camera, I would choose a different product due to the price and the quality of the camera, I would choose a camera not using wifi, with a dedicated monitor. I left the camera shown on my phone overnight so that the sounds would wake me up and my phone got extremely hot.
Nicole: I would not choose this product over other alternatives as I personally did not feel it eased my anxiety levels. Although the design and functionality of the smart sock is undeniably very clever, I found it annoying to put on before bed when the little one is wriggling and tired. The sock itself is snug and well designed but was sometimes tricky to fit underneath a footed babygrow. I wouldn’t choose to use a smart sock as part of my routine monitoring of little one, as it was too much stress overall, however, I can appreciate it would be worth it if parents had additional concerns about their little one’s wellbeing overnight.
Letitia: I would not choose this product above others. I was so excited to receive this product and get it set up. It was very difficult to set up and I was unable to do it myself and my partner had to do it but also took him a good while to understand and get it up and running. I think the main thing that put me off this product was that you cannot keep the screen on when using your phone so think I will stick to the camera with a separate monitor screen, not the phone.
Katie: I would choose this product against other products like it because of the high standards and specs of the sock and the monitor being able to use both together really helps and really puts your mind at ease knowing if anything was to happen to your child you would know almost instantly. This product also would come before others because of the fact there is no other company that offers this and I think it is a really solid, helpful and ingenious design.
What changes would you make to this product?
Kirk: When using the product on several occasions the sock would come loose and the alarm would sound waking me and my partner up which we found very irritating when we already were getting little sleep. I would include a monitor. I would also include white noise as well as the lullabies, I found white noise helps my baby sleep a lot more than lullabies. I would also allow the ability to personalise the camera more such as changing the temperature to Celsius instead of Fahrenheit. I found this quite annoying, and it would be very easy to change.
I also believe the app needs more improvement, myself and my partner have the app on our phones and on several occasions when we unlock our phone and go back into the app the stream from the camera would not show and we would need to close and reopen the app for it to work. Also because we did not want the camera to be on 24/7 we would turn it off during the day, one time I went to turn it on during the evening and it would not work and I had to totally reset the camera and set it up again whilst my baby was trying to sleep, when scanning my phone with the camera for the QR code the noise to recognise it would disturb my baby so maybe change the noise for a change in the light on the camera.
Nicole: We would have benefitted from a physical key of the alarm colour codes and their meanings for easy and quick interpretation, rather than having to navigate via the app to the website when first using the product. We would also find a monitor screen useful to be able to see little one, with the base station colour feedback included for an at-a-glance overview of how little one is doing. The set-up was not as straightforward as we would have liked.
Katie: The only thing I would change about this product is if the sock is off and you have not placed it on the baby in under a minute, it starts playing nursery rhymes which is good and although you can snooze it for one minute, sometimes it might take more time then that and you have to keep snoozing the machine until your baby is ready.