Reviews for Philips In.Sight Wireless HD Baby Monitor

For those who are having trouble, here is what I did:

First, I use an actiontech router from Verizon for FiOS. It's setup to support a/b/g/n network. It actually sits in my basement and the monitor is all the way up on the third floor of the townhouse. So distance is not an issue here. I am using WPA 2 for encryption on my network. DON'T use WEP, the instructions tell you that there's a problem with that - besides it's not as secure. I also use an iPhone 4 with iOS 6.0.1. I'm using version 2.1.0 of the In.Sight software.

When I setup the monitor I tried to do it up in the baby's bedroom. Didn't work, and now that I understand what happens, I'm not surprised. Get the monitor close to your router and the phone. That step is important because it seems to encrypt the signal and for some reason being close to the router is key. Follow the usual instructions, but be close to the router. You'll pair up within 5 minutes. The phone will go through a bunch of steps to get things going and when it's done you can unplug the monitor and move it up to the baby's room. Plug it in and it will work just fine. The video feed is VERY clear even in night mode. I was actually shocked at how clear it is. When someone moves in the room, the motion is a bit blurry - that's because of the video signal speed. Again doesn't bother me. I just need to know my kid is up, not see and record her performing gangnam style.

Things I did NOT expect when I bought it: Live streaming down to the millisecond. The streaming is 4-5 seconds off. Who cares? Same with audio… again, so what?

The alerts work just fine. It's not enough to setup the alerts within the app. You have to go to the notification center inside the system preferences on your device and adjust the in.Sight settings to your liking. I set it up so it shows me a full prompt even if phone is locked. I've tested it with the app not even running, and it works. YES it takes a few seconds to get the alert, it's not instantaneous, again so what?

This is not a home monitoring system where you want to see live action continuously. This is about monitoring and making sure your baby is sleeping OK, and if they wake up or make big movements that you can respond quickly. The 5 second difference to me is minimal. You might feel differently. If you're expecting live streaming, this is not for you.

Now the reason this got a 3 star:
- Documentation is horrendous. I mean just awful. If the documentation was better, I'd give it a 4 star for that change alone. Docs are just as bad as I've ever seen them.
- The monitor did hang on me once. Instead of the In.Sight app telling me it can't connect to the monitor, it crashes. Unplugging the monitor and plugging it back in solved it. This thing has been running for a couple of days now with no issues. If you're concerned it might crash in the middle of the night, reset it when you put your kid to sleep.
- You can't have two phones monitoring at the same time. If that's a feature, fine, but when I try to look at the feed, at least give me a prompt that another device is connected, don't tell me I can't connect to the server. That's just a dumb error.
- The reset button is on the square connector on the In.Sight device, not on the monitor itself. Documentation says nothing about it.

I just set it up tonight thus have only used the night time/infrared mode, but wow is the picture bad. I have the iBaby and at less than half the resolution it is far clearer than the "720p" in.sight. It might be just terrible LED's or I got a bad camera, but ouch...
PROS-
Setup and wi-fi connection was super easy
Drop Box integration is great
Love the temp and humidity
Two-way audio is a plus
Like the idea of the alerts but have no clue what levels to set them at
App design is pretty good- clean retina ready graphics
Video Alerts start a few seconds before the event trigger, which is dope and means the camera is continuously recording/buffering
Pinch to zoom is nice- not as nice as actual pan/tilt on iBaby, but at least I can zoom in on insight to any part of the image unlike ibaby, only center of image.
For 1.0 it beats the first iBaby chinengish app

CONS-
SO far- horrible video quality at night
No brightness/contrast or any video adjustments
Cannot turn off audio in app like iBaby, have to turn device speakers up/down/off. I wish I could set it to mute by default.
Cannot figure out how to stop recording video without exiting camera
Auto infrared mode is buggy- turns on and off randomly in the dark, triggering a motion alert
CANNOT VIEW ON MULTIPLE DEVICE SIMULTANEOUSLY-yes you can use on multiple devices, but not at the same time, as far as I can tell
Time is always in 24h mode, cannot change
Bad web support- manual links are bad
iPad app is weak
App settings do not sync between devices

In my opinion, as a young parent, it's perfect. There is no delay between the baby monitor and the app on my iPod. Images are crystal clear and the talk-back is the icing on the cake. Another really nice feature is the nightmode, so you can see what your baby is doing. This is the best baby monitor that money can buy !

We bought this to be able to keep eyes and ears on our baby whose room is all the way across the house from ours. We read the negative reviews but figured we'd give it a try.

Setup was easy and took about five minutes and I'm happy with the camera and sound quality. We experience about a one to two second delay which I expected.

The apps need some help. The notifications are buggy and, as many mentioned, often very delayed. This hasn't yet been a huge issue for us because we usually don't rely on them, but that definitely should be fixed, especially in light of the other issues. On the iPhone I love the feature of continuous play so that when my screen times out and locks I still have ears on the nursery. However, it's totally annoying that if I get a call, text message or other notification, I have to go back into the app and reset it to continue hearing. That's not exactly safe for middle of the night emergencies.

The iPad app has the same issues with the added frustration that there isn't a continuous play option. This feature needs to be added to the iPad app so parents like me can let their phones get calls and notifications and use the iPad as the monitor.

Phillips needs to spend some time fixing these issues and then they'd have a great product. Hope they read these reviews.

Read these reviews and the app reviews. This thing is a joke as a baby monitor. I'm sitting here at 4 AM awake and frustrated because the app won't stream video any longer. This monitor was my back up plan and the video I have been using to see my child while traveling. Our main monitor failed earlier this week and while waiting for a warranty replacement, I've tried using this. Absolute junk, the software to support this hardware. Again, read the comments on here. Even with that limited purpose, if two devices have the app open in iOS (not even active) and they have not completely killed the app in their "active apps", a third device can't get in. Seriously, the product (the camera) is OK (quality video and audio) but the whole app (and the website for computers) is terrible. Apple, you need to quit selling this product. This does not work anything close to 'as advertised'.

Again, Do Not Plan To Use This As A Baby Monitor, I implore you. You will be frustrated, disappointed and, quite likely, very angry. I know I am.

Don't trust it. It is delayed and the video cuts off after and hour and then the sound follows it, we have to go to store and find a new one just to feel peaceful at night! Glad this was a gift and I didn't spend money on it, still a huge disappointment.

Great device and great app. I use it to keep an eye on my dog and use it only with my ipad. Love the simplicity of it.

This is absolutely amazing. Before I bought this I constantly had to run form room to room to check up on my little daughter, but now I can relax and just peek from my ipad, even at night. This is very useful when you are trying to do two or three things at once and don't want to constantly run around the house. I recommend it to every family

This monitor was so simple to set up! I love the fact that I can check on my baby at any time and anywhere just by looking at an App on my IPhone. It has a lot of cool features: night vision so you can see your baby in the wee hours, the temperature in her room so I know if it's too warm or cold, the ability to talk to her through the phone (very cool), etc. The monitor is small so it doesn't take up much room. All in all, this is a great product and I would highly recommend it!

The clarity of the iPhone's camera makes this the most impressive baby monitor I've seen. It's crisp and clear in daylight and works phenomenally in dark. The camera is great. I love the base which has a sticky rubberish bottom and stays secure where you put it. Here's why I returned it and wouldn't recommend buying it;

1. Video and Audio Lag - After setting up the camera (which was very easy), I noticed that there was a bit of a lag in the audio (about 1 second). Then I noticed that the video stared to fall behind too. Then it got worse and worse until the lag was greater than 10 seconds. Audio and video didn't sync up either.

The product quality is great and the concept is amazing however, for what it's designed to do, it completely fails. I was hoping for face time video and audio quality but it doesn't come close.

A baby monitor is there for safety and piece of mind. Unfortunately, I can't confidently say that this until offers either.

Save yourself some time - DO NOT BUY.