Ultimate Reassurance Monitor product reviews

I was a little underwhelmed when I first unpacked this unit... it looked a little... shall we say, light in the offering. There was a handset (aka Parent Unit) that looked more like Mork's spaceship, and a base-station (aka Baby Unit) that appeared way too compact to offer even half of what it promised. Then there was the 'motion sensor pad' which seemed way too rigid to be effective. None the less, in the spirit of exploration that makes humanity great, I dived in and started to set it all up, figuring I would trial it somehow... maybe with one of those animatronic cats or something...

However, fate intervened and brought my son into the world a little ahead of schedule, which worked out perfectly, since he arrived the morning after I had assembled this unit and given it a bit of a basic play-test. A few days later, and he was able to come home and help me give it a real test!

First off, the most obvious, and least technical stuff. Starting with the nightlight: This is a soft yellow-golden glow spot on the top of the upright arm. At full power, it can give a good faint light to fill a small room, and if aimed correctly won't affect your baby's eyes at all. However, it is quite directional, so may not be quite as effective for anything more than seeing which buttons to press on the base unit itself. At minimal glow, it will give you a good idea of where things are within a few feet of the base station, so if you use a pacifier for your baby and leave it nearby, you should find it fine.

Next the thermometer: Brilliant! An excellent indicator of the room's ambient temperature. Would have been nice to have some form of alarm fitted to it so you would get alerted if the room temp dropped below a preset threshhold, so that you could ensure a warm room for when you remove sprog from their warm bundle of blankets for feeding times.

Now, talking about Power... both the base station and the handset will happily run off mains or battery... mains is of course to be preferred, saving the batteries as a fall-back for mains drop-out. This is great for dealing with those short power-cuts and rolling brown-outs we have been warned to expect due to predicted power shortages and accidents with the lines. A bit of peace-of-mind there, knowing you can quickly check if baby is still there, even when the power isn't. As a bit of a test, I plugged in some high-end lithium-based 'AAA' cells and left both units running on battery for 6 hours. Afterwards, a quick check with a multimeter confirmed the batteries still had heaps of juice, so good batteries are a worthwhile investment.

The multi-frequency aspect of the unit will be most appreciated in multi-apartment dwellings, or if you have more than one sprog each with their own rooms, as the units will shuffle around the bands until they find some clear space and lock in. This prevents you from hearing someone else's baby squarking for a feed and rushing in to find your angel snoozing like it was a Sunday morning.

The bit that really surprised and impressed me was the motion sensor pad... this is a roughly-A4 sized pad of hard plastic, attached by a rather long cord, to the base unit. It slips between the mattress and the hard base of the cot. Yes, hard base... this is NOT recommended for spring or fabric-based cots, such as collapsable or porta-cots. Once attached to the base unit, you can activate or de-activate it with a switch, allowing you to have it or not, without otherwise affecting the performance of the rest of the unit. I thought it looked pointless, until I plugged it in while my baby son was sleeping, and noticed that it was reliably detecting the slightest movements of him breathing! Stunning stuff! As a test, I unplugged the pad while the unit was still in 'motion sensor on' mode, and sure enough 20 seconds later it started howling, and moments later, so did my son. Now if it's sensitive enough to detect breathing, and the kids stops... you're going to know within 20 seconds. If the noise doesn't spark junior enough to move, then you have some real issues, but if the sprog jumps, then that's motion, the alam relaxes and shuts up, but leaves the indicator light blinking to remind you it happened. Reset is as simple as close the lid, open it again... tah-dah. Alarm fully reset.

By far the biggest commentary has to do with the handset, aka the Parent Unit. As I mentioned earlier, it has a rounded egg-like shape, which actually fits quite comfortably in the hand. With the clip on the back serving a double-feature as a belt clip, or when reversed, a stand, this little gem can be easily carried anywhere and placed nearby no matter what you are doing. The indicator lights on it are quite informative: The power light glows solid for full power, or blinks to let you know the batteries are running low and need replacing. The results from the motion-pad being displayed as a blinking green light and an audible 'tick', and the vertical column of lights indicating relative noise strength from the microphone on the base unit listening to your baby gurgle, burp, fart, whistle... or cry. This holds true to an amazing range, as I discovered when I clipped it to my belt and walked around our property... 12 metres out to the letterbox, which had the signal punching through 3 walls, and it was just starting to break up as I walked into the metal garage, a good 20 metres from the base station, a good solid 4 house-walls plus a metal garage wall away! Very impressive indeed!

Two little gripes I have with it though... firstly, when the unit is planted in it's docking cradle, it is running off mains power, preserving your battery life. However, an annoying power-hum is generated and can feel like a mosquito with attitude is driving a wedge in behind your eyeballs. Such hums are usually caused by weak sheilding of the power circuits as they pass near the speaker. Adjusting the speaker volume can fix this to some degree, but also, naturally, reduces how much of your baby you hear. (Yay for the indicator lights on this score!) Secondly, and far less annoying, more of an "I wish they had..." is that it would have been good to echo the temperature indicator from the base station onto the handset, allowing remote monitoring of room temp. OK, a bit of an extreme example, but this could be an early warning indicator of a fire in the room... of course, a smart parent would have a smoke detector in the room anyways, but you never know, some people don't think that far ahead.

Overall, I would have to say this about the Ultimate Reassurance Monitor... it sure isn't cheap... but it's the best value for money I can find on the market... and what price would you put on your child's life? For me, this is still a good value buy at around $300, so $240 is a bargain in my books. Sure, you can buy other monitors for less, but lower price always means lower features or quality... you don't buy diamonds for the same price as cut glass. Now if only they could nail that power-hum... But at least the handset tells you when it is out of range (*if* it can go out of range) or if the base station has been turned off and you forget to switch off the handset.