Summer Infant Baby Pixel Touchscreen Color Video Monitor Review

We’ve got a new baby on the way in just a few short weeks. While my wife likes to gush over the baby clothes and swaddle blankets, I’m a tech guy and get excited about the newest tech products to help us through the baby years. I was so excited to hear that we’d be receiving the brand new Summer Infant Baby Pixel Touchscreen Color Video Monitor to review. Our old monitor was about 5 years old, so I was excited to see about the progress that’s taken place over the years. Today I’ll be sharing my thoughts on this new Summer Infant video monitor.

While the Summer Infant Baby Pixel 5″ Touchscreen Color Video Monitor is on the higher end of the cost spectrum for video monitors, the features are numerous and include some new innovations to the video baby monitor market.

Features of the Summer Infant Baby Pixel Touchscreen Color Video Monitor

Sleepzone Virtual Boundary

This is a pretty cool innovation from Summer Infant! It becomes especially useful for when baby wiggles into corners or your toddler starts to stand or climb. The Sleepzone feature allows you to define a digital “safe zone” around your child. This virtual boundary box is set using the parent handheld. When your toddler or baby crosses the boundary, an alert triggers on your handheld. A glance at your handheld unit will tell you whether you need to move the baby into another sleeping position or save your toddler from climbing out of their crib. As parents are all well aware, toddlers seem very self-determined to injure themselves once they learn to stand and climb.

I like this feature because you aren’t always looking at your handheld unit. Parents have other things to do throughout naptime or need to sleep themselves! Being alerted to movement from your wily toddler as they attempt to make a stealthy jailbreak from their crib is pretty handy.

Moonlite Night Vision Boost

While the Summer Infant Baby Pixel Touchscreen Color Video Monitor comes with the standard night vision feature that any reputable video monitor includes, Summer Infant added an LED light that temporarily provides an in-color look at your baby as they sleep. When you view an image in standard night vision, it essentially appears to be black and white due to the very small amount of light being used to produce the image. Color simply doesn’t translate with night vision. The Moonlite Night Vision Boost LED produces a subtle illumination in the field of view of the monitor to temporarily produce an in-color picture of your baby.

To be honest, don’t personally see the practical use of this feature. The night vision already produces an acceptable picture quality. I’m not sure why you would need to see the picture in-color other than if you are having trouble identifying something within the field of view. However, if this produces a greater sense of peace of mind for you as a parent, it’s a worthwhile feature.

3-Level Zoom

A self-explanatory feature. This video monitor has 3 levels of digital zoom so you can get a better look at your baby when the need arises. I think this feature should be included with every video monitor and I’m so glad Summer Infant included it.

360 Tilt Camera Steering

This feature gives you the ability to change your angle of view using the parental handheld unit. To activate it, you simply hold down the camera steering button on top of the handheld and tilt the handheld in the direction you want the camera to turn. Compared to video monitors with similar features that we’ve tried in the past, the Baby Pixel reacts much more quickly and smoothly.

The video monitors we owned in the past lacked a movable camera feature. Now that I’ve used it, it’s a feature I wouldn’t want to do without. For example, when Gideon was sick recently, I could turn the camera to see if his humidifier was low on water.

In addition, extra cameras can be purchased separately and added to your system for a total of up to four!

Voice Activated Video On/Off (VOX)

Voice activation auto-wakes the screen display when baby begins to cry, babble or fuss and automatically returns to power-save mode after 30 seconds with no activity. Instead of having a constantly glowing screen that may keep you awake, the screen will dim while the monitor is still on. This is also a boost to battery life. As soon as the baby cries, the screen reactivates to its normal brightness setting.

Digital Privacy

You can be sure of having a secure and private connection between your camera and handheld screen with a range of up to 1000ft. Remember in years past when you would read stories about baby monitors being hacked? Thankfully, security has improved greatly in most modern baby video monitors!

5″ Handheld Screen and Controller

The 5″ touchscreen handheld doubles as your controller and info center. Along with controlling the 360 Tilt Camera Steering, the handheld also displays temperature, signal strength, and battery indicator, while buttons placed along the rim of the handheld include power/menu, Moonlite, zoom/power-save, 360 Tilt Camera Steering activation, and volume control.

Talk-Back to Baby

Pretty self-explanatory. This feature allows you talk and soothe your baby or talk with your toddler without having to enter the room; sing a lullaby or tell your youngster that it’s not time for them to get up yet. Sometimes a little reassurance that you are nearby is all it takes for a baby to fall back to sleep.

2-Color Nightlight

This calming component can shine in two different colors: red to help baby get to sleep and blue which, according to the packaging, acts as a nightlight. I’d highly suggest sticking with the red lighting which research shows is the least likely to inhibit melatonin production. White and blue based lights inhibit the body’s secretion of melatonin by confusing the brain into believing it is still daylight.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Summer Infant Baby Pixel Touchscreen Color Video Monitor

Is It Worth The Cost?

The Summer Infant Baby Pixel Touchscreen Color Video Monitor system retails at a suggested price of $199.99. While this is on the higher end of video monitor prices, the features are what sells this model. If the price is a hurdle, adding the system to your baby registry might be appropriate. This model is currently only available through Amazon.

Is The Installation Hard?

Installation is extremely easy and only requires tools if you wish to use the included wall mount hardware. In our case, we just put the camera on top of Gideon’s dresser for the best overall view of his room. Because I wasn’t using the wall mount hardware, installation was simply removing the components from the package and plugging in the camera and handheld. The camera automatically linked to the handheld when I turned it on and the rest was as simple as familiarizing myself with the menu options. The power button is a bit counter-intuitive as you must hold it down all the way through the bootup process. At first, I thought our unit was defective but I eventually realized that I needed to keep the button pressed. The process is the same for shutting the handheld off.

How is the Picture and Sound Quality?

Picture and sound quality on the Summer Infant Baby Pixel Touchscreen Color Video Monitor are perfectly acceptable for a video baby monitor. The response time and finesse of the 360 Tilt camera are superior to other controllable monitors we’ve tested in the past. Night vision quality was also superior to any past models of monitors we had the opportunity to try. The zoom feature leads to a noticeable degradation in video quality but, for a baby monitor, how much detail do you need? HD simply isn’t necessary here.

Is The Monitor Easy to Use?

A quick tap of the menu button brings up all your available functions on the 5″ touchscreen. The menu is simple and uses icons to communicate the various options, all of which are immediately obvious or become obvious when you tap them. A quick test drive is all you will need to fully understand and use every option available on the Summer Infant Baby Pixel Touchscreen Color Video Monitor.

How’s the Battery Life?

Battery life was sufficient for the handheld to last through the night on a full charge. I attribute this to the VOX feature that only activates the screen when the baby cries. Otherwise, the handheld is in a battery-saving “sleep” mode. We usually keep the handheld connected to its charger in our bedroom and only detach it to carry it with us into the living room where we typically spend the few hours between Gideon’s bedtime and when we turn in for the night. Once we return to our room, we plug the unit back in.

The Features We Didn’t Need/Use

The Sleepzone Virtual Boundary was a bit disappointing as you do not have full control over the size of the boundary box. It is only adjustable between two sizes. Because of this, you may find yourself having to change the actual placement of the camera if you want to achieve the perfect boundary area. I don’t think we will use this feature very much with our baby, but I could see it being helpful if you have a toddler who likes to escape from his or her crib!

We typically don’t use the talk-back feature as Gideon is old enough to realize we aren’t in the room with him and he generally sleeps throughout the night anyway. You will probably find this feature most useful when your child reaches the toddler phase and can understand what you are telling them through the monitor. Likewise, when your baby is newborn or still very young, odds are you will have the baby in your room with you. This feature is probably one that you can do without. However, as every child is different, you might find great success with using this feature to help put your slightly older baby back to sleep. Again, results vary.

The Moonlite is a feature that you will find mixed results or opinions in usefulness. Personally, I don’t understand its function. Night vision is already included with the camera. Activating this feature simply ignites the world’s brightest LED to bathe the room in a sudden blinding light that leaves floaters in your eyes for several minutes if you happen to be in the room and may very well sunburn your child if he or she is on the pale end of the skin spectrum. Okay, that last part is total exaggeration. But it is quite bright, especially in a dark room. I’m not sure why you’d want to suddenly convert your nursery from darkness to near daylight. I suppose if you are concerned about the need to burn a vampire or turn a troll into stone, this feature will set your mind at ease. Outside of combating mythical creatures of the night, I don’t find this feature necessary.

Overall Thoughts on the Summer Infant Baby Pixel Touchscreen Color Video Monitor

Beyond one or two features that are perhaps unnecessary or gimmicky, the Summer Infant Baby Pixel Touchscreen Color Video Monitor is a very solid choice. While it is on the higher side of the retail price scale for video monitors, you can be confident of the quality build and the top-end features lasting you through several children. Buy it once and you are probably set for life. It is loaded with great functions, expandable to multiple cameras, easy to use, and reliable. We’ve trust Summer Infant for many of our baby gear needs with our other children, and the Summer Infant Baby Pixel Video Monitor does not disappoint!

Could you use a new baby monitor? One lucky Thrifty Nifty Mommy reader will WIN a Summer Infant Baby Pixel Touchscreen Color Video Monitor! Just enter using the Giveaway Tools entry form below. Good luck!

Disclosures: This giveaway is not associated with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest. All opinions are my own. Summer Infant is responsible for prize fulfillment.

Orin

Hi, I'm Thrifty Nifty Daddy! I am a father, a family-man and a lover of all things mechanical and digital but also the old-fashioned and simple. In short, I love my family, my friends and anything with gears.

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