French tech company Withings announced Wednesday the US introduction of its iOS-powered baby monitor. The Withings Smart Baby Monitor costs $299, and works with a free app called WithBaby.
The monitor detects sound, movement, temperature and humidity levels. You can also turn on lullabies and a nightlight to help soothe an upset baby. Customizable alarms can be set to alert you of any sleep disruption.
The accompanying WithBaby application can be installed on an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.
Those Withings guys come up with some cool stuff, I’ll give them that. It’s a bit on the expensive side though. The ability to remotely talk to the baby is pretty neat, especially if you use your HAL 9000 voice.
3 megapixels is a bit weak for that price.
As a recent new parent, we actually went through a “what about an iPhone webcam” discussion before settling on a Motorola baby monitor for about $130.
Main issues for us where:(1) no infra red on the web cams we considered (solved above)(2) One more drain on iPhone battery(3) Not easy to use up when not in our own house (e.g. at friends house). Bluetooth doesn’t cut it in most houses.
i.e. this is nice, but not worth double the price for the gadget envy on my eyes.