REASONS TO BUY
Easy to use
Longer battery life
REASONS TO AVOID
Higher price
Shorter range
Summer Infant Baby Pixel Review
Expensive unit with average video and a limited indoor range
Credit: Abriah Wofford
RELATED: The Best Video Baby Monitors
The Skinny
The Summer Infant Baby Pixel is a dedicated monitor with a 5-inch video and touchscreen parent unit. This monitor has a 3x digital zoom, remotely controlled camera, and an easy to use menu system. Unfortunately, this monitor is one of the most expensive dedicated options in the review, but it only has average video and sound quality with grainy images and washed-out color. With a shorter range than the dedicated competition, we feel this unit is not the best choice no matter what features you are looking for or what your monitoring goals are.
Our Analysis and Test Results
In 1985, William Lockett III wanted a safe place to put his newborn while he tended to other things. Under the name of Summer Infant, he developed the first bouncy seat for babies. Summer Infant continues to create a variety of products for babies at reasonable prices. This gear includes strollers, cribs, bathing products, and monitors.
Performance Comparison
The Summer Infant Pixel is a dedicated video monitor with a limited range and grainy video images.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Range
The Pixel has a shorter indoor range than much of the competition. During testing, this unit maintained a connection between the nursery camera and parent device up to 65 feet and through 4 walls. If your house is larger, and depending on your home's construction, the Pixel may not work.
Audio / Visual
The sound clarity on any monitor is important because that is what draws your attention to the parent device. This monitor has a maximum decibel level of 101 dB. This unit has no sound activation or sound sensitivity adjustment to help keep the unit quiet. The sound is a little hollow and bright and distorts as the volume gets higher. Without adjustability, the audio is always on which could be a problem if you are a light sleeper.
The daytime images for the Pixel are crisp, but the colors are washed out and not true to real life. The Pixel video quality with night vision images that are grainy. These black and grey images are hard to decipher, and the zoom feature makes it worse. While you will be able to get the gist of the scene, you won't be able to see if your little one's eyes are open or not.
The touchscreen menu on the Pixel has intuitive icons and works well.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Ease of Use
The Pixel is relatively easy to use. This monitor links automatically straight out of the box and is easy and quick to set up and get running. We didn't experience any time delay between action in the room vs. action on the monitor. Meaning you get a reliable picture of what is happening in the room.
The menu button on the parent device brings up the monitor options on the touchscreen which works well. The icons are intuitive and straightforward to use. The unit has separate buttons on the top for zoom, pan and tilt operation, and the nightlight.
Battery Life
The Pixel battery life is better than average. It has a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. In our testing, the Pixel parent device ran for 11 hours. This duration is long enough to make it through the night.
The Pixel comes with a nightlight that has two color options.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
Features
The Pixel has a variety of features.
The parent unit for the Pixel has a 5-inch touchscreen.
Credit: Abriah Wofford
This video monitor includes:
- 2-way talk-to-baby microphone
- 5" touchscreen monitor
- Sleep zone boundary alert
- Nightlight
- Temperature sensor
- Voice activate screen wake up
- Moonlite™ Night Vision Boost for in-color night images
- 3X digital zoom
- Wall mount hardware
- Remote camera
Electromagnetic Field (EMF) Levels
The average EMF emissions for the Pixel during our testing was 2.6 V/m at a distance of 6 feet from the reader. This level is higher than all of the WiFi options and slightly higher than most of the dedicated options. While the level that reaches your baby can be less by moving the unit further from your baby, the camera can only be so far before it becomes virtually ineffective. The parent unit emits 2.71 V/m at a distance of 3 feet, the average space between a sleeping parent's head and a bedside night table.
Manufacturer Video
—
Juliet Spurrier, MD & Wendy Schmitz
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