Respisense or Ultimate Reassurance?

We have an AngelCare Sound & Movement monitor (the kind with pads under the mattress) and have found it to be invaluable for us. Here are my personal pros and cons:

Pros:

• Can be used in bassinette or carrycot with hard base under mattress as well as in cot
• Parent unit is portable with batteries or plugs into wall
• Baby unit uses batteries or plugged into wall
• Baby unit beeps LOUDLY if Baby doesn't breathe for longer than 10 seconds
• Can be used for just movement, sound and movement, or just sound
• Extremely sensitive for both movement and sound
• Cute appearance -- little angel for Parent unit, cloud for Baby unit
• Large range

Cons:

• Price ($250+)
• Thin cord connects movement pads (which go under cot mattress) to Baby unit, so there will be a cord coming out of the bottom of the cot -- puts some parents off, but there is no way Baby can get to it without completely tossing the mattress out of the cot. However, this does mean that the cot needs to go reasonably near a power point.
• Annoying "tick" sound on monitor indicates Baby's in-and-out breathing (can be turned off, though, without turning off the monitor)
• Base needs a flat surface to sit on under mattress
• Can get interference from portable phones (static noise) (all monitors have this problem, though)
• Parent unit can get interference (low buzzing noise) from other things being plugged into the same power point -- like cell phone chargers -- so depending on your house, may need to be plugged into its own power point

All those things aside, we found this monitor to be awesome, and we learned to work with its "quirks". I liked the idea that this monitor was not dependent solely on batteries like the RespiSense one, because I would worry that the batteries would die in the middle of the night and I wouldn't realise it! I also like that this monitor isn't "attached" to the baby but is sensitive enough that it can be under the cot mattress and still detect Baby's breathing. I'd recommend it to anyone.

I third that about the Angelcare monitor. And will add that it has already saved Sam's life after she tried to smother herself with a blanket a few weeks back

We love it!! Oh, and we have the tick turned off otherwise it drives me insane!!!

I've got the ultimate reassurance and it pretty much matches angelcare feature for feature (though I'm not sure about the range).

We've just installed and tested it under both the bassinet and the cot (innersprung mattress). It's really sensitive and you can adjust the volume of the beeps - the default setting is pretty loud but you can make it louder. You can adjust the brightness of the night light too.

Cons are pretty much the same as listed for angelcare - it is cheaper than angelcare though and we haven't experienced interference - yet (but I'm sure portable phones would probably do it). Also - I think DJ posted this previously - it doesn't take rechargable batteries so once your batteries run down you would have to buy new ones (though it will primarily run from mains power anyway)

to give you an idea of how sensitive it is - my DH was barely touching the innersprung mattress of the cot and it was registering movement. You can adjust the sensitivity too but we haven't needed to.

Oh one big pro for this one is you can easily see if the monitor pad is on or off on the unit - because it says "on" or "off" when you slide it (and it's right under the nightlight so you can see it) With Angelcare it's on the side.

Edited by Bobbie

Thanks ladies ... my work have decided that the baby monitor will be my baby gift (lucky me, since its a pricey item) so its awesome to know the features  

pesky wrote: can you use them in baby hammocks? I assume not.

No, because the pads need a flat, level surface to rest on in order to register movement.

We have the Angelcare monitor and really like it too. It's only ever gone off once (several times one night when L had a heavy cold).

It seems to me that both monitors are really good and whatever people own they seem to love so I think you probably want to work out what in particular you want, i.e. something that is with bubs most of the time and runs on batteries, or something that runs from a power source and is used in their bed.

Maya, how long do the batteries on the respisense last?

scarecrowfarm wrote: Maya, how long do the batteries on the respisense last?

I'm not sure, they say up to a year of being used 16 hours a day, and you can send them back to have the battery replaced.