Withings Smart Baby Monitor

Pros Sharp video quality. Elegant design and interface. Helpful push notifications.

Cons Wi-Fi setup and operation can be glitchy. Bottom Line The Withings Smart Baby Monitor is an intelligent fusion of baby monitor and webcam.

By Rob Pegoraro

Withings, the company best known for making such connected devices as its Wi-Fi scale and its Pulse activity tracker, aims to quantify some much smaller selves with its $249.95 Smart Baby Monitor. It's a solid product that does exactly what it sets out to do, and despite a few app-based quirks, it's our new Editors' Choice for baby monitoring systems.

Design and Setup
Even in the box, this gadget sets itself apart from its blister-packaged brethren. The iPod-esque packaging reveals this compact product (3.5 by 3.5 by 2.5 inches HWD), clips to mount it on a bedside, a backup battery (an incomplete FAQ says it can run the camera for an hour), a power supply with international plug adapters, a padded carrying case (by standard gadget-industry logic, Withings is leaving money on the table by not charging extra for it), and a manual that is not only printed but in color and on glossy paper.

The flip-open camera unit also includes dual microphones, a decent speaker, temperature and humidity sensors, and a nightlight that can display custom colors. It's the baby monitor Apple might build—except Apple wouldn't have it plug in with a micro USB connector.

You set up the camera via a Bluetooth link to Withings' iOS or Android app, through which either program will transfer over your Wi-Fi network's configuration. Note that the monitor only connects to 2.4GHz networks, although an Ethernet port allows for wired connectivity.

You can protect access to the app with a four-digit passcode lock, but the only obstacle to online viewing at Withings' site is your username and password—the same one you would have already set up to use Withings' other quantified-self products—or those of other user accounts you've authorized. To stop remote viewing, you also need to disable Wi-Fi viewing and instead switch the monitor to Bluetooth-only mode, which will greatly limit how far you can roam with a phone or tablet.

Apps, Video Quality, and Conclusions
In addition to letting you watch video from the camera, pan, tilt, zoom, and take pictures as needed, the iOS and Android apps also notify you of changing data from the monitor's sensors. The temperature sensor's parameters are wound too tight for Washington, leading to "high temperature" alerts (as, in above 77 degrees) every 10 minutes. The motion sensor, however, missed my toddler getting out of her bed two mornings in a row.

You can activate a push-to-talk mode from either app or play a lullaby. The default is a lovely rendition of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," but the app offers a choice of seven other tracks that range from kids' music to classical to white noise. You can't, however, play a track from your phone or tablet's library—the song "Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby" from the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack comes to mind—which seems a serious missed opportunity.

The nightlight defaults to a cheery shade of blue, but you can change that as well to any other color or a sequence of hues. The 3-megapixel camera yields just 512-by-384-pixel video for remote viewing, but in the context of a device that spends much of its time using its infrared night-vision capability, that's fine. Video seen through the apps looked plenty sharp, if nowhere near what the 3MP resolution of the camera would suggest.

But for days, I couldn't get video to work in the Android app—even while push notifications did, and even as an iPad had no such hang-up. I finally fixed this issue when I realized I'd put the monitor on a guest Wi-Fi network instead of the regular one; the iOS app could deal with that, but the Android one could not, even when on home Wi-Fi. After reconfiguring the monitor (which involved a few freeze-ups of its own), both devices could tune in, either on Wi-Fi or on another connection.

Transient errors ("You were disconnected from the Smart Baby Monitor and reconnection has failed") have continued to appear and go away for no apparent reason—pending bug-fix updates that might smooth out some of these issues. Even so, the Withings Smart Baby Monitor is an obvious choice for geek dads and geek moms alike. If you'd prefer a hybrid system that also works for surveillance, consider the Dropcam Pro, while the Infant Optics DXR-8 has an optical zoom lens to recommend it as well.

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