Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have a confession to make, I fell victim to the “top selling” “most popular” item on amazon. I bought the......infant optics monitor. Now, had I done my job properly, which I generally do with every tech/gadget/tool/anything I buy, I would have researched properly and found WiFi monitors are the way to go. After a week of issues, I decided to go for the lollipop camera. It arrived this morning, next day - thank you Amazon. So the packaging is slick, like a giant iPhone almost 😁. It neat, sturdy and feels like a quality product. This is stage 1 of the review - initial setup and thoughts, though I will post an update after a few weeks of living with it. The setup via the app was freakishly easy. To get the camera up and running was simple - the settings that you may want to change will require some brain power but it’s no different from any other app. The USB power lead is lonnnngggggg, which is great as having a 1m cable would suck and be pointless. Video quality is a huge step up from the other brand I had, wide angle view and maybe a 2 second max delay. Pan and tilt is not a feature and I was a little worried about this until a saw how much more picture you get with this thing. The bendy arm is great and I’ve attached ours to the pack and play corner with ease. And when the time comes for the little monster to move to his own room, I’ll wall mount it above the crib. So when we originally looked at cameras, we thought why get WiFi, don’t need it on our phones etc etc. BUT after the arrival of our pride and joy, my thoughts have changed. I go back to work next week and being able to look in on the little man eases any negative feelings about leaving my family and going off to work. You may not think that now, but for you men saying “I’ll enjoy going back to work for some peace and quiet” you’re wrong, after 2 weeks with our baby, your heart melts and you WILL want to see him during the day while you’re sat in your office, in your truck, or wherever you are. Stage 1 review done - summary - great initial setup, impressed with video and the app. No issues so far. UPDATE. So it’s been a couple of weeks and I have to say....it’s awesome. Notifications if the little man is crying, crying loud are great. The picture quality is also great. I’ve not had any connectivity issues but then my WiFi is solid as I installed it all myself. One minor complaint - when you use the built in sound generator (sea breeze, vacuum etc) it overpowers the audio feature on the app. Our little monster has to be really crying to hear him. We have a separate sound machine which we will use to get over this, but having the speaker and mic so close with no filtering seems like a design flaw. But not a deal breaker for such a great monitor. Update - 09/08/19 So the connectivity issues have started. Drops almost every other hour. Will be fine for a while, then a firmware update is sent out and it’s almost unusable. Seems lollipop are their worst enemies, great product that is ruined by terrible patch releases. The QA team should be ashamed to be honest. If it was within the return window, I’d send it back and try the more expensive one I was looking at....let’s see what lollipop will do for us. Rating dropped to 2 UPDATE 3 - 19/12/30 So the WiFi is a little more stable but the android version of the app is a disaster. We moved the little one into his own room, hoping this monitor would do the job we paid for. Unfortunately the audio stream we have running stops anywhere between 2-5am. The app hasn’t crashed, network is fine...app is just useless. Almost ready to pay more and get a smart monitor that actually works as this is terrible. The support is woeful - a screenshot of the network test is what they asked for to prove the network was down?? Really, do they think we’re lying.