Summer Infant Baby Pixel Review

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.

The Summer Infant Pixel is a dedicated video monitor with a limited range and grainy video images.

Performance Comparison

The Summer Infant Baby Pixel is a dedicated video monitor with a parent device. This monitor had difficulty keeping up with the competition during testing.

The Pixel is one of the most expensive dedicated options in the review with average video and sound quality.

Range

The Pixel has a shorter indoor range than much of the competition earning only 5 of 10 for this metric. During testing, this unit maintained a connection between the nursery camera and parent device up to 65 feet and through 4 walls. In comparison, the Philips Avent SCD630 works through 5 walls up to 92 feet between the camera and parent unit. 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 earns only 5 of 10 for sound with 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 earns only 6 of 10 for 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.

Ease of Use

The Pixel is relatively easy to use with a performance score of 7 of 10 for ease of 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 with a score of 7 of 10. This unit 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.

Features

The Pixel has a variety of features, and this helped earn it 7 of 10 for features.

The parent unit for the Pixel has a 5-inch touchscreen.

• 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 wi-fi 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