Beware long post follows
Tommee Tippee Ultimate Reassurance Monitor Vs AngelCare Sound and movement Monitor AC401.
We have been in the unique situation of having used both monitors so I feel that I am situated that I can explain and compare the features of both. These are only my opinions which you can take or leave.
I’ll tell you why we had both monitors later.
The TT was cheaper. I liked that there was a movement light on the TT parent unit that flashed every time movement was detected. The AC has a movement light on the nursery unit but when you are standing by the cot you can usually tell if your baby is moving or not. I guess you don’t really need to see a movement light flashing on the parent unit because if the baby is not moving the alarm will sound but watching the light flash did “soothe me”.
It was VERY easy to switch the TT nursery unit from movement to sound only when you picked up baby out of the cot. This can be good if you want to be able to call for backup in the middle of the night from DH sleeping in bed or bad if you don’t want to be heard talking in baby talk.
They both display the temperature however the TT is on the nursery unit. The Angelcare has a reading on the parent unit so I can see from my bed whether the nursery is hot/cold/just right. The AC monitor allows you also to set an alarm if the temperature goes above or below levels you set. (I have never used this function but could be useful in winter)
Both monitors suck in that if you turn off the nursery unit (movement and sound) the parent units sound an alarm if you haven’t turned the parent units off first. Annoying if you forget to turn the parent units off before you go to the nursery.
Both monitors have a small warning beep if there is no movement for 15 seconds then the big alarm at 20 seconds. The small warning can jolt baby back into breathing.
Both monitors have a night light (I thought they were both pretty pathetic)
The AC has two sensor pads which I think will be good once baby start moving around in the cot.
This is a BIGGIE… The AC monitor charges the parent unit when you put it on the charger. An overnight charge is enough for a whole day. I don’t even move the charger now and just take the parent unit with me from room to room during the day. The TT parent unit does not recharge and if you use rechargeable batteries you void the warranty. We went through a set of batteries with the TT monitor in two weeks which is a cost you need to factor in.
The sound function on the AC monitor can be set to continuous transmission or voice activated ie if there is no sound in the nursery there is no sound coming through on the parent unit. You can also set the AC monitor so the “voice” has to be a certain level to activate… ie if you don’t want to hear all the little grunts you don’t have to and you can just hear the medium to loud crying.
The AC monitor also has less feedback or interference than the TT monitor and you can also change the frequency if you want/need to.
Both monitors can run on batteries so we could take either up to my parents and use them in the portacot up there. We never bothered to take the sensor pads. Alternatively if baby falls asleep in the car you can put the ‘nursery’ unit in the car to hear when they wake up.
The TT monitor is certainly cheaper. Rrp around $270 but we got it on special for $198. The AC rrp $400 we paid $330 on a web site I had never heard of (I won’t name it so I don’t get into trouble but I ordered it at lunchtime and it arrived at 9am the next day) There are price comparison web sites so regardless of which model you want to buy you can find it cheapest.
Now my confession:
We had the TT first and had a number of false alarms with it (ie over 20 in 3 weeks). We had baby sleeping at one end of the cot and we changed the cot end he slept in so that our set up was EXACTLY the same as the manual. Then when the false alarms continued we changed the end back again but the alarms continued. We discovered a major installation error after three set up changes. I don’t know if the installation error was present in all the three set ups we had tried (I would be really surprised if both DH and I failed to notice this 3 times when changing it around. However more importantly the false alarms continued after we put it the right way up so it appears that the installation error was not the only problem with this unit.
We returned it and got our money back no problems. I have not heard of other people having this trouble with the TT monitor (our issue may have just been a one off) but we have had NO false alarms with the AC monitor for 6 weeks… and counting.
I love my AC monitor.
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Maya Grace (28/02/03)
(02/01/06)
