Motorola MBP36XL 5" Portable Video Baby Monitor

The Motorola MBP36XL 5" Portable Video Baby Monitor is a wireless digital monitor that offers great picture quality on its large, five-inch screen. Its infrared/night vision camera delivers a very sharp and clear image—good news since nighttime is usually when you need it most. The range on this monitor impressed us in our tests. The parent unit has a rechargeable battery, and there's also a battery in the camera, which could come in handy during power outages.

There's a lot to like about the Motorola MBP36XL baby monitor, from a clear picture and audio to simple set-up and above average range. Here's what we found in our testing.

Set-up

Set-up for this monitor couldn't be easier: we had it plugged in and working in under five minutes, and our hands-on parent testers overwhelmingly agreed that the Motorola MBP36XL monitor was easy to set up and start using in their own homes very quickly. The interchangeable power cords are a good length, which makes it that much easier to capture your baby at her best angle. The menu buttons on the parent unit are intuitive and not unnecessarily complicated.

Screen

The picture on the parent unit's screen is clear and sharp, so much so that our hands-on parent testers could see whether their child's eyes were open or closed. The on-screen colours are true to life, and we felt it had one of the better picture qualities of all the video monitors we tested. All of our testers liked the size of the screen and felt the level of brightness was good. A nice feature is the ability to turn off the picture and just use the audio—ideal whether you want to be able to listen in while doing other tasks or when you're trying to get some shuteye.

Sound

The monitor's sound is generally very clear. We played a recording of a baby crying through the monitor, and the sound was one of the truest. Our hands-on parent testers all said it was easy to adjust the volume, and they were able to get it to a level they were happy with. And when we measured for white noise with a sound meter, it had one of the quietest readings of all monitors we tested.

In our lab tests of the talk-back feature, the voice heard through the camera was clear, but our hands-on parent testers had mixed results when it came to whether their kids were calmed when using this feature. (We're not surprised that a disembodied voice coming out of a camera isn't exactly as soothing as someone coming into the room to soothe baby.) This feature might be more useful with older kids, so you can easily remind them that it's time to go to sleep.

Camera

Our testers were generally happy with the pan, tilt and zoom features on the MBP36XL, although some found it didn't pan down enough from the top of a dresser to get a good view of their baby. Taking the time to mount it on a wall or shelf would be a good idea in that case. The camera angle can be adjusted remotely using the parent unit, which is great if you've got a baby who likes to explore all corners of his crib.

Range