Tomy Walkabout Platinum digital baby monitor review

Need some space from your little one, Tomy wants to help you monitor from afar

17 June 2006 0:56 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Don't get us wrong, we love our chief tester here at The Dad Blog, however there are times that we just want to put her to sleep and then get on with our evening.

In steps the Walkabout Platinum Digital baby monitor from Tomy with its DECT support, temperature gauge, talkback function and night light glow, but does it do the job?

The main important element here is the DECT functionality. For those not familiar with the term, DECT stands for Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications and is normally found on your home land phone if it's wireless.

What this means is that the baby monitor has a range of over 300 meters, amply getting you to the end of the garden and probably half way down the street.

In practice of course, the range is a bit of an overkill, I mean unless you reckon you can get back to a screaming baby from that distance once you see the lights on the monitor light up then chances are you're unlikely to stray more than 50 meters.

But before you dismiss the extra power, it does mean that no matter where you go in the house it's likely to pick up a good strong signal - something which you can see via the on-screen display.

Get past that and the Tomy Walkabout Platinum digital baby monitor has plenty more features up its sleeve. The main one we found we used the most is the talkback function. Not only to sing lullabies to Emily so we didn't have to get off the sofa, but also to relay messages backwards and forwards between adults. "Can you get me a…" is certainly a favourite of Mrs Pocket-lint's.

Also included is a thermometer in the base unit and this information is automatically relayed back to the mobile unit so you can see if it is getting unduly hot or cold in the room the base unit is in.

Fan's of Mission Impossible will also be pleased to see that the mobile unit has five green lights and three red lights that light up according to the noise generated at the other end. Although there are only so many times you can say "Toast" like Ving Rhames before it gets boring, it's still fun for the most part reinacting the scene where Tom Cruise steals the NOC files from Langley.

Verdict

Easy to use, the Tomy Walkabout Platinum digital baby monitor offers plenty in a unfussed design.

Mother's with a bad memory can record their last feed with the last feed timer and you can even activate a glow light on the base unit if you think that will help.

With strong signal strength and a host of useful features, it's certainly worth a look.