If you have a newborn, a premature baby, are a first time parent or just tend to be overly anxious, you’re likely the kind of person who feels the need to pop-in to your baby’s room every few minutes while they’re sleeping because you’re worried that he or she stopped breathing. If that’s the case the Owlet Dream Sock is something you might want to consider.
Basically it’s a sock you wrap on your baby’s foot (it works for ages 0-18 months) and it will monitor baby’s heart rate and oxygen levels (oxygen reading is an average level taken every 10 minutes), so you can be assured that they are breathing (this data is especially relevant for premature babies). It will also track their sleep and give you data like length of sleep, movement, night wakings, etc. I used the SNOO for the first five month’s of my son’s life so I wasn’t sure how much use I’d get out of the Owlet when I started testing it at six months. That’s around the time the odds of SIDS goes down and the paranoia about baby stopping to breathe at night has settled, but then at around seven months my son fell on his head and I became completely insane about tracking his heart rate/oxygen.
Owlet gave me the peace of mind to actually sleep at night knowing my son was OK. In the four months I’ve been using it the sock never fell off, I never got a false positive and I found the sock easy to put on and the app easy to use. (**I also had the Nanit so I actually used both depending where I was for this purpose since I go back and forth between TLV and NYC every month, and it was great as well).
The brand just launched what they call Dream Duo, which includes both the sock and a camera. It retails for $399 (if you buy them separately, the sock retails for $299 and the camera retails for $149). So is the camera worth it also?
In terms of quality of live feed, it’s as good as other top cameras like Nanit and Miku (it’s clear even at night, has sound and motion notifications, HD, etc.) and is quick to load. But the real tech here is with the sock – not the camera – meaning if you’re getting the sock, the camera is a great addition and less expensive than Nanit and Miku, but without the sock it doesn’t offer all that much value as compared to those other high-end monitors.
