Infant Optics DX-8 Baby Monitor has won accolades as the 2018 award winner by Popular Mechanics “Best Baby Monitor” category. Although it was released a while ago, it remained one of the most mature hardware for non-Wifi radio baby monitors.
It also has a responsive customer service team that will gladly assist you when it comes to technical challenges.
Quality of Video, Camera, and Audio
One of the more prominent features of Infant Optics DX-8 is its interchangeable lens. You have a wide-angle and zoom lens at your disposal to use depending on your setup. It is pretty simple to change the lens as they made it easy to unscrew.
The zoom lens is included in the package although you have to purchase the wide-angle lens separately.
By default, the lens gives you the ability to have mid-range coverage, which is adequate to view your baby’s face and their immediate surroundings. The zoom lens allows you to set up your baby monitor further away from the crib and still get good coverage due to the zoom.
The wide-angle lens, preferably used in a second camera, allows you to get an overview of an entire room. It is especially suitable for a child that is slightly older and has the ability to move around in the room.
It is in our opinion that the default lens gives you a good enough video and picture quality of your baby. If you want to keep the baby monitor further away from your baby, then the zoom lens will come in handy.
With the interchangeable lens comes Infant Optics DX-8 ability to support up to 3 additional cameras, which means you can have it support 4 cameras all at once. You can purchase the additional cameras over here (link).
You will be glad to know on top of the lens and cameras, Infant Optics DX-8 has a good video quality and that the images look clear even at night. Its audio quality is also capable of picking up the slightest noise made by your baby.
Its infrared night vision allows you to see your baby clearly in the dark too.
Privacy Guaranteed & a pretty decent signal strength
Video and audio are transmitted via a 2.4GHz channel with FHSS technology. No data is shared through the internet, which makes it safer than Wifi baby monitors. Infant Optics DX-8 claim a max 700 feet signal range but it is around the signal range of 100 feet with walls in between. Depending on the configuration of your house, you might get a wider signal strength.
Good Enough Battery Life
With Infant Optics DX-8, you can drag out to have 10 hours battery life if you keep it on power-saving mode with its screen off. With the screen on and running, you can probably get about 6 hours in battery life.
You do need to plug it in to charge every night, much like your smartphones, as it takes around 7 hours to be charged fully. You are able to change your monitor’s batteries if it deteriorates over time.
Other Notable Features
Infant Optics DX-8 has a 3.5-inch video screen that allows you to view one camera at a time. You can easily switch around camera views (if you have additional cameras) and there’s an auto switch function. Do note that the sound is tagged to the camera so you will hear whichever camera view that you are on right now. There are no split screens available.
There are no lullabies tagged to the baby monitor, which might be one of the good to have features that they are missing sorely. More recent baby monitors have included some elements of lullabies, white noises, or music into their system.
It does have a 2-way talk function, which gives you the ability to talk to your baby through the speaker. Do note that you can only speak through the camera view that you are on to avoid waking up or disturbing the other rooms in which your cameras are placed.
Infant Optics DX-8 allows parents to remotely pan, tilt, and zoom the video image. It gives you a 270-degree horizontal angle and a 120-degree vertical angle, which is really flexible to capture any movements by your baby.
It has a built-in room temperature sensor which is important to gauge the comfort of your baby as well as it is one of the indicators of SIDS. The accuracy of the sensor is important in SIDS case and Infant Optics DX-8 has decent enough accuracy based on customers’ feedback, although they should try to get it as close as possible.
There is no VOX mode in this radio baby monitor but there’s a sleep function where the screen is off, which helps to save battery life.
Our Verdict
Infant Optics DX-8 has all the features of a good video baby monitor. Infant Optics DXR-8 was ahead of its competitors when it launched. Even though there are newer models like Eufy that has incorporate more advanced features or worked on it’s user experience, Infant Optics DXR-8 has an established track record for setting the standards on what became the norm today.