My wife insisted on getting this product to monitor our baby’s O2 and heart rate, while sleeping, for peace of mind. Peace of mind has been the complete opposite of what the dream sock has given us. First, you cannot use the Health Notifications, which is the feature that alarms if baby’s O2 falls below 80%, until baby is 1 month old. When finally setting this feature up, it took several attempts restarting my phone, reinstalling the app, and unplugging and plugging the base back in for the “activation” to complete. While using the dream sock, it would constantly drop connection with the base and the base would alarm, sending a notification to my phone stating “sensor disconnected from base station.” My daughter sleeps 1-2 feet away from the base station. It is set up on the dresser directly next to where she is sleeping. This has been our experience for nearly a week now and each night we have had to unplug the base to get it to stop alarming. What is really frustrating is we will put the sock on while our daughter is getting ready to go down for the night and it will work perfectly. While she’s wiggling around during a diaper change in another room, while she’s being rocked to sleep, even when she’s downstairs before we all go to bed, there are no alarms, but as soon as we lay down to sleep, again DIRECTLY next to the base, it starts alarming. This is easily one of the worst products I have ever used. It flat out does not work for the function for which it is designed. The cost is ridiculous. Upon writing this review, I see the cost has increased a further $100 since we purchased our kit. Seriously, my wife bought an “off brand” Apple Watch for $15 that tracks her O2 and heart rate and it works far and above better than the dream sock. The Owlet app looks like it was designed for Windows XP and works just about as well. I haven’t even set up the camera yet, but based on my experience with the dream sock and app, I expect it to be a complete nightmare to use and the whole kit will end up being a tremendous waste of money that just sits in the cupboard collecting dust. Unfortunately we are beyond the return window because of the whole “can’t use it for the first month of baby’s life” thing so we’re stuck with the nightmare sock for good. I guess I expected that for a premium cost I would be getting a premium product with a premium user experience. The Owlet Dream Sock and app are the total OPPOSITE of a premium product and premium user experience and I would not recommend this product to anyone.
05/27/2024 Update: I set up the camera and it was simple enough. I like that it shows the humidity of the room and gives an indication of the noise level in the room on the app. The picture quality is about as good as the webcam that came for free with my Dad’s HP Pavilion desktop computer in 1999. We wanted a second camera for another area of our house where our daughter naps, but a camera on its own is $129! Thats right, $129 for essentially a 1080p webcam. Do a quick search on Amazon and you can find higher image quality baby monitor cameras, with the same features, for far less than half the price. We are going to go that route for a second camera.
My wife insisted on using the dream sock for what has now been a total of 6 weeks and she has finally given up on it. We end up having to unplug it almost every night because it keeps giving the same connectivity error over and over to the point, last night, it woke our baby up. I am not confident that if our baby was having a medical emergency it would even work to alert us because the connectivity issues have been so bad. Not to mention with it going off over and over, night after night, it has been pretty much “crying wolf” for 6 weeks. My wife and I are done using this product for good and the sock is now packed away. For how poorly the dream sock has worked, I wonder if our set was possibly defective? But again, we can’t return it because we are beyond the return window. I cannot reiterate enough, this is BY FAR the worst product I have ever used and the value for money is truly horrendous. Since the dream sock is nonfunctional, we ended up paying $269 for essentially a 1080p webcam and an app that looks like it’s from before the iPhone was even invented. Also, don’t forget, this all functions over 2.4ghz WIFI and not the newer 5ghz WIFI so there is noticeable lag with both the camera and sock. The dream sock has cost my wife and I hours and hours and hours of sleep and has done the complete and total opposite of giving us “peace of mind.” It belongs with Oscar the Grouch, IN THE TRASH.
Sarah
Jakob Banks
Cinthia