I gave birth in April and have been using owlet since I brought my baby home from the NICU. I hadn’t planned to purchase one, as I felt it would make me dependent on it, but the NICU was completely unexpected and my baby had some lung issues. After about three months I’m thankful for it, but I also have some valid frustrations. (1) The sleep assist has been extremely unhelpful. I know my baby is having trouble sleeping, the alarm blaring it doesn’t help. I’m bouncing my baby; my baby is not wiggling that much. (2) The app is incredibly slow to load. I am in programming, so I understand to some degree how big of a program this is, but I feel like there should definitely be some tweaks to assist this. I shouldn’t have to wait more than 2 minutes for the app to load. And no, I’m not referring to the connection of the sock to the app. I’m referring to the actual app. (3) Almost back to number 1, but more a suggestion: can we please have the ability to select which alarms we want on? Maybe we can make the alarms silent but alert the phones instead of waking the baby I just got to sleep. // Regardless of these small, fixable issues, I am incredibly grateful for this technology. I don’t think I would’ve slept that first week home without it.

This app needs serious improvement. It claims to “clinacally proven, medical grade accuracy” which is true, as long as you can get the app to stay open long enough to load the levels. The app is constantly quitting while in the middle of “loading” my babies vitals and sleep state. It takes 10 or so minutes to update the current sleep state. And often times, I click on my babies profile to see the sleep state and it shows there is no sock connected, causing me to reset everything at 1:00, 2:00, 3:00 in the morning. The range from sock to base is not designed for bigger houses. When we bring our babies from their room to the living room, the base will beep at you constantly because of connectivity issues. And our living room is the same distance as their room. Even if you turn the base off completly, it seems to still beep after a few minutes of getting readings. And when it is beeping at you, trying to open the app takes even longer so I’m sitting there overstimulated with a screaming baby and a phone & base that won’t stop beeping because the app takes FOREVER to load. I love that this is designed to alert me and to keep my baby safe and I will say it has helped me get better sleep since my twins were born. But we spent almost $700 on these two owlet socks. For that money, this app should be working way better than what it is. Do better, Owlet. Do way way better.

As the title says, the idea is a great one, but this company really benefits from a lack of competition and being the proverbial “first mover” in the space. The reality is this just another company selling cheap, foreign-made plastic-ware at premium prices to American consumers. The base station is impossible to deal with and just randomly disconnects from WiFi. The process to reconnect it is an entire ordeal, to which I’ve resigned myself to just press the “Connect” button over and over and over until the thing finally connects to my home WiFi. There is no rhyme or reason to this at all. The mobile app has a mind of its own and is full of bugs and poorly thought-out features. One of the recent ones is that the base station will turn itself back on even after you’ve turned it off for the day. This leads to the infuriating experience of the base station going off at 1pm because the anklet is laying on the counter somewhere and the base station thinks it needs to alert you to the situation. Another poorly thought-out piece of technology wherein the machine thinks it knows bette than you do about what’s going on based on dumb logic and if/then statements. At its best, this is an oxygen monitor for your infant, and I admit this is very helpful and brings a certain peace of mind when it works. At its worst, it is a foreign-made piece of junk with seemingly no quality control or user-minded product development.

Update: Changing my review to a 1 star, as I contacted support about my issue and they recommended I buy the extension sock…. which is no longer available for purchase! How in the world is that a helpful solution?! Support has ZERO idea how to troubleshoot anything. So so so frustrated. For the amount of money we spend, support, app and product should be 100x better. I love this product when it works. The app is constantly updating and drives me insane with all the new tutorials we are required to go through. And now this silly prompt of basically “your child is too old to use”. He will wear this to college if possible. My child was born with respiratory issues, and recently diagnosed with asthma triggered by illness, so I rely on this product to watch his oxygen and provide medicine when necessary. When my parents watch my son and takes the owlet to their house, they have so many issues getting it to register to the app and vice versa. Next, sometimes when I open the app it will say “add device” even though it would be connected. I have to close the app and reopen it for it to work. Finally, just recently, it keeps giving me “sock placement” errors despite putting it on the same way for months and it worked perfectly. I’ve factory reset my owlet, reconnected the device, reset WiFi, cleaned the sock, switched feet and it will. not. work. As stated, this product is great when it works and you spend hours trying to get it connected and working.