Reviewed: Ellie Baby Plus Smart Baby Monitor (non-WiFi)

Adorable and high-tech, the Ellie Baby Plus gives parents peace of mind and much-needed sleep!

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  By: Tali Ditye, Ph.D., Co-founder

  Updated: September 21, 2024

Mommyhood101 independently tests and curates baby gear to help you make informed decisions. If you buy products through links on our site, we may earn a commission.

Ellie is new to the baby gear market and is making a splash with their adorable and highly capable baby monitors.

We put their new Ellie Baby Plus monitor to the test - check out what we found!

Full disclosure: Ellie provided us with their new Ellie Baby Plus monitor for testing, and we're very grateful (thank you!).

In our testing, we assembled it, tested all of its features, and let a little one try it out!

Is it worth a spot on our annual best baby monitors list? Let's find out! 

Ellie Baby Plus Monitor Review

Based on our hands-on reviews, we give the Ellie Baby Plus a solid 4.4 out of 5 stars:

Ellie Baby Plus

Overall Impressions

Most parents don't have time to read this entire article, so here's a summary of what we found.

We were excited to get our hands on this new baby monitor, and we were pleasantly surprised by the following aspects:

✔️  Easy installation.
✔️  Crib or wall mount.
✔️  Remote zoom/tilt/pan.
✔️  Cute design.
✔️  Decent range.
✔️  Good video quality.
✔️  Good night vision.
✔️  Lullabies via App.
✔️  Large parent unit screen.
✔️  Streams to smartphone.
✔️  Accurate temp & humidity.
✔️  Several AI features.
✔️  WiFi not necessary.
✔️  High privacy/security.
✔️  No monthly fees for AI.
✔️  Great price.

However, like with any review we write, we also had some little gripes worth mentioning:

❌  Mediocre battery life.
❌  No lullabies pre-loaded on parent unit.
❌  Only one wall plug is included.

Overall, we were impressed with Ellie's first baby camera offering, and think it is worth considering, especially if you want a baby monitor that can work with or without WiFi, and stream to both a parent unit and your smartphone. That's rare at this price!

That said, there are some minor limitations to consider. The battery life was decent but not great - we plugged it in to charge more than we'd prefer. Second, the device can play lullabies but to do so from the parent unit you'll need to load some onto the (included) SD card; if you're using the smartphone app, they are pre-loaded. Third, while there are two devices to power (the camera and the parent unit), only one wall plug is included.

Also, the camera is on the heavier side which can make the crib mount sag down a bit. Outside of that, we think it's great!

About Ellie

Ellie is very new to the baby gear market.

Founded in 2023 by a father with a talent for developing innovative AI-based technology, Ellie aims to offer unprecedented AI capabilities without needing any cloud-based services or subscriptions. This is made possible by storing all of the algorithms for face detection, cry detection, danger zone detection, and sleep tracking onboard the device itself. 

This means faster processing, lower cost, and more privacy. We can get on board with that!

Ellie is owned by a company called Wuhan Simshine Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd, based in China.

Because Ellie is so new, we lack reliable data to judge their products - we're excited to make this our first experience with Ellie!

Hands-on Testing

We got our hands on the Ellie Baby Plus monitor in late 2024 for testing.

To gain a more comprehensive understanding of the baby monitor's capabilities, we tested two of the devices in two different homes. 

Full Feature & Accessory List

The Ellie Baby Plus monitor offers a surprisingly vast set of features, especially for the price.

Here is the full feature list:

✔️  5" parent unit display.
✔️  2.5K high definition video.
✔️  App-based streaming.
✔️  Sleep quality tracking.
✔️  2-way talk.
✔️  Danger zone detection.
✔️  Cry detection.
✔️  Lullabies.
✔️  Auto-play lullabies for cry soothing.
✔️  Daily photo album.
✔️  Remote pan & tilt.
✔️  Remote zoom.
✔️  Face covering alert.
✔️  Rollover alert.
✔️  Temperature sensor.
✔️  Humidity sensor.

We didn't see the following features: Breathing detection, a second wall plug, or a waist clip for the parent unit. 

Unboxing and Initial Use

The Ellie Baby Plus monitor comes nicely packaged in a small box. 

Inside the box, you'll find the camera, parent unit, crib mount, wall mount, cables, and a single wall plug.

We were surprised to find only one wall plug (in the middle of the above photo) given that there are two charging cables and two devices you need to charge (the camera and parent unit).

Outside of that, all the parts appear to be of good quality.

The camera is somewhat heavy whereas the parent unit is surprisingly lightweight.

The camera itself is pretty adorable:

We attached the camera to the edge of our crib, using the included flexible crib mounting arm.

Here's what that looked like:

Powering On - Things We Loved

A few things worth pointing out:

First, the daytime lighting conditions are pretty impressive, and the parent unit has a wide brightness range that is suitable for most conditions (even outdoors in bright light).

Here is what the screen looks like in the daytime:

It's bright, has decent color reproduction, and has reasonably good resolution.

Second, we also tested the night vision and think it had good contrast and resolution, showing a high level of detail even when the room was very dark.

Notice the automatic face detection? If it can no longer detect the face, it will give you a face-covering alert.

We tested that with a baby doll and it seemed to work well!

Zooming out, you can still see your baby with reasonable clarity. If your toddler likes to sleep on his or her tummy, the AI-based face features will (unsurprisingly) not work.

Here's what that looks like:

Third, we appreciated all the customizability available in the menu settings.

Simply press the M button and you'll see this menu pop up:

Here are some of the settings you can change:

• Volume: While we prefer a volume button on the side of the parent unit, you can change the volume between 0 to 10.
• Music: There was no music included on the parent unit by default, but you can put songs onto the included SD card. You can choose to shuffle or repeat a single song. On the app, it includes pre-loaded lullabies to choose from.
• Zoom: Using optical zoom, you can choose between 1x to 5x zoom with the parent unit. From the app, it has a nice continuous optical zoom.
• Playback: Here you can play back any automatically-recorded video events, such as awakening events, face-covered events, cry events, and any time when your child was out of the virtual fence area.
• Media: You can view any photos or videos you manually took (you can take them using the little camera button on the parent unit - push once to take a photo, hold down to take a video).
• AI Functions: Here you have tons of features to choose from including sleep monitoring, cry soothing, cry detection, virtual fence, sleep report, and temperature and humidity settings. Within each function, there are several customizability options. For example, in the Sleep Monitoring function, you can choose to enable or disable the function entirely, enable or disable face cover alerts, display the AI box, adjust activity sensitivity, enable notifications, and change what tone is played during a notification.
  • An important point about all the AI features: they work without an internet connection, running the algorithms locally on the device itself. This means that your baby's images and videos are not getting streamed to a cloud, they are staying within the walls of your home.
• Settings: In this menu item, you can adjust camera settings (like turning off/on the camera sound and night vision), screen brightness, language (this wasn't adjustable), time zones/date/time, format the SD card and view its capacity, and factory reset. 

Overall, that's a lot of customizability!

Fourth, we also appreciated the inclusion of the flexible crib mounting arm and the wall mount, which gives you some versatility when choosing the perfect location in your nursery.

Other small things we appreciated: the kick-stand on the back of the parent unit, the auto-standby screen settings, and the decent range. For range, we were able to maintain a signal in the backyard and on the first floor while the baby was sleeping upstairs. 

Smartphone Streaming over WiFi

For this price, we were amazed that the Ellie Baby Plus has the ability to stream to your smartphone!

To make it work, we suggest first downloading the Ellie app onto your smartphone and making an account. Then, on the app, click to add a new device.

Then, using a tiny needle or very small paper clip, push the RESET button on the back of the camera. Hold the button down for about 5 seconds or until it starts talking to you ("Starting, please wait").

The camera will take about 30 seconds and then say something like "Configurating network." At this time, it can connect to your app via Bluetooth, so go ahead and use the app and continue the pairing process.

Once it's connected, you can simultaneously stream video to the parent unit and the app, and fully control the camera using either.

Here is what both devices look like when simultaneously streaming during a daytime nap:

Here is what both devices look like when simultaneously streaming in the dark using the night vision:

Finally, here is what it looks like when you use the app in landscape mode. We appreciated how you can pinch the screen to use the zoom in/out feature, just like with your phone's camera.

The app is very powerful and frankly quite a bit nicer to use than the parent unit.

It basically includes all the same controls as the parent unit but it's super portable. Heading outside or on a dinner date and want to see what's going on with the babysitter? Easy peasy!

Two perks with the app. First, you can play one of several lullabies that are pre-loaded onto the app. Second, you can view sleep data and trends in an intuitive layout with nice visualizations.

We love it!

Small Annoyances

Nothing huge here, but some limitations worth mentioning:

First, the system requires two wall plugs, but only one is included. While you need one plugged in for the camera all the time (it has no battery), you'll also need one intermittently for the parent unit. It does use USB-C, which helps with compatibility with other wall plugs you might already have in your home.

Second, it was a little disappointing that the parent unit didn't come with any default lullabies. If you download the app onto your smartphone (Apple or Android), it has several pre-loaded app. For the parent unit, you'll need to load them yourself onto the SD card. Not everyone has a device compatible with the micro-SD card, or knows how to load songs onto it. It would have been nice had Ellie included a few default lullabies.

Third, the parent unit's battery life isn't fantastic. If you leave the screen on while it's unplugged, it will only last about 4-5 hours. It will be much better if you let the screen go into standby after a minute (this is a setting you can customize), which will last overnight. Also, it would have been nice to have a waist clip on the parent unit given how large it is (and how small women's pockets are!).

Overall Conclusions

The Ellie Baby Plus monitor offers a good blend of adorable design, high-definition video, and AI-powered features that cater to parents' peace of mind.

While it impresses with its versatility and ease of installation, reliable video quality, and privacy-focused functionality, there are a few areas that could use improvements, such as battery life and the lack of pre-loaded lullabies on the parent unit.

Despite these minor drawbacks, the Ellie Baby Plus stands out for its price point and versatility, especially for parents seeking a non-WiFi option with advanced AI monitoring. Overall, it's a great addition to any nursery, providing both functionality and style!

Where to Buy the Ellie Baby Plus Monitor

Ellie products are available at Amazon, where you will find competitive prices.

You can see the current inventory and prices by clicking the below image.