Did the Cubo AI Plus Become A Baby Registry Must-Have?

Cubo AI has quickly ascended to be among the top-tier premium baby monitors parents will register for. If you're looking for an all-in-one monitor, this might be hard to beat.

What It Comes With

• The camera itself, unique with a bird design and wood accent.
• A floor base, which contains the crib attachment and water bag.
• Components for the stand, cables, plugs, and mobile stand.
• Velcro stabilizing strap.
• Temperature and humidity sensor, which replaces the dangling tail from the previous generation.

Image Quality and Infrared Lights

The Cubo AI Plus arguably boasts the sharpest picture quality of any of the baby monitors currently available and competes comparably alongside fellow top-flight monitors – Nanit Pro and Miku Pro – delivering 1080p picture and clean day/night vision. Gone are the days of parents having to squint at a grainy picture being delivered at 5 frames/second. Simply put, it’s impressive.

Most notably Cubo operates without the red infrared lights that most cameras use for night vision, which some parents reportedly found to be distracting or frightening to the baby. With Cubo, they’ve done away with that and every onboard camera light can be controlled through the app.

Even though this is a baby monitor in the premium price range (around $299), they are delivering a little more value than other brands, namely with three mounting options: 

1. Mobile stand – Allows you to set it on dressers and tabletops.
2. Crib mount – Gives you a direct attachment to the crib slats.
3. Floor stand – Tall stand with hollow base

It's also important to note that a wall mount version can be purchased for $199 but it's not something I'd stretch for unless a clean aesthetic is of major concern to you.

The first version of the floor stand could easily be knocked off kilter but with the newest release, Cubo has added more heft and stabilization. It comes with a small Velcro strap to secure it to the crib slat, so in combination with the new thicker design, it stands much stronger. They’ve carried over the same concept of weighing down the base with an improved water bag that doesn’t leak as much but it's still not something I'm particularly fond of. Ideally, I'd prefer a heavier base or a tripod-style option similar to Nanit's current model.

Additional Features

Detection Features

Cubo was initially noted for their Face Cover and Rollover Detection which may be serviceable in the early months. However, if you abide by the rule that nothing should be in the crib for the baby's first year (something every parent should adopt), that alert feature is virtually useless. Regarding rollovers, if your child is naturally a stomach sleeper, it is technically a safe sleep position so – again – the alerts aren't needed. What may be more useful are cry detection alerts along with danger zone detection. The latter is particularly useful in the toddler stage or when they try to climb out of the crib are wander into places they shouldn't be.

Two-Way Talk, Lullabies & Built-In Nightlight

TWT is something that we use occasionally after the infant stage. Its use will vary from home to home but it's a standard feature found in almost all monitors. In my opinion, built-in nightlights are almost never used as total darkness is best for sleep, but it's nice to have in on-board.

Time Code Events

You can scroll through the time code to a particular event tag, which is pretty neat to be able to go back and see a moment with precision rather than having high-speed night summaries like Nanit. It takes a moment to load sometimes, but it’s a great feature. 

Background Audio Monitoring

This is a feature I value quite a bit. I like hearing the baby even when my phone is asleep, and while it's now a common feature, Cubo AI is able to filter out static noise nicely and functions similarly to the ANR technology of the Infant Optics DXR-8 Pro. The down side is if there's a service interruption, you'll lose the feed so a backup like the Vtech DM221 is always recommended. 

Sleep Analytics 

The biggest addition with the Plus is the introduction of their sleep analytics. Looking back at sleep data can be helpful for parents who want to know when their babies fell asleep, when they woke up in the middle of the night, and how frequently they cried. You can have a visual on sleep progress or regression, which is helpful when trying to build routine. Not that it does take a couple hours to populate the data after waking, so I wish that were faster. 

For the first year, they provide free access to their premium features, which includes up to thirty days of analytics and memories, as well as playback video downloads. After the free access ends, it will run you about $8 per month. Without premium, you still have access to the data – you just can’t go back as far. 

Home Integration with Google and Amazon

Another feature with the Plus is the smart home integration with Google and Amazon devices. While it's cool, it is buggy and doesn’t always work and for our style, it’s not something that we use too often. We tend to stick with the app on our phones, but I understand how some parents find value in it if they view the feed for longer periods of time.

Lullabies

Lullabies and white noise are becoming a lot more common with smart baby monitor options, as they try to offer an all-in-one solution or parents, but for me, it’s not paricuarly valuable. For sounds and noises, we used the Hatch Rest. It just delivers more for us. It's good to note that they stepped up the speakers for onboard lullabies and sounds. It’s important to note that when this feature is activated, it pauses cry alerts. But the good thing is that you do still have the background audio monitoring enabled, so you can hear the baby crying. 

Summary

This is legitimately one of the bets monitors you can buy. Personally we're still in the Nanit ecosystem and don't plan on making the switch, however this is solid alternative that may cost you less in the long run. If breathing monitoring isn't something that piques your interest, Cubo is a great buy.

In the case that you do want to run with Cubo use this link the code “CUBOVERB” to get $10 off.