Hisense's babysense monitor: a display that could spark beside a crib

Hisense, the Chinese electronics maker, sells a line of babysense baby monitors built to let parents watch a sleeping child from another room. The Max View model pairs a camera with a parent display unit that sits plugged in near the crib.

The display unit could overheat or spark while charging, posing a fire hazard. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission recalled roughly 81,800 of the monitors after eleven reports of overheating or sparking, with no injuries reported because the failures had not yet reached a person.

The product's entire promise was vigilance over a sleeping baby, and the part that lit up was the one plugged in beside the cot. A recall for a fire risk in a nursery is the exact opposite of the reassurance the brand sold.