Two new products from Lorex bring peace of mind to your home and business, and help prevent theft. The $270 Lorex Portable Color LCD Digital Wireless Monitoring System is a handheld baby monitor, which broadcasts video and audio from a wireless camera to a portable video monitor. If you're not within range (even on the other side of the globe), the $300 LNE3003 Remote Surveillance Camera can stream video to your iPhone or any device with a Web browser.

We tried it at close range, and the Lorex baby monitor product worked well. It was able to broadcast audio and video across the PCMag Labs--an environment with far more interference-causing gadgets than you'd likely have at home or work. Lorex suggests a range of up to 450 feet at home.

Setup required very little work (no need to even read the instruction manual), and took only a few minutes to complete. The wireless camera isn't completely wireless--you'll need to plug in its AC adapter--but the portable monitor includes a belt clip and rechargeable battery as well as a dock for charging the device.

The Monitoring System will prove useful outside of the home as well, and includes an A/V-out jack (with cables) for connecting to a TV or recording device. The color camera's image quality is more than sufficient for use as a baby monitor, and audio pickup was fine for occasional monitoring, but listening in to employee conversations might prove difficult with the receiver's built-in speaker. The receiver also includes an audio level indicator. The device cannot send video to the Web or connect to your computer, though other offerings from Lorex help fill this gap.

At $300, the Lorex LNE3003 Remote Surveillance Camera is the most affordable network-ready camera in the company's lineup. Once connected to a wired or wireless (802.11b/g) connection, the camera can stream VGA video in real time, with frame rates dependent on the speed of your Internet connection.

Lorex grabbed our attention by focusing on the camera's ability to stream video to the Apple iPhone (and other mobile devices), though the company has yet to offer an iPhone application. Connecting to the camera from your phone takes far too much effort for frequent use, but including the feature certainly doesn't hurt. If you're looking for an easy solution for streaming surveillance video to your iPhone on the go, unfortunately this isn't it.

A computer-based browser offered a far better snooping experience, featuring real-time video with sound streaming at several frames per second. Video on the iPhone refreshed only every few seconds, and did not include sound. And the Web-based iPhone interface was designed to accommodate other devices as well, so don't expect a rich user experience.

The LNE3003 worked exceptionally well when streaming video and audio to my desktop computer. The VGA video was sharp and clear, and audio came through just fine. Both camera systems include night-vision, though the networked camera's six LEDs certainly won't hide the camera's presence. The camera included with the Portable Monitoring System uses infrared illumination for low-light viewing, so there's no risk of waking a child or drawing attention to the device.

The Lorex Portable Color LCD Digital Wireless Monitoring System is available in black or white with one camera for $269.95 or $349.95 with two cameras. Additional cameras can be added later for $179.99. The LNE3003 Remote Surveillance Camera is available in white for $299.99 or in a two-pack for $549.99. The LNE3003 camera's Web-interface includes support for simultaneous viewing of up to six cameras.