Baby Monitors

samd6 · July 2018

I’ve seen a couple of people mention that they needed to research baby monitors and I don’t know where to begin. Video? Audio only? WiFi vs. dedicated?

Give me your opinions! I’ve read BabyGearLab and Consumer Reports and came out of it no less confused. I originally was looking for dedicated but I think we have too many walls between our room and the nursery. 2nd I really want something with its own viewing device (I don’t want to have to use my phone).

smsaulino · July 2018

We have the Owlet. It's a sock that attaches to the baby's foot that detects movement/pulse. If the baby stops breathing, an alarm will go off. Research has shown that the only downfall that would arise is if sock isn't attached properly, it would give off false alarms. I personally would much rather an alarm that went off too much than one that didn't go off in a time of need.

There are two other downfalls that I see: price and no video. At 299, its definitely the costliest (or close to it) on the market. I believe the main reason for this is because it is newer and there's nothing like it on the market. There are payment options for those that can't afford it such as monthly paments via affirm, through your FSA/HSA and refurbished units through their website occasionally offered. Video wasn't a huge concern to us as we live in a one floor, 2 bedroom apartment.

When going through all the different kinds of monitors, we agreed upon this one mainly because if Polly ever stopped breathing in her sleep, we would be alerted and to us, that was the sole purpose of a monitor.

pourmeanothermocktail · July 2018

My son has always been relatively quiet. This matters because if he feels ignored, he goes from awake but chill to awake but pissed off at the world in about 5 min. We never did a video monitor because I'm the type that would watch it too much, but slept touching him until out of the greatest SIDS age. But at 2, we still use our audio only monitor. We have 3 now, one that's always hooked up at home (parent unit is batteries or plug in, child unit is only plug in) in his room. 1 that's our on-the-go monitor for family functions where he'll nap at someone else's house, so we don't have to unplug our normal one. That one is batteries only on the parent unit. It's old, like 15 years old, but it does it's job. We have 1 more, new in package, to set up for baby in our room assuming baby naps and goes down to bed alone.

nlc8424 · July 2018

@samd6 we have a video monitor that's like a security camera-this definitely isn't everyone's cup of tea due to safety concerns, but it works for us. I also registered and received an audio monitor since our current one doesn't do a good job of notifying you when baby wakes up crying (it sends an alert to our phones, but doesn't actually turn on the app). Before this we used the infant optics dxr-5, which was okay except the monitor crapped out after about 8 months. So I'd look at the dxr-8 instead if it were me. Also, please check your inbox, you've got a message!

lisac113 · July 2018

@samd6 this is the one we registered for. https://www.amazon.com/Infant-Optics-DXR-8-Monitor-Interchangeable/dp/B00ECHYTBI
I am a FTM, so I don't know that I am very helpful. We got a few recs for this one, but I was just reading some reviews and now I am concerned, but I don't know that any of them have absolutely perfect reviews.

mrsman2018 · July 2018

I have the Levana Aria video monitor. It has a huge screen that zooms and a feature where you can move the camera to see anywhere in the room. The image is not too bad, audio is great and shows the temperature and gives a temp warming if it gets too hot. And I like that I can talk to DD thought it too.

DanyTargaryen · July 2018

My first I bought a Summer Infant wide view. It was never anything special and the battery on the parent unit wasn't great. I dropped the parent unit and broke the screen so a mom in my old BMB gave me her old Motorola. The screen was smaller but the quality was much better than the Summer Infant. It was compatible with multiple cameras but it was old enough I was having a hard time finding them. Then I knocked our camera off its shelf and broke the microphone so it no longer had any sound.

I recently bought the Infant Optics DXR-8 and have so far been very happy with it. The battery on the parent unit is starting off really good and I'm very happy with the video quality. It tends to be one of the more highly rated options out there and I always see recommendations for it so I went for it. I've only had it a couple weeks so I can't really give a recommendation for it, but I've been happy so far. Now I just need to buy a second camera for this next baby.

dexnie · July 2018

@DanyTargaryen we also got the infant optics DXR-8. Happy to hear you like it so far.

We haven’t even unboxed ours yet (it’s with the movers still) but we selected it based on ratings and functionality (remote pan/tilt, talk back feature, night vision, streaming to dedicated device and not our phones). It also has a room temp sensor which might be nice.

DanyTargaryen · July 2018

@dexnie - I didn't care about the room temp sensor when I bought it, but now that I have that information available it's neat to know. The entire house is on one thermostat for our central a/c so it's nice to know that his room stays at a decent temp. Winter will be even better to know whether or not he's warm enough or too warm.

[Deleted User] · July 2018

That's the one we registered for, too, and someone has already reserved! I'm excited about it. I personally like that it's not on wifi, so it should be more secure / less hackable.

Lcardinal04 · July 2018

I haven’t found one monitor that matches exactly what I want: decent reviews, multiple camera ability and VOX ability. I’m tied to VOX ability and it seems rare now. Infant optics used to have it but doesn’t anymore.... boo!

@smsaulino we used owlet with DD and will buy a new one for this baby. I think DD wore it until around a year of age, and it gave us complete Peace of mind. Hope you like it!

adirat · July 2018

My aunt gave us the VTech Digital Audio Monitor. We did not want a video monitor -- like you @pourmeamocktail we thought we would stay up all night watching the video! The hacking concern also freaked me out.

AdmiralKitty · July 2018

We have the infant optics one and it’s be been great. I’ve replaced the battery on the unit once because I keep it on and plugged in 24-7 which isn’t great for battery life. But it was a super cheap replacement. I just ordered a second camera for it for the new baby’s room!

BostonBaby1 · July 2018

Truthfully, I think they’re all poor to awful in their own ways. We are on our 4th Samsung and only keep buying them because they have good nursery rhymes and work with up to four cameras. We also have a Project Nursery as a back up. But that plays Joleyne in lullaby version. Sounds awesome, right? Well, it’s not. It’s grating.

This reminds me that I want to place a call to my security guy. We have bought so many darn monitors, I’m thinking of the possibility of just putting in a security system that can monitor the nursery as well. We will not go Wi-Fi because we don’t know how to set up a VPN so creepers cannot potentially see them.

NinnyJean · July 2018

We currently have an audio only for DD1 and it does the job perfectly. In the very beginning I don’t remember wishing we had a video one, now I do at times just to see if she gets out of bed to play

MandyMost · July 2018

We have a Samsung video one, but couldn’t find a second camera for it unfortunately. We like that it didn’t use our Wi-Fi or phones, and we could turn off the sound and just see some lights light up if she was making noise. Love the video over just sound.

Personally I won’t use the Owlet (or other brands). There are a lot of negatives, and there are concerns that they actually increase the risk of SIDS because people over-rely on them at the expense of safe sleep habits. The last I read they currently are not recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, and there’s been an article in JAMA about their risks, and how they really should be regulated but aren’t. If you google “owlet risks” you’ll get lots of info if you’re interested.

Leash14a · July 2018

We used a nest cam but switched to the Chinese knock off (yi) because it has free storage. I prefer it because I just use my phone to look at the nursery, since I always have that on me. We just recently bought the yi dome that moves 360 degrees so we can see my older sons entire room, instead of having blind spots in the room that you can’t see. The cameras are about $60.

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