Honorable Mentions
CuboAi Smart Baby Monitor for $199: This cute monitor looks like a bird, so it blends nicely with nursery decor. It works similarly to the Nanit Pro, with an option to turn your phone into a monitor and have audio constantly playing, and can alert you when your kid is crying or when they’ve moved into zones you’ve marked in the camera’s angle. But I had several issues with Wi-Fi connectivity, occurring almost daily, and the notifications that my son was crying tended to come in delayed. It’s frequently returned on Amazon, and reviews had some problems similar to what I experienced.
Hubble Nursery Pal Premium for $160: This was our previous top pick, but we’ve removed it due to availability issues with Hubble’s baby monitors. It’s still a monitor we like, but it’s hard to find.
Hubble’s Nursery Pal Dual Vision for $150: This was a previous pick for split-screen view of a nursery, but we’ve removed it due to availability issues with Hubble’s baby monitors. It’s still a monitor we like, but it’s hard to find.
MomCozy Video Baby Monitor for $200: This radio-based video monitor has similar features and pricing to the Eufy, but the temperature sensor is a little less stable and the camera’s night vision light shines much brighter into the nursery and crib than Eufy’s. Still, the monitor works well and is another affordable option with no Wi-Fi.
Maxi-Cosi See Pro 360 for $300: This monitor has built-in AI called CryAssist that can analyze and identify a baby’s cries for you. It’s designed with infants in mind, though—my toddler’s cries, whines, and laughs were all simply analyzed as “fussy.” Besides that, the monitor worked fine, but I wished the camera could angle up and down. The nightlight is also super bright, which I didn’t like.
Philips Avent Baby Monitor for $350: For being one of the most expensive, this monitor’s build quality felt the cheapest of any I’ve tested. The camera feed was unreliable to the base device, and one time it somehow started playing music on its own (it has a built-in sound machine, but I didn’t turn it on) in my son’s room while he slept.
Vava 8-inch 1080 Baby Monitor for $260: This is a solid baby monitor, similar to the MomCozy and Eufy, but has a larger, 8-inch screen. The screen was a little too big to be comfortable on my bedside table, but if you’d prefer a larger screen to watch your kiddo on, this is a fine choice.
FAQs
How Does a Baby Monitor Work?
Baby monitors use a couple of methods to share a video or audio feed with a secondary device or your phone. Radio-based monitors use radio signals to locally send video and audio from the monitor to the parent device, like the Eufy’s closed-loop FHSS system. Many monitors use Wi-Fi now so that you can use your phone as the parent device and check on your baby anywhere, but that also means video and audio footage is sent to the cloud and stored elsewhere. Both are good options for different reasons, but if you’re choosing a Wi-Fi based monitor, you’ll want a brand with good security and to be sure your home Wi-Fi is secure.
What Should You Look for in a Baby Monitor?
The best baby monitors have quick response times and come well-equipped with technology that picks up the slightest cry or fuss. They’ll give you a heads-up the moment they detect any sound or movement from the baby, so you know when it’s time to gulp down your coffee and attend to their needs. If you just want to be able to hear your baby from another room, you may want to consider a simple but effective audio-only monitor. Monitors with cameras that can capture video and stills go up to 1080p resolution, but 720p HD is plenty of pixels for a good view of your child.
A video monitor that streams footage to a separate wireless “parent unit” that you can carry around the house can be very convenient. You get real-time sound and motion alerts whenever your child moves or stirs. You may also like to consider a smart baby monitor with a camera that streams footage to an app on your smartphone or tablet. You’ll want to make sure these models have secure two-factor authentication for added peace of mind. If you’re limited to using just your smartphone, this can sometimes be a pain if you’re keen to limit screen time and turn your phone off when you’re at home. Also, check whether the storage of the monitor footage is in the cloud or on an SD card. If you want to record and save video, you may have to sign up for a monthly subscription plan.
Should You Choose a Radio or Wi-Fi Monitor?
Wi-Fi allows you to check a monitor from anywhere and adds features like alerts on your smartphone and AI that can analyze your baby’s position or cries to send alerts about if they’re awake or in a bad position. But Wi-Fi will also allow for video footage of your kiddo to be uploaded to a cloud, and you might not be comfortable with that. Radio-based and audio-only monitors are more secure for keeping video of your kid out of the hands of others, but you miss out on cooler features and being able to check on Baby if you’re out of town (while someone else is still home with the little one, obviously).
How Does WIRED Test Baby Monitors?
My first test of any baby monitor is to gauge the difficulty of the setup process. I track how long it takes me to get the monitor up and running and how many steps are between unboxing and getting a clear feed of the crib on either my smartphone or the handheld display. Most baby monitors shouldn’t take long to set up, even if you have to log on to Wi-Fi or make an account, especially since sleep-deprived parents might be setting these up right before bedtime.
Next, before my kid is even home, I play around with settings and check the camera feed. If there’s a parent unit, I go to the farthest stretches of my home to see if I lose any signal from the device. If there’s a Wi-Fi-based app, I make sure to test it both in my house and away from home. I look for a stable, clear video feed and turn on the sound machine to see if I can hear it. I also test how adjustable the baby monitor’s camera angle is.
After that, I use the baby monitor for about two weeks to monitor my toddler son. I’m primarily watching for video and sound stability, as well as how easy it is to use, whether it’s an app on my phone or with a stand-alone display. I look at how standard features (temperature monitors, night mode, two-way mics) perform over the course of testing. Features can vary across these baby monitors, but any fun extras like tracking vitals I make sure to use and see both how well they work, and if it’s something actually useful for a parent to use on a daily basis. I also leave a radio-based monitor up to compare response time of my son’s cries between it and any Wi-Fi monitors I’m testing.
Power up with unlimited access to WIRED. Get best-in-class reporting and exclusive subscriber content that’s too important to ignore. Subscribe Today.
Read the full article here