There were a few baby items, such as the baby monitor, that I spent entirely too long researching. We are talking hours on the internet scouring comparison charts, reading baby monitor reviews, making pros/cons lists, etc. I found it surprisingly hard to find advice from a real mom that was straight to the point. Hopefully, I can save you from this torturous process by providing you with the solutions I eventually found and the logic that got me there.
If you don’t have time to read on, my baby monitor choice is the Wyze Cam 1080p HD Indoor Wireless Smart Home Camera with Night Vision, 2-Way Audio, White.
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The Endless Search for a Baby Monitor
After your baby literally lives inside of you for 9 months, there is a bit of anxiety associated with keeping an eye on him or her once they are out of the womb. Thanks to technology, parents are able to monitor their baby better than ever before. However, with all of the advances in technology, there are roughly one million baby monitor options to choose from.
Unlike choosing the best cup of coffee (Starbucks, obviously) or the winning shopping experience (Target, clearly), there just didn’t seem to be an indisputable front-runner for baby monitors. Since hubs is the tech in the family, he dove in deep to technical baby monitor reviews that broke down the range, camera specs, etc. But in the end, we realized we needed advice from real parents.
What Should We Really Be Looking For?
Surveying a few of our friends who were already parents, we arrived at the most important features to look for:
- Can you sit outside and still see your baby in the nursery?
- Is the picture clear or does it look more like a blurry image circa 1980 bunny ears cable?
- Are you alerted when little one makes noise/moves?
- Will you need to take out a second mortgage to afford it?
Oops, We Fell for the Big Name Brand
Finally, we decided on the Philips AVENT SCD630/37 Video Baby Monitor with FHSS. This baby monitor lived on the dresser beside his crib for approximately 6 days before we stopped feeding off hopeful thinking and false positivity and returned it. Sure, it was “ok” but you would not believe how terrible the image quality and sound was for such an expensive purchase.
Wyze Didn’t We Know About This Camera Sooner?
Thankfully, our camera-in-shining-armor arrived when my sister called me with an exciting recommendation. The dad of Claire Crosby, adorable YouTube sensation who went viral for her cover songs with daddy, had invented a wireless camera to compete with more expensive products like the Arlo security camera and Nest indoor camera. My sister was gifted one of these $20 cameras and she could not believe how well it worked. For such a low price, I figured there was no harm in ordering one to try it out.
The Wyze camera ended up being one of the best purchases I’ve made during my pregnancy. Instead of spending money on expensive advertising campaigns (which is why you may not have heard of it), they have created an affordable product that honestly sells itself. When we compared the quality of the Wyze security camera side-by-side with the Philips baby monitor, it was painstakingly obvious that we had made the wrong call initially.
Features I Love About the Wyze Camera
The picture quality is amazing!
It’s crystal clear and you can zoom in for even more detail. Even the night vision is impressive.
There is two-way communication that actually works.
The first monitor we bought made our voices sound muffled and echoey, like dark overlords booming down. With the Wyze camera, not only can you perfectly hear sound on the app coming from the camera’s surroundings, but when you speak into your phone your voice is projected beautifully through the camera.
The app is really well designed.
It’s very easy to use and you can add as many individual camera units as you want. You can share the camera feed to an unlimited number of people so me and my husband both have the feeds on our phones. Best of all, installation is so ridiculously easy your baby could probably do it (just kidding, but really- it only took us 2 minutes).
It has reliable motion detection and sound detection with adjustable sensitivity levels.
Since our baby boy hasn’t arrived yet, I’ve been doing a lot of preliminary tests setting the camera on our cat’s favorite spots when we leave the house (RIP to Chappie’s privacy). The motion detection works flawlessly! I can even limit the motion detection to just one section of the picture, instead of the entire camera view, which will be so useful when we want to focus on just the crib in his nursery.
There is free recording!
Most similar baby monitors or security cameras charge for you to record and playback. Wyze continues to save you money by recording motion detection segments to the cloud for free. You also have the option of buying an SD card and recording all of the time.
The cameras are super portable.
Since the cameras are small, light-weight boxes you can easily unplug them and move them to a new location. We don’t need to worry about not having a plan for grandma’s house or even a hotel stay.
Trust me, I do not usually get this excited about technology. But the Wyze camera has impressed me so much that I’ve already purchased another one and have sung its praises to anyone who will listen. Save yourself the headache and hundreds of dollars and pick Wyze for your baby monitor.
