moonybaby Split 50 Baby Monitor with Camera and Night Vison, 5" Split Screen - Wide-Angle, Wireless, 2-Way Audio & Long Range, Temperature Sensor, VOX Mode & Long-Life Battery - 2 x Cameras, Indoor

Product Information

Like our local-video pick, it has an indicator light to let you know if your baby is making noise, even if you have the screen and audio off. The monitor vibrates when the unit detects sound, which we found helpful, but in a large house the sound went crackly fast. The camera and display units don’t use a Wi-Fi connection, so they have to stay within about 1,000 feet of each other (the length of three baseball fields) to work.

The audio-only VTech DM1411 offers good reliability, has a long battery life, and provides sound quality that’s equal to or better than that of any other audio monitor we’ve tested. If you want a local-video monitor, and a large display screen is your top priority: The VTech VM919HD is the company’s nicest local-video-only baby monitor, with a 720p camera that you can pan and tilt remotely and spin 270 degrees (to achieve a 360-degree panoramic view). But we read multiple complaints in app reviews about the app crashing or being generally unreliable, and we were concerned about the company’s potentially lackadaisical approach to security.Other people may want a monitor only for occasional use, such as when they’re trying to do some yard work while the baby is napping. But the zoom feature wasn’t as good as what we saw on our picks, and although this model has a useful wide-angle lens, our attempt to read large print from 10 feet away was a fail. But VTech’s security and privacy measures for the RM7766HD are less rigorous than those that Nanit implemented for its monitors, and the VTech app doesn’t offer nearly as many features. We also like that this model has white-noise, lullaby, and night-light options, as well as an accurate temperature dongle outside the main body of the camera.

The Infant Optics DXR-8 was our runner-up pick in a previous version of this guide, prior to 2022, and it was our main pick in a version before that. However, in a direct comparison with newer options that we tested in fall 2023, the DM221’s shortcomings were obvious.

I found that night-light button especially helpful when my child was nursing overnight, and I would set it to 15 minutes, knowing that it would slowly dim when time was up. We were hoping to love the Motorola VM36XL during our most recent testing, since it boasts a feature that other models lack: a portable and rechargeable baby camera that you can move from room to room, which is useful for both the newborn days (bassinet sleep versus crib practice) and the later toddler years (bedroom versus playroom surveillance).