WIRED Found the Best Baby Monitors for Your Nursery

A major appeal of the Eufy SpaceView monitor (see our full review here) is that you don’t need to connect it to your Wi-Fi network. It operates on a closed-loop FHSS system, meaning you simply turn it on and start using it. The large, billiard-ball-sized camera has a 330-degree horizontal rotation, a 110-degree vertical rotation, and an optional wide-angle lens that increases the viewing angle to 110 degrees. Eufy also sells accessories to let you attach it to the wall or clamp it onto the crib. (While the clamp is easier to set up and move around, a toddler can likely reach a crib-clamped camera.)

The handheld monitor unit offers just 720p video quality. It’s easy to see whether your kiddo’s eyes are open and where the pacifier rolled to, but it isn’t high definition by any means. Eufy says the camera and monitor unit have 460 feet of range, but WIRED reviewer Adrienne So got around 250 feet from the camera before it lost connection, and I’m not able to get a signal to the first floor if the monitor is on the third floor. You’re able to control night vision, change the camera angle, adjust screen brightness, and much more from the control unit, but the interface feels a little dated compared to newer smart devices.

Still, it works great and is more reliable in my bedroom than my phone’s Wi-Fi signal ever is. The handheld 5-inch display is also easy to fit onto bedside tables, and the buttons and menus are intuitive to use, even when you’re jolted awake by your baby’s cries. The battery life doesn’t last the entire night, but does last through my son’s two-hour midday nap and for the four hours between his bedtime and mine (with the video feed on the entire time!) It’s easily my favorite non-Wi-Fi baby monitor, and has some accessories you can purchase like a wall mount.

The Nanit Pro (see our full review here) is a great Wi-Fi monitor on its own, with a 1080p video feed that gives you alerts on motion, sound, and even if your baby is standing up. You can also customize where in the room you want notifications for, and the sensitivity for these notifications, which you’ll want to do to avoid getting 30-plus notifications per hour about every sound and movement your baby makes. I also liked that the Nanit’s built-in light is a dull red that doesn’t light up the room.

But the real power of the Nanit comes from the accessories you can use with it to get detailed sleep analytics and alerts.. Adding one of Nanit’s Breathing Wear accessories, which can be a band, sleep sack, swaddle, or pajamas, allows the camera to track your baby’s breathing and alert you if they stop breathing. I tested with my 1-year-old, but the feature feels like a better fit for newborns—especially since my toddler noticed the Breathing Band and would try to remove it. You can also purchase a set of sheets that will allow the camera to track your baby’s growth, but we didn’t test these. You can also subscribe to one of Nanit’s Insights Plans, which range from $50 a year to $300 a year, to get more sleep analysis data and video storage.

While the Nanit doesn’t come with a handheld unit, you can choose a “broadcast audio” option that turns your phone into a constant audio monitor, playing all sounds from your baby’s room from your phone as background audio even if your phone is locked. I loved that option and constantly use it, whether I’m home or out of the house while baby naps (while Dad is home with him!). You can also use Nanit with a smart display from Amazon or Google to watch the video feed. I used it on an Echo Show 8, but note that Nanit has two different Amazon Skills, one that lets you ask about how Baby slept last night or what time they went to bed (the regular Nanit Skill), and one that lets you view the video feed (Nanit Show).

If you don’t need a video feed—that could be personal preference, or you’ve got an older kid you just want to hear rather than need to watch their exact sleep position—then an audio-only monitor can be a perfect fit. The VTech audio abby monitor is small and compact, looking almost like a little set of walkie-talkies to stream audio from baby’s room to whatever room you’re in. It uses Dect 6.0 technology, or Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications. That technology operates on a specific frequency to communicate with its units, similar to a cordless phone, and provides a reasonably clear audio transmission that eliminates most background noise.

The parent unit has rechargeable batteries that last up to 18 hours and a clip so you can carry it with you hands-free. (I’m notorious for forgetting to carry the larger monitor bases around the house if I move rooms, so this is a handy add-on!) It also has a really large range of 1,000 feet, so you can easily roam around the house without worrying about losing signal. There’s a talk-back feature, too.

The Harbor is an interesting monitor. You buy an annual membership that includes a camera, monitor, and all features for the first year, and future years will cost $28 a month. Baby monitors are useful well into toddlerhood, so that’s a bummer to have such an expensive monthly fee looming over you.

But while most monitors are either Wi-Fi- or radio-based, the Harbor has both. You can sync the camera to Wi-Fi to use with the included 10.1-inch monitor and the Harbor app, and if the Wi-Fi goes down the camera and monitor can switch over to radio. My Wi-Fi tends to be unstable, so having the radio backup has meant I didn’t get dead zones overnight when my signal would flicker. It can also travel easily thanks to the radio backup. The camera can get a nice high-quality stream, up to 2K resolution, but I usually got 1080p quality. You can easily zoom in thanks to the touchscreen monitor, which is a nice bonus compared to clicking plus and minus buttons over and over.

Harbor’s monitor can also give smart notifications. That means the monitor is on silent and the screen off until it hears a loud enough sound to notify you, or movement you should see, after which the monitor will fire up the speaker or screen. It’s nice if you don’t want to listen to every sound your kiddo makes, and I like that the screen can activate when it sees major motion, but it tended to react only to someone walking around the room rather than my son just bopping around in his crib. You can adjust how loud of a sound you want to be notified about in the app. Harbor also offers a Remote Night Nanny service that will watch the monitor for you and send notifications when your baby definitely needs something and can’t soothe themselves back to sleep. Right now there are free trials, but Harbor is still deciding on the final pricing for the service.

This smart baby monitor goes a little further than your standard monitor. It combines a “Dream Sock” smart sock wearable that you attach to your baby’s foot and a Cam 2 monitor that you place in the nursery. You can then keep an eye on your baby as it streams 1080p HD video over Wi-Fi to the very comprehensive Owlet App on your smartphone. With the sock wearable in place, you can track your baby’s heart rate and average oxygen level. We found this effective enough, though of course it won’t be as accurate as a hospital-grade tracker.

The app comes with lots of useful extra info, and it can monitor the nursery room temperature, humidity, and noise level. We like that it comes packed with lots of useful sleep data—possibly more than you’ll ever need, but it’s a bonus. As well as watching and saving videoclips of your baby, you can analyze your baby’s sleep patterns using the data from the app. The Predictive Sleep Technology, for example, will try to identify your baby’s sleep patterns to get to know when their next nap or sleep time is. (It’s a great idea in theory, but good luck with that.)

The Owlet monitor itself sends real-time motion and sound alerts direct to your smartphone when your baby moves or makes a noise. It has a 4X zoom, wide-angle view, and night vision, and it also gives you the option for two-way talk when you want to soothe your baby with your voice through the camera. The entry-level wearable sock is designed to suit babies up to 18 months old, but you can opt for a larger design that works up to 5 years. (We suspect, though, that it will work best when the baby is younger, as they’re less likely to pull it off.) We do wish the kit included a separate parent unit so you weren’t entirely reliant on your smartphone, but that would be icing on the cake. Owlet also recently added Owlet360, a $10 a month subscription level to get more trend analysis-style features. You can still get some features for free, like vitals monitoring and real-time alerts. —Emily Peck

★ New Owlet Camera: Owlet just announced the Dream Sight ($100) camera, which is a more affordable but still-smart camera option. It has a video quality from 1080 to 2K HD, 5GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities for setup, and 256-bit encryption, plus it’s $60 less than the Cam 2. It’ll retail for $100 and be part of the new Dream Duo 3 set with the Dream Sock ($340).

What we like most about the Infant Optics DXR-8 Pro monitor is that, like the Eufy, it operates on a frequency-hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) connection in a closed-loop system that doesn’t require connecting the device to Wi-Fi. This means there’s no need to fuss around with Wi-Fi and there’s no smart app to contend with. All you need to do is set up the camera for optimum viewing, plug in, and you’re good to go. In the kit, you get a 5-inch screen on the parent unit that provides 720p HD playback picture of your baby. While this isn’t the clearest-resolution picture you can find, it’s sharp enough. There’s also night vision for when the lights go out. The viewing control is particularly impressive, as the compact camera allows you to pan, tilt, and zoom around the crib as much as you need to.

With a decent speaker on the parent unit, the set provides a noticeably loud volume and crisp sound playback. With its active noise-reduction feature that cuts out any background noise, you’ll also hear your baby only when they make a sound. This works well if there’s a fan in the room or, say, the distant hum of a lawnmower when you’re trying to settle the baby. And when you’re trying to settle the baby, there’s always a distant hum of something in the background. —Emily Peck