When my wife and I found out we were having a baby, I knew that all my years of researching, reviewing, and shopping for devices would finally come in handy. I was in charge of buying the baby monitor..you know..that important device that alerts you to when a bear is sneaking in to steal your baby, or your baby is choking, or you know, just being fussy and needs to be comforted. There are 3 main types of baby monitors:
- audio only
- audio and video over wireless radio
- audio and video over wireless wifi
When I started by search for the best baby monitor, I was convinced I needed a wifi monitor. I travel for work occassionaly and I thought it would be cool to make sure the baby was still breathing when I was about to go to bed while in some dingy hotel room in middle America. But after doing a ton of research, I realized most of the wifi baby monitors on the market had flaws; mainly losing communication between the camera and the monitor. And think about it: How often have you had wifi issues at your house? Do you want to stop monitoring your baby when wifi goes out? What if it goes out in the middle of the night? And what is more important anyway, having someone at home with constant coverage of our newborn, or me being able to spy on her while watching the Late Show? So I went with a radio audio/video baby monitor, and we couldnt be happier.
I chose the Infant Optics DXR-8 due to the recommendation of a friend who had just purchased it and the great Amazon reviews. It was lower cost than wifi baby monitors and I figured it would be more reliable. After 5 months of use, I couldn't be happier. Why?
- It just works. We have a three-story house and the nursery is on the top floor. I have Peloton bike/theater room on the bottom floor, and after I put the baby down at night I like to go workout. The baby monitor easily works with no signal dropout. We can even take it outside if we're eating on the deck after she's gone to sleep.
- It's easy to setup and add new cameras. It's incredible easy to setup and use. No messing around with wifi or resetting my router or multiple calls to tech support. I just plugged it in and started using it. I even have a second camera for when we travel. My main camera is mounted on the wall and I routed the power cord through some conduit to make it look pretty. We have a second camera that we use to travel with and it's very easy to setup multiple cameras with one monitor.
- The audio is great and has two-way functionality
But it's not just me who loves this monitor, the WireCutter gave it the number one spot of all baby monitors reviews in October of 2017! In their review, WireCutter stated:
"Compared with competitors, the Infant Optics DXR-8 has a more intuitive, easier to use interface, and the battery life on its parent unit (aka the monitor) lasted longer than on any other video option we found. On other requirements, it delivered as well as the best monitors we tried: It has an adequate range for home use, acceptable image quality, an ability to add on multiple cameras, and overall simplicity and ease of use with a minimum of annoying quirks"
I have friends who use audio only baby monitors, but as first time parents, we wanted to actually see our baby. Now we know if she's crying because she's being fussy and we should let her "cry it out", or if she's crying because she's rolled over onto her stomach and her legs are caught between the crib spindles (her current favorite trick).
I still wanted to be able to remotely check in on baby when I was outside the house, so we purchased a Nest camera. And this works...most of the time. But like I was afraid of with a wifi baby monitor, I am constantly getting notices that the camera is offline. I haven't spent too much time trying to figure out why, and the camera comes back online fairly soon afterwards, but it's annoying, and it would be even more annoying if I had a wifi baby monitor that was going offline when my daughter needed care.
