Baby Monitor

Baby Monitor is Critical Gear

One piece of essential gear for any Undefeatable Daddy is a baby monitor. There are so many of them on the market though, making a choice can be difficult. Here is how to narrow it down.

Get the Right Baby Monitor

1. Get a video baby monitor
   • Ok, if your baby is less than 6 months old, the video thing is not going to be much more than a novelty. After all, they won’t be moving around much. But, after that, it can be great to see what is going on in there. The first time I noticed that my baby could raise her head up herself was on the baby monitor after she rolled over and wanted to take a look around. After that, I put her on her stomach more knowing that she could lift her head. Now that she can stand and do other things, it is very comforting to be able to peek in and see that the thumping sound is her laying on her stomach and bouncing her foot on the mattress, and not her banging her head against the rails.
2. Get night vision
   • You would think this would go without saying, but you can’t see into your baby’s room in low light without night vision. Even during the day with the curtains shut you won’t see much without night vision.
3. Get a $100-ish one
   • Check Amazon and you’ll see plenty of reviews both good and bad for most video monitors. Keep in mind that everyone has a different perspective. If you just want to keep an eye on your baby you only need so much resolution and so big of screen. But, if you want to be able to read over their shoulder you’ll need much better equipment. Something around a $100 is probably all you need for normal purposes.

My Personal Baby Monitor

I use the Summer baby video monitor. I didn’t test out a bunch of them first. I read some reviews and bought this one. It works, I stuck with it. You’ll see on some reviews about terrible reception. The truth is, this thing is much better at video than it is at audio. My video is pretty much clear and bright all the time, and I live in a pretty urban area. The volume though is much less reliable. It seems to crackle every so often for no reason. If you are moving around with it, forget it. Even sitting on a table it can be pretty touchy. It bizarrely seems to matter where you put the volume. Turning it up a little makes the static go away and then putting the volume back where it was before doesn’t make the static come back. Go figure.

As for quality of build, this thing is phenomenal. My daughter likes to play with ours. The way she plays with it is to push the Video On/Off button over and over again. I don’t know much about electronics, but I know this can’t be good for the monitor, but it still works after a few years of this abuse. Plus, its been dropped about 50 times including from the heights of my arms which probably makes about a 5 foot fall. No problems so far.

The charge seems to last a very long time. So long that once I thought the signal was going out or something because it was getting fuzzy. My wife asked about the battery, and I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I put it on the charger. Once charged it worked like a champ.