Best Baby Monitor? - Dundee,IL

I love, love, love the Summer Infant Baby Touch video monitor. It pans, it zooms, there's a two-way intercom so I can tell the baby to "lay down, mama's here" from another room. I love having a video monitor because just hearing if the baby is awake wasn't enough for me. A baby can be asleep in a bad position, like with a blanket over her head, and I wouldn't know without a video monitor. This one doesn't get static, and you can add additional cameras to the receiver.

It's pricey but we got an Angel Care Monitor as a gift and it's the best thing anyone ever got us. There is no video monitor but it is a motion detector. A pad goes under the mattress and if baby were to stop breathing the alarm would go off. Also an audio monitor and tells you the temperature in the room. I am addicted to it. I feel so much better knowing that thing is there. BTW: We got it in 2007 when baby #1 was tiny and now we are still using it with baby #2. There is a little blue night light option on it, too. It came with two monitors but now only one works because we dropped it so many times.
Also, babies go thru a phase where they migrate around the crib at night and get themselves nestled in the corner of the crib. This gave us a period of many false alarms which can be annoying (hubby hated it!) but I didn't care. Just went in and repositioned baby, maybe turned down the sensitivity knob a bit. You can adjust it so that it's as sensitive as you need. I got so much peace of mind with that thing.
The unit is completely quiet except for the sounds coming from babie's room and we have never, in all the years we have had it, had to replace the batteries bc they are rechargable while you charge it on the console when not in use.
FYI: If you have a fan in the room make sure to test the sensor without baby in bed to make sure the fan isn't making the monitor pick up movement where there is none. It's sensitive enough to pick up the motion of your child's breathing so a fan can trigger it if it's pointing directly at the crib but you wouldn't want a fan directly on a baby anyway so it's not really a problem.

There is a huge price difference between video monitor and just sound monitor . I spent an arm and leg on the video one ($150), and toddler knocked over the screen and it brook. My other was a $20 Target one and it worked great. I can't think of name brands, but I would just ask them first if a video monitor is what they want. I really appreciated it when I had it, but really its overkill.

We love our video monitor:
http://www.summerinfant.com/Products/Monitoring/Video-Mon...
We're going to have another baby this fall and we're going to have to buy a second one because I'm addicted to it :) and even though my daughter will be two by then I still want to be able to watch her

Angel Care Baby Monitor. Hands down, best one around, in my humble opinion. Mine has lasted 5 years (2 kids, and many family vacations!).

How thoughtful of you!

I never felt the need to get a video monitor, but as Jane suggests, I would ask them what they want (sound or video). If you want one that is just sound I suggest the Sony Baby Call Monitor.

The one we have is the Angelcare Deluxe Movement Monitor :

http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2970307

We absolutely LOVE ours! We registered for it and said that if we didn't get it we would have to get the lower model since we wouldn't be able to afford it, but someone got it for us and I'm SO glad!!! We've had it since our shower in July of 2010 and the baby was born in September of 2010 - we've used it everyday since! I went to someone's house and stayed for a week who had the lower model and didn't like it & they had problems with the sensor pad not working correctly (we never did)...the only "bad" thing is they will need to go out and get a piece of particle board to go under the mattress (on top the springs) so the sensor pad can sit on that (and under the mattress).
We LOVE that it shows the temperature of her room so we know how hot or cold it is in there for her. We love that the sensor pad saved us once when she was really sick (with RSV) and stopped breathing for less than a minute at night - it alerted us and we were able to get in there to get her to breathe on her own again...there were times when she started moving around the crib that the alarm would go off, but once I adjusted the sensitivity it stopped happening.
I would recommend this (and have) to anyone having a baby! I've even told my husband that when we have our second that the new baby will get the sensor pad monitor and our current child will get just a regular monitor and he agrees.
The batteries last a long time too since they are rechargeable...17 months in to using it we haven't had to replace them yet! The receiver can last about 36 hours off of the charger! And I've even walked down to our mailbox while she was napping and gotten clear reception (it's about a half a block away since we are in town homes)!
We've NEVER picked up another family's monitor either!
The last feature we LOVE about it is that while it is on, you don't listen to static/white noise - it will only give the sounds that the baby makes (cries, moans, etc.) - like right now I have the unit next to me and it's still on and I can see the temp in her room, but since there is nothing going on in her room (because she's sitting in the family room with me) there is no sound coming from the unit at all.

(check around, I remember amazon had this one a little cheaper for a while)

Safety 1st Video monitor, LOVE it! I've had mine 4.5 years now and it works great & its really nice to be able to 'see' the baby as well as hear her. GREAT gift idea!!

all monitors are really pretty good, because the parents are not that far away anyway. But be careful, they can be monitored from outside the home. News information showed a potential robber was listening to every word from a monitor that was left on in the babys room. The person outside the home had another monitor on the same frequency. When not in use in baby room shut it OFF.