Philips Avent SCD510 DECT Baby Monitor

The Philips Avent SCD510 DECT Digital gets excellent scores in professional and owner-written reviews. The high-priced Philips baby monitor is often the last resort for parents with a house full of electronics that interfere with other baby monitors; instead of using the most common 2.4 GHz and 900 MHz frequencies, the Philips monitor uses the less-utilized 1.9 GHz frequency (also known as DECT). We also found good reviews for the cheaper Safety 1st High-Def Digital Monitor (*Est. $50), but the Safety 1st version lacks battery backup and a useful intercom feature that's a parent favorite on the Philips baby monitor. If you've had trouble with other baby monitors, experts say the Philips Avent SCD510 DECT monitor is the best you can buy.

The Philips Avent SCD510 builds on the success of its predecessor, the well-regarded SCD589 DECT digital monitor. Though the updated SCD510 is too new to have been included in the most recent coverage at Consumer Reports, the baby-gear book "Baby Bargains" has a good section on baby monitors -- authors Denise and Alan Fields discuss the Philips line, including the SCD510, in a fair amount of detail. User reviews for this updated model are still a bit sparse, but Amazon.com and similar sites have enough posts on this model to provide a good sense of how owners find it compares to other baby monitors.