Baby Monitors

In this older report, the editors at ConsumerReports.org compare 11 audio monitors and three audio/video monitors, and summarize their findings. Monitors were tested for convenience, sensitivity, battery… life and interference. Interestingly, editors say parents can consider skipping a baby monitor, especially if the nursery is near the master bedroom, or if a family lives in a small home or apartment. The highest-scoring models in this report have been discontinued, but some of them are similar enough to updated versions to render this review useful at present.

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This website has several child safety articles, including this one in which editors discuss the different types of baby monitors and offer safety tips. Two recommendations are included, both from Sony:… 9-channel BabyCall Nursery Monitor or the 27-channel version of that monitor. Editors say these have the best reception and are water-resistant. We wish this information had a date on it. It clearly predates the development of digital baby monitors, which limits its usefulness.

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BabiesRUs.com (part of ToysRUs.com) is another online retailer that allows customers to post product reviews. The baby monitor section here isn't as extensive as at Amazon.com, but if you search for a… particular model by name, you will find many more monitors with enough owner-written reviews to be helpful. For a few models, including the Angelcare Deluxe Monitor 1750295, BabiesRUs.com actually has the most extensive coverage of any user review site. Summer Infant's baby monitors also earn good ratings from parents.

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Five baby monitors are briefly described and ranked in this "road test," and there's no real information on how product testing was conducted (or if it was done at all). The top-rated monitors in this… round-up are the Philips SCD589 (now supplanted by three updated models) and the Fisher-Price Private Connection. Features of each are listed, but author J.D. Rinne does little to elaborate on why these two models were chosen over the others in the lineup.

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Baby monitors are jumbled in this section along with other baby gear like breast pumps and security gates. The individual reviews are almost entirely positive, and while some reviews mention testing, we… can't tell who the testers are or how the tests were controlled. Only three baby monitors are mentioned here, the Graco iMonitor digital, the BebeSounds Angelcare and the Philips Avent SCD510 DECT baby monitor. The only negatives noted relate to price.

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There are actually two lists of top baby monitors on the About.com website, but the two lists don't correspond at all. This list from the About.com's guide to pregnancy, Robin Elise Weiss, is clearly much… older than the list from About.com's guide to baby products. There is no indication that the monitors were tested by Weiss, and most of the monitors on this list have been discontinued. (Note: ConsumerSearch is owned by About.com, but the two don't share an editorial affiliation.)

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