My BIL (Wife’s little brother) and his wife are having a baby. I’m going to be an aunt later this spring! You know what this means – shopping! They registered for a few things including a baby monitor. The Wife and I looked at their choice and yes, we poo-poo’d it. Yeah we know it’s my BIL’s prerogative on baby stuff, but we’re usurping him this time.

This brings us to The Wife and my conversation about video monitors.

Why do all baby monitors have that Paranormal Activity glow to them?

We’ve narrowed down the machines.

This one – the Jena Digital Baby Video Monitor by Levana – has a swivel head and you can talk back to the baby. It has The Wife’s vote because he wants to be able to yell at the baby “GO BACK TO SLEEP, KID!”

It has Paranormal Activity night vision. Once your baby makes a sound at night, the video monitor will come on. You can blame your baby for wasting the rechargeable battery. It looks like it’s a color monitor, which is a plus, and it comes with a few lullaby tones that you can play to drown out your baby’s snoring. No, you can’t insert “No Sleep Til Brooklyn” into the machine as a sleepy song.

There is also a version 2.0 of this monitor, which includes remote control, larger screen and voice activated control. It also includes 24/7 customer support. I don’t think you can call them to rock your baby to sleep when you’re exhausted though.

Then I asked the SCLB bloggers who were moms for their recommendations. Here they are:

This VTech Communications Safe & Sounds Full Color Video and Audio Monitor has a 1,000 ft range, double the range of the Jena. I don’t think BIL and SIL will be 1,000 ft away from the baby, but if they decide to some gardening like that woman in the video, then I guess it’s a good thing. (My BIL is an IT nerd, you will not see him gardening. Bwahaha!) You can talk back to your baby… or in The Wife’s words, scare the bejeezus out of them when they’re older. Or you can lull them to sleep with the a few built-in lullabies. This one also doesn’t allow re-programming the lullaby to read “Go The F*ck To Sleep” to your baby. Bonus – There’s a sensor to track the temperature of the baby! So if you think your baby is a Cylon or the T1000, this is the monitor for you.

My fellow peers also recommended the Summer Infant Baby Touch Digital Color Video Monitor, which is the priciest of the bunch. (This one’d better transform into Optimus Prime, I’m just sayin’.) The range is only at 400 ft, but I’m trying to rack my brain on exactly how far you would stray from your sleeping baby. I assume the farthest you’d get is to the bathroom so you can go #2 without holding a child. The monitor looks similar to an iPod Touch, which I think is pretty neat. However don’t ask it if it’s raining; there is no Siri in this machine. The monitor also comes with a belt clip, so you can clip it on your Wonder Woman belt… because we all know stay-at-home-moms are superheroes. The Summer monitor also allows you to talk back to your kid remotely – I think some parents of teenagers might need this. Note, this one does not include lullabies pre-programmed – this could be a good thing. You can start training your kid on the classics like The Beatles and Sesame Street instead of Ke$ha and Chris Brown.

  

This is the one The Wife chose to add to the list. He noticed there were over 1,000 reviews for this Infant Optics Digital Video Baby Monitor with Night Vision. It’s light blue which is a little more nursery-ish looking than the others. This has the shortest range of the bunch at 150ft inside and 800ft outside. The ad features a hipster dad, which makes me not want to buy it. I checked out other review sites, and it’s been highly rated too. (It’s a contenda!) All of these monitors allow for extra cameras; you can toggle between babies/cameras.

 

The good thing about these monitors is that you can reuse them. When my BIL and SIL grow old, our nephew can use them to make sure they’re doing ok. Our future nephew can also talk back to his parents remotely! Circle of life, people.

And that, boys and girls, is the short list of video baby monitors we are looking at. All four come highly rated. All four have night vision, or as we like to say “Perv Vision.” All four are rechargeable, come with a base, and have a decent distance. All four are color monitors.

Before you yell at us, we are sending the list of options to our BIL and SIL, so they can make the final decision. Which one do you think our BIL & SIL should pick?

 

 

Disclosure/disclaimer: We really are getting a video baby monitor. I am not being paid by any of the above companies for this post, but if you click on any of them and purchase one, I will receive maybe a 10-cents or 25-cents or something via Amazon Affiliates. NOTE -if there IS a machine that can tell if someone is a Cylon, please let me know.

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