Baby monitors can be both a lifesaver for parents of young children, and also the bane of their existence.
Sure, you can see that your baby is asleep, but you can also hear when they’re wide awake deep in the middle of the night, usually in glorious full colour and sound.
Regardless of how much sleep you’re actually getting, a baby monitor can be useful for new parents, particularly if you live in a two-storey house or if you’re in another room while they’re sleeping – or not sleeping, as the case may be.
(Just remember that safe sleep guidelines recommend having your baby in your bedroom for the first six to 12 months.)
If you’re going to buy one, though, don’t just go out and pick up any old thing: our testing shows they’re not all created equal. CHOICE expert testers have put 39 baby monitors through their paces to help exhausted new parents and parents-to-be make the right choice.
Here are the three monitors that rated lowest in our tests.
Uniden Baby Monitor with Pan & Tilt Camera
CHOICE Expert Rating: 50%
Price: $259
Uniden Baby Monitor with Pan & Tilt Camera.
Our testers found this unit had plenty of teething problems across the board.
And with an overall picture performance score of just 43%, even the fancy “pan and tilt” camera doesn’t make up for the poor picture quality.
Our expert testers found that the image was stretched and the field of view too tight, which means you might have to move the camera back more than one metre to get a full view.
And while it does display an image when the camera is in dim lighting, it’s far from a high-quality image – is that blurry shape your toddler or a teddy bear?
It lost connection when a microwave was used between the camera and monitor
And although it’s easy to set up and use, our experts say it performs poorly on a number of other fronts: sound range, video range, detecting and reproducing soft sounds, and maximum sound level at the carer end.
It did manage to operate through two walls, but broke up quite a lot when used through three walls. And it lost connection when a microwave was used between the camera and monitor.
All in all, it’s quite a disappointment and not worth the $260 it sells for.
It’s hard to say what’s worse about Angelcare’s AC327 baby monitor: is it the fact that it has the second-lowest CHOICE Expert Rating in our test or that it’s one of the more expensives model we’ve looked at?
Angelcare Movement Monitor with Video.
The combination of the two certainly isn’t good.
There’s absolutely nothing here to justify the asking price, with borderline to poor scores for both picture quality and sound sensitivity, and a broadcast range that we rated only OK.
The only thing in its favour is the high volume transmitted to the carer, though that’s largely offset by the underwhelming sound sensitivity results.
After all, loud volumes on the carer unit won’t do much good when the baby unit often misses sounds in the first place.
There’s absolutely nothing here to justify the asking price, with borderline to poor picture quality and sound sensitivity
And yet that’s not the worst of it: the first unit we tested had a faulty screen out of the box.
That wouldn’t have been a big deal had the replacement unit worked properly – but it was faulty too. We had to test the monitor with a band of dead pixels across the top of the screen.
This video monitor might be suitable under a very specific set of circumstances: if your home’s never too dark or too light, your bedroom is right next door to your baby’s room, and if you don’t need to know if your baby is moving.
Uniden 2.8″ Baby Video Monitor with Camera.
Our experts found that the audio and video signals would severely weaken or drop out entirely through more than one wall, and that it doesn’t give great picture quality in the dark, daylight or dim light.
Our experts found that it couldn’t pick up sound and vision through more than one wall, and that it doesn’t give great picture quality in the dark, daylight or dim light.
On the upside, it won’t be affected by interference from other household appliances, but that’s not exactly a plus when it doesn’t do a good job in the first place.
It also has a room temperature monitor which means you can tell how warm your baby’s room is. But that also doesn’t help much if you can’t see your baby.
You’d almost be better off not having a baby monitor than buying this one. Plus you’d be $100 up, which you could spend on (very much needed) coffee.
Alice Richard is a Content creator and marketer. Alice writes on a range of topics, from health insurance to heaters and BBQs to bargain-hunting, always with the aim to help consumers find the best products to buy, and which to avoid.
Alice can take vast amounts of data from CHOICE product tests and turn it into content that is easily digestible and fun for readers.
Alice has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Queensland.
Alice Richard is a Content creator and marketer. Alice writes on a range of topics, from health insurance to heaters and BBQs to bargain-hunting, always with the aim to help consumers find the best products to buy, and which to avoid.
Alice can take vast amounts of data from CHOICE product tests and turn it into content that is easily digestible and fun for readers.
Alice has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Queensland.
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