Baby Monitor Phone App
From a pure imaging standpoint, night vision is vital for watching your baby sleep from another room, and is standard for most baby monitors. Motorized pan and tilt (which lets you swivel the camera from afar) isn't quite as common, but is very welcome if you have a toddler and want to scan an entire room. High-definition is a nice plus, but you don't need the highest-resolution sensor to keep tabs on your baby—most of the monitors we test use 720p cameras rather than 1080p.
Withings features a high-quality 3-MP video sensor that gives clear and unfettered footage of the baby. With special features such as high-resolution digital video, image stabilization, a wide-angle lens, zoom capabilities, and more, you can position the camera in the nursery and not have to worry about constantly repositioning it. In addition to working on Wi-Fi and 3G/4G networks, Withings offers bonus features like a two-way speaker, infrared lighting, the ability to remotely turn on lullabies through the camera itself, motion detection, and room temperature and humidity monitoring. All of this monitoring is done through the complementary Withings apps for iOS and Android.
Instead, baby monitors offer more options for letting you know when something might be wrong at that moment. Temperature and humidity measurements are common among high-end monitors, along with alerts and notifications for when movement or a lack of movement is detected. The Baby Delight 5" Video, Movement and Positioning Monitor, for example, includes a pendant sensor that monitors your infant's movement and breathing patterns, letting you know if it gets too quiet or still.
Most connected baby monitors are effectively just home security cameras, like the Nest Cam Indoor—devices that let you watch another location with color video, night vision, and sound, so you can tell if anything is amiss. Because baby monitors are used to keep an eye on your little one rather than on your home and property, they prioritize different features than security cameras.
Watching your child from moment to moment is far more important than going over footage from previous nights, so baby monitors don't usually make a big deal about saving video for later, whether using built-in storage or through a cloud service. They can take snapshots and short clips when they detect movement, but they don't offer time-lapse videos of entire nights, or let you page through hours or days of footage. Those features are useful for identifying burglars, but they don't really help you watch your child unless you're in a Paranormal Activity sequel.
WiFi Baby Monitor allows you to monitor you baby through video and audio broadcasts. You can zoom in and out to see what the baby is doing and what’s happening in the surrounding. It is highly secure as it has password protection for cameras while allowing simultaneous connections for multiple viewers. It also has both iOS version and Android version.
As with any internet-connected device that watches or listens to your home, it's not out of the ordinary to be somewhat wary of a smart baby monitor. All Internet of Things (IoT) devices are potential soft spots for hackers to monitor you. Anything you network can possibly be compromised, and while you shouldn't be afraid of an epidemic of camera breaches, you should always weigh the convenience of these devices against the risk of someone getting control of the feed.