Hellobee Boards

Someone told me the Wyze camera is good. It's basically just a security camera that you can view video on your phone. I wish I had gone with this method in the first place.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076H3SRXG/?coliid=I31J9W74HP6EF4&colid=1F28MOZXAP77Q&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

We have the Infant Optics DXR-8 and looooove it. We went through 3 crappy Motorola ones and finally got this after BIL got it and said they loved it.
We’ve had 1 for about 2 years now (both use the same parent unit) and 1 for a year. Both work just like day 1 and zero complaints.
We also have a Nest cam for both kids. We like that if we’re away or just out for the night we can creep on them and see how they’re sleeping. And if I leave the video monitor in my room I can sit in the living room and just occasionally check the Nest on my phone.

Personally I wouldn’t use a WiFi cam as my only monitor. 1) you kinda have to use an old phone or an iPad or something if you want constant monitoring during the day. And overnight I just don’t love having my phone on all night. The screen up I mean. 2) if your WiFi goes out even for a second it goes out and you have to sort of refresh it. Overnight that sucks because you don’t know it went out till the AM when you wake up and then you don’t know if the baby needed you while the monitor was down.
3) same issue if you have a sitter - you have to leave an iPad or old phon or something for them to use as the monitor screen. Or give them your password for their phone but then they can creep on you any time (like I know my MIL would, haha).

So we like having both.

Pretty much what @SweetiePie: said. We started with a motorola, and it was fine. We liked it well enough that when the first one died one week after it's warranty ended, we bought another. Again it met our needs and was fine. But when we moved last summer the range didn't worked from DD's room to ours. There were too many walls in the way. So we got the infant optics dxr-8 and LOVE it. The picture is so much better. The sound quality is better. I am so wishing we had it to start.

We considered a wifi camera since we have amazing wifi (thanks to a mesh network). But didn't like that we would have to leave one of our phones on all night. And we need the monitor, we cannot hear DD at all from our room. And we were concerned about when someone would babysit - would we have to leave one of our phones? Or download the app on theirs? Just didn't make sense for us.

We use our wyze cams now that the kids are 1+ because that’s when I stop using the baby monitor overnight. I stop around 9 months and I can hear them very well and am a light sleeper anyway. I just check in on them through the night periodically. The battery life on our phones/iPad is also way better than our Motorola baby monitor so that’s a big plus if we did want to use it all night. On the rare occasions we have a babysitter we just set it up on the iPad and our Motorola cam has a wifi app you can use so we use that now because of the crappy battery life on the parent unit. The cost factor is also insane. Our baby monitor was $250 ish and the wyze cams were $30 each.

I have the infant optics also and have no complaints about it. I got it for like $80 from Amazon warehouse deal. It was marked as good condition and looked like new to me, not a scratch and the screen cover was still on it. No issues with the battery either. I'd definitely recommend going that route over the brand new price.

Another vote for the infant optics dxr8, we LOVE ours, it’s going strong after 3 years of constant use. Got one for a baby gift for my SIL because she hated her old Motorola and she loves it too.

We have nest for our home security and thermostats and I like it, but much prefer the old-school monitor for the nurseries for all the reasons @SweetiePie: listed. It never occurred to me you could tag team both though!

I'll add that I have a normal audio monitor that we use in the evenings......but when I go to sleep, I can hear the kids since we share a wall.