VTech DM221 Audio Baby Monitor with up to 1,000 ft of Range, Vibrating Sound-Alert, Talk Back Intercom & Night Light Loop, White/Silver

It was what she asked for

Bought this monitor a few months ago. Its great for several reasons: Sound sensitivity: we are first-time parents and like many parenting noobs, purchased an expensive video monitor. Turns out, the main feature we care about is filtering out all of our daughters tiny noises through the night (while still hearing her cries). The video monitor had no such sound filtering - but thankfully, this does. This audio monitor does exactly what we want. I have the sound sensitivity set to the lowest level so I dont hear her weird grunting or loud breathing. Just the cries. I never wake up to non-crying. I have it on volume 3. I tried the vibrate mode but it was too intense and loud for me. Further, Id read in the comments that it filters out the white noise and doesnt alert you to that; that has been true for us, too. The monitor doesnt alert us to the sound of the white noise machine. Good battery. It hasnt died on any night yet. You cant beat the price for the features and reliability. Also, fun hack: baby is now sleeping better so I really only want the monitor on after like 1 am. She occasionally cries in the 9 pm to 11 pm window for a minute or two but goes back to sleep. This is SUPER annoying to wake up to. So I plugged the monitor power cord into our old school christmas tree lights timer. When the monitor is connected to power, it turns on, so I schedule the timer to turn on at 1 am. It connects power, and the monitor turns on. No more early night cries waking me up, only the later night cries that may actually require intervention. Dont know of many babies who do this, but hopefully this helps someone. Its been a lifesaver for us.

I ordered this because I wanted a baby monitor. I didnt want anything wifi enabled (because my cable company isnt the best and weve been known to just lose internet service in the middle of the night). I wanted something slightly better than the baby monitors they had when I was growing up and I had a baby brother sleeping down the hall (I.e. No cordless phone interference). These days companies seem to have worked out that whole everything wireless is on the same frequency debacle so I figured this should be no sweat. This unit set up quickly and is pretty darn sensitive. When my daughter sucks her thumb, it gets picked up on the monitor. I was nearly scared off of this item by some of the negative reviews. Once I established that it worked, I decided to run a few experiments with the sensitivity using the bathroom fan. In a quiet room, the thing is awesome. When you turn down the sensitivity to accommodate say, a white noise machine/air purifier/fan/air conditioner, it begins to show some weakness. Why? Because the sensitivity is based upon volume. If the baby crying doesnt exceed the new threshold youve set, the monitor wont pick up the sound. If the room is heavy on white noise, then you have two choices: a constant flow of white noise on the monitors parent unit or turn down the sensitivity so that only the louder cries will be heard. This isnt a limitation on the unit. It isnt able to distinguish between air conditioner and baby noises. It picks up sound over a certain decibel level. That isnt a flaw. Thats that slight improvement over the units from 20 years ago I was hoping for. If you are running lots of white noise in the room, you may need to switch to video monitors. Or you may just have to deal with the monitor blasting white noise into your room in hopes of picking up every whine and whimper. But if thats your situation, it isnt really the monitors fault for not adapting to your environment (it would be like hanging up a flat screen TV crooked and then writing a negative review for the TV saying the picture is slanted). Its a good monitor. Clear sound and very responsive to baby noises. It may not completely change the way you parent, but they never made that claim.

***Update!! After 20 months of use. This monitor still works! Im impressed for the price. However, we recently moved and now have issues daily with the parent unit becoming unlinked from the baby unit.. even when we are in the next room! If we move it closer, it will link back up. Sometimes it will link again on its own. So thats a bit disappointing. The other issue we have, is the battery of the parent unit does not last. We now plug it in every time our son is awake, and unplug when hes sleeping to use. Doing this keeps it charged enough not to die. However its always at 1 or 2 battery level. Also, we have to keep it on ALL the time. Even if it has a full battery, when we turn it off itll turn back on and display low battery and need to be plugged in. While these issues arent deal breakers, they are annoying. But again, for the price Im impressed with how well its held up. Our toddler loves to play with it, the handle on top of the parent unit is cracked, but the screen works still! Still recommended if youre looking for a quality baby monitor for daily use that wont get too much abuse. *original review: Weve had our monitor for a few weeks now and Im pretty happy with our purchase. For the money, its worth it. We bought it as a supplement to our video monitor (we bought a WiFi one so our long distance family could see our little boy) and only needed something for use while hes napping. It works when the baby unit is upstairs and our parent unit is downstairs and on the patio with us, so the range is perfect. We havent had any issues with the screen dying or it breaking at all. The volume is loud enough for us to hear him when were spending time with loud company. And the sensitivity settings make it so we can hear him when he cries but not listen to his rock and play rocking in the background. My only complaint is the battery dies relatively fast, after using it for a few hours it displays low battery and needs to be charged.

We use this for travel! I feel kinda like the parent unit is almost always dead and needs to be plugged in. Maybe that is user error because we don’t use it constantly so the batter dies when it isn’t in use? That is frustrating to be honest since it takes a while to charge up when it’s dead. BUT when I have the foresight to plug it in as soon as we get somewhere a couple hours before we need it… it’s great! A classic.

This monitor system works very well.

My mom had cancer surgery and was in bed for several days. I stayed over at my folks house to help with her recovery. I decided to purchase these as the unit for the baby is wireless, which means she could keep it next to her in bed instead of the nightstand, which she could not reach due to surgery pain. It also has a nice nighlight on the baby unit made her feel comfortable after waking up in the middle of the night, a bit disoriented. The unit allowed us to keep her bedroom door closed so that she would not be woken and could rest and recover. If she needed anything, she would just have to speak and we could hear her over the parent unit.

These work well. You can hear breathing most of the time turned up all the way. You can also clearly hear the person talking or calling out. You can talk to the person from the base station to the remote, the person on the remote end can not hear what is happening at the base station so they are not disturbed. The battery life could be a little longer, they will do 6-8 hours with a low battery signal long before the battery on the base station goes out. Overall they can be used to monitor elderly people without disturbing them. Would work for anyone who needed monitored.

Certain reviews will make you doubt, some will even scare you, assuring that they even burned the wall, however, it is an excellent product, it has been connected since my baby sleeps in his room and it has never presented any problems, I love it!

Church nursery workers wanted to be able to hear the sermon. Instead of wireless speakers (bad reviews) or running wires (not really feasible) these work great. These are placed approximately 90 ft apart and the sound is amazing.