VTech VM344 Safe&Sound Pan & Tilt Full Color Video Monitor

The VTech VM344 Safe&Sound Pan & Tilt Full Color Video Monitor is a cute owl-shaped monitor that looks right at home in a nursery. We hardly needed to use the manual for set-up—putting the monitor together was as simple as plugging it in. The features of the monitor are simple to understand, and the buttons along the sides are pretty self-explanatory.

The monitor works very well and picks up a signal well. We really like the larger screen; it makes it very easy to see our baby with just glancing quickly. We like the ability to be able to talk to our baby through the monitor. We don’t use it often right now, but I imagine it will come in handy as he gets older.

We use the temperature setting all the time. It has been really helpful for us to see how warm or cool it is in his nursery, especially when we’re on a separate floor from him.

Our little man moves around a lot, so having the ability to pan around the bed has been really helpful. Also, I’m still checking if he’s breathing constantly, and the zoom feature allows me to zoom in on his chest to easily see if it’s rising. Call me crazy, but that’s a great feature for a first-time mother.

We’re able to use the monitor all day without needing to plug it in to recharge. Our baby takes three to four naps a day, and we use the monitor for about three hours before we go to bed. I plug it in next to my bed while I sleep, but the battery still has life when I plug it in. We only got alerted the battery was low once when I forgot to plug it in at night.

We did use the manual to see if we could alter the coloring on the monitor screen. For us, the colors are really off. (For example navy blue appears almost pale green.) It’s not too serious of an issue; it just kind of threw us for a while. We double-checked to see if this had anything to do with the night vision being on but it was set to off. The night mode does work really well and allows you to see you baby clearly even in an almost pitch back room.

The owl-shape of the monitor is very cute, although we were a bit surprised to find that the eyes are actually the cameras, so they turn red when the camera is in use. It looks a bit odd to us, but our little one doesn’t seem to mind too much.

A couple of features that we haven’t taken advantage of yet are the vibrating feature and the sound sensitivity. The monitor has the ability to adjust how you are notified of sound based on how loud or soft the noise is. For example, if you have a 2-year-old who is just singing herself to sleep the monitor would not notify you; however, if she begins to scream and cry, it would alert you. We don’t use this yet because we’re still learning our baby’s needs so ours is set to alert us even at the softest sound.

The monitor can also vibrate if noise is detected, the battery is low, or the temperature of the room is too high/low. We haven’t turned this feature on yet because we prefer using sound alerts right now. We may graduate to the vibration as he gets older.

Overall, the VM344 performs its job well, allowing us to keep an eye and ear on our babe when we can’t be in the same room as him.

Price: $199.99
To buy: target.com