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

Works great! I sleep upstairs and now I can hear my Mother is she calls for me. She is 101 years old!! I call it my Mommamonitor! :)

When we moved our baby girl to her crib in her room, we, of course, needed some sort of monitor. Since we didnt receive the fancy, expensive video monitor at our baby shower that we had registered for, we had to come out-of-pocket for one and had to settle for a more basic, less expensive monitor. Im so glad that someone didnt waste $200 on a monitor with all the bells and whistles! This monitor does everything we need it to. It has good range - in my one-story house Ive never been too far away for it to get signal. The volume is nice and loud at the highest setting and wakes us up when she cries. Theres also a setting for a vibration alert, and it works, but I have yet to use it practically. The nightlight casts a soft amber glow. I love the feature where you can communicate with the Baby unit. There have been many times when my spouse or I have talked back and forth when one of us needed something. We like this monitor so much that, when my mother needed one at her house for when shes caring for our daughter, I recommended this one to her. The only cons I can think of with this unit are minor. 1) I wish the battery on the Parent unit lasted longer. When we have someone babysitting at our house, the Parent unit is always off of the charger (which is in our bedroom) so the sitter can use it in the living room. The charge on it wont last a full day. 2) When you turn off the Baby unit (like when Im at my mothers and feeding my daughter or sleeping in the bedroom and dont wish to have the Parent unit listening in) the Parent unit emits a loud beep every 30 seconds or so. I can understand the practicality of this feature (in case the Baby unit accidentally comes unplugged), but it still bugs me. Overall, I think this is a very good monitor and I would recommend it to anyone!

**Update 1/5/2016** Since my below review we have used this many more times and Im happy to report that this is still a very solid performer. The range is great, baby noise comes through clear, and my previous complaint about the talk button being easy to press hasnt been a big deal. Four stars remain well deserved. **Original Review 4/18/2015** We have a nice Angelcare monitor that we use at home but wanted something simple we could take with us when traveling to our parents and friends houses. The VTech fit the bill budget wise and after one 5 day trip we have been really happy. Other reviews have done a great job saying what this unit does well so I wont waste time here reiterating those opinions as I agree with them. Couple of cons that I wanted to mention just to keep in mind before you buy, but note I would still buy this product again knowing this so I do like the product a lot. - Battery life on the wireless unit is not great. You will have to charge during awake time at least once during the day if not more. - No battery on the unit that is in the nursery. Minor concern for me since we are used to power outages which would render this useless. How many times is that going to happen though? Not a huge deal. - Biggest complaint is the talk button on the side of the parent unit is extremely easy to press when grabbing the unit. If you wear this on your belt or pocket then when you grab it you will almost certainly press the talk button which will send whatever noise is going on around you straight to the unit by your sleeping baby. Not ideal. Again, Im rating this as 4 stars so obviously I am happy with the unit. For the price, I think youd be hard pressed to find a better option and considering our needs it is near perfect. It is really compact and fits in a pair of shoes easily for simple packing.

Its a great monitor with no frills, which you dont want anyway. It picks up baby noise even if the monitor is across the room from baby. Two story house has no problems with connection to the parent unit anywhere in the house as well as back yard. MAJOR FLAWS: The safety warming which is as dB level over 9000 comes on every time you turn on the parent unit. You have to smother it with pillows on the other side of the house in order to not wake up the dead. The warning also goes on and on with an annoying female robot voice, and there is no way to disable it. Same with volume level buttons. They come with beeps at obscene degree of audio level. For these reasons I have a love-hate relationship with this product. I dont know why this has to be so hard.

I really like the simplicity of this device. It’s easy to set up and use and does what it promises. The battery life is very poor. I get a few hours out of a newly purchased device.

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!

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 6/4/13 - Im keeping the Vtech rating at 4 stars. This is due to battery life. I can get about maybe 6-8 hours out of a charge, which is not very much. Im guessing they really cheaped out on the battery. It does beep to alert you when the battery is running low. As long as you remember to plug it in every evening, its not a problem. Otherwise, its a fabulous unit and has been working excellent for our family. Still the best choice of the 3 I reviewed below. UPDATED 3/28/13 Ive owned the below 3 units over the course of the last 2 years. I recommend the VTech for now (Ive only had it a few weeks, but it is by far the winner in performance AND value). For features, I only listed the features that I felt would be important to the average buyer. Some of the units had other features that I didnt list because I didnt think there were critical in my decision making process. Also, it might be important to note that we live in a 2 story house and we have Wi Fi.

This product works great for us! We use it to monitor our labrador at night. She lightly barks when she needs to go outside for the restroom. We bought this because we all know dogs eat stuff that can upset their stomach and we had a couple of accidents on the floor and so we decided to purchase this product. Last night at 1:30 AM I heard her on the monitor and immediately ran downstairs to let her out. She ran for her potty spot outside immediately and had an awful bowel experience that thankfully was not on the floor in the house. This product paid for itself right there and I know had we not had the monitor there would’ve been poop all over the floor. We also use it for when we take care of our grand children who are sleeping. This was an excellent purchase for us and worth $39 easily.!

We have had this monitor for three years. Three years of continuous use. We leave the parent unit plugged in all day by our bed, unplugging for a few hours every night to take to the living room so we can listen if the kiddos need us. We ran conduit up the wall to cover the cord, and have the room unit hanging up out of the way. The kids can hear us well when we talk to them through the monitor, and know they can call for us if they need to. Saves a lot of trips back and forth at bedtime. It’s been a solid little monitor, never an issue, and would definitely buy it again if needed (knocking on wood right now, just in case I jinxed myself). Highly recommend!