No, not always. A monitor earns its place when the baby sleeps further away than you can hear them, or when you sleep with a door closed, or when someone else is watching the baby. In a one-bedroom flat with the crib in the room, a monitor mostly buys you an extra device to charge. If you have decided you want one, buy the audio-only VTech DM221 first: it is cheap, it does not need Wi-Fi, and it tells you the one thing you actually need to know. Add video later, when you know why you want it.
The test that settles it in about ten seconds
Stand where you will actually sleep. Can you hear the baby if they make a normal wake-up noise? Not a cry — a normal noise. If the answer is yes, a monitor is a convenience, not a device. If the answer is no, or if you sleep with the bedroom door shut for the cat, or if you work in the next room with headphones on, then you have a real problem and a monitor is the cheap solution to it.
There is one more case that people forget, and it is the one the industry markets hardest: the parent who cannot sleep because they keep getting up to check. A monitor does not improve the baby’s safety. It improves your ability to stay in bed, which matters more than it sounds like it does in the first three months, and is the honest reason most monitors get bought.
What a monitor will not do
It will not tell you the baby is breathing. Several products imply they do, with socks and pads and sensor mats, and none of them are cleared to prevent anything. The American Academy of Pediatrics position on home cardiorespiratory monitors has been consistent for years: they do not reduce the risk of sudden infant death, and they increase the number of false alarms, which increases parental anxiety and the number of unnecessary doctor visits. Read that as a reason to put the crib in your room, not as a reason to buy a fancier camera.
What a monitor does do is extend your ears. It is a hearing aid for a wall. The moment you expect anything more from it than that, you will be disappointed, and you will have paid four times as much for the disappointment.
✅ Buy it if
- The baby sleeps in a different room from you
- You sleep with a door closed
- Someone else watches the baby while you work
- You want to hear a waking baby without getting up to check
- You want a second set of ears at a grandparent's house
❌ Skip it if
- The crib is next to your bed
- You would lie awake watching a video feed instead of sleeping
- You are looking for a device that monitors breathing
- You want a monitor to replace a person checking on the baby
The window when it earns its money
Monitors get bought in the first month and used hardest in the third. For the first few weeks most parents are awake at odd hours anyway, and the baby is usually in the room. By month three the baby is sleeping longer stretches and the parent is trying to sleep too, and that is the point at which “can I hear them from the bedroom with the door shut” stops being a thought experiment.
Then it tapers. By eight or nine months a lot of families find they check the handset less and trust their own ears more, and once the child can climb out of the cot the monitor is mostly telling them what they can already hear through the wall. That arc is worth knowing before you spend, because it changes what a sensible budget is. A cheap audio unit covers the eighteen months that matter. A connected camera on a monthly plan will keep billing you through the years afterwards, when what you are really using it for is saying goodnight through the speaker.
There is a fair counter-argument. A camera is genuinely useful through the toddler years, when the question stops being “are they breathing” and becomes “what are they doing in there”. If you expect to want that, buy the camera when you get there instead of paying for it two years early.
If you are buying, buy the smallest thing that works
Three picks, ordered by how little you can spend before the decision stops being rational. All three do the same job.
The three picks, briefly
VTech DM221 — the standard answer
Two rechargeable parent units, DECT 6.0 audio, two-way talk-back, a night light you can switch from the handset, and a vibrating alert. That last feature is the one that keeps it at the top: when the link drops or the battery runs down, the handset buzzes, which means a parent who is hard of hearing or wearing the unit on a belt does not miss it. There is no camera, no account and no app. It sits on its own radio band, so it keeps working when the internet does not.
Skip it if: your baby wakes without making a sound, in which case audio tells you nothing at all.
VTech DM111 — when the budget is the requirement
One handset, one baby unit, five levels of sound indication, and the same DECT 6.0 link. It is the least expensive way to get a private, encrypted radio connection rather than an analogue one. What it gives up is the rechargeable handset and the vibration alert, which means batteries to buy and a beep that you have to be awake to hear.
Skip it if: you have any hearing loss, or you want to stop buying AA batteries.
VTech VM3252 — the sensible first camera
A 2.8-inch handset screen, night vision, lullabies and temperature display, on the same non-Wi-Fi basis as the others. It is a good first video monitor precisely because it is unambitious: no app, no cloud, no password. If you buy it and discover you wanted a phone app after all, you will have spent a small amount finding that out.
Skip it if: you want to check the feed from outside the house, which no radio monitor can do.
Cost of ownership, plainly
| Model | Best for | Hearing the baby | Seeing the baby | Running cost | ASIN | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1VTech DM221 | Start here | Yes, with vibration | No | Batteries for two handsets | Check price → | |
| 2VTech DM111 | Cheapest | Yes, sound only | No | AA batteries | Check price → | |
| 3VTech VM3252 | If you want video | Yes | 2.8 inch handset | Rechargeable handset | Check price → |
How we choose
We start from the requirement rather than the product. For this page the requirement is “tell me when the baby makes a noise, reliably, for years, without a subscription”, which rules out most of what the category sells. Then we check the specifications that decide that outcome against manufacturer documentation, read owner reviews sorted by complaint rather than averaged, and name who should skip each pick. Nothing on this page needs your Wi-Fi password.
Questions we get a lot
Can I use a phone app instead of a monitor?
A phone on a video call works, badly. It drains the battery, it drops when the screen locks in some configurations, and it puts a camera in the nursery on a general-purpose device. It is a reasonable free experiment for two nights. It is not a monitor.
There is no rule. Most families stop when the child can get out of bed and come and find them, which makes the monitor redundant, and that is usually somewhere between two and three years old. Others keep an audio unit in the room until school age because it is useful for hearing a cough.At what age can I stop using a monitor?
You need one that covers both children, and the cheapest reliable way to do that is two separate single-camera units rather than one unit with two cameras. Two units also mean a failure in one does not take the other down. Our twins guide covers the configurations in detail.Do I need a monitor for twins?
Where this fits on the site
If you have decided video is what you want, the non-WiFi monitor guide is the next page. Audio-only monitors goes deeper on the cheapest option. And if twins are the reason you are shopping, start with the twins guide.
Last updated: October 2026
Update log: Initial publish — a decision page rather than a listicle: when a monitor is genuinely useful, what it cannot do, and the three cheapest picks that do the one job properly.