When our baby was born, we, like most parents registered for a modest monitor with decent ratings.  We figured with a name like Sony, we could hardly go wrong.  To be fair, maybe we got a lemon, or something, but the thing just didn’t work well at all.

Our baby’s bedroom is at the back of the house, with a bathroom near the middle of the house, and the family room at the other end of the house.  While my wife and I stayed home with our new baby for her first 3 weeks; we took many showers in the middle of the day.

With the base station in the baby’s room, the receiver at the other end of the house (well within the stated range on the box) and one of us in the shower in between… The static in the living room was so bad in the living room that we couldn’t hear the TV or other people talking in the room!

We got the monitor at Babys ‘R’ Us, and were lucky that they took it back and let us exchange it for another one.  We were told by the sales people there that our problem was likely due to the fact that the monitor was an analog monitor.  So we took their advice and tried a new one, this time a digital one.

The monitor we switched to was the Summer Infant Slim, and it was a night and day difference.  With the new monitor we were able to walk all around the house without any interference, static, or crackling like we had with the Sony from above.  The transmitter is so sensitive that we can hear her breathing when she has a stuffy nose!

The range is at least double what the Sony one was.  In the fall we can take it out to the fire pit in the backyard without any loss of signal.  When we bought ours 6 months ago it was considerably more pricy, but it was worth every single penny.

Take my advice, pay a little more and get a digital monitor over an analog one, it’ll save you a lot of sleep, and a lot of static.