Review: Nanit Pro Camera

“Is that monitor for a baby polar bear?”

That was my husband's reaction as I set up the Nanit Pro camera. The monitor itself is actually not very large; it's similar in size and form to many other baby monitors and security cameras, with a rounded camera head and a small white arm sticking out of the bottom. That bottom arm sticks into one of Nanit's three options for bases, and I used the floor stand option that reaches about 5.5 feet tall. Thus, the curiosity about whether it was for a human baby or a baby polar bear that I hadn't told my husband about.

There are lots of smart baby monitors (and smart security cameras that can do similar motion and sound alerts) out there. But Nanit's range of accessories makes it stand out. Some of its coolest features require these accessories, like breathing wear that lets the camera track a baby's breathing, and sheets that can measure a baby's size for you.

Some of the accessories are a little pricey, as is the camera itself. Choosing the cheapest base for the monitor comes out to $250, and the most expensive base (the polar-bear-sized floor arm) comes out to a whooping $400. More of its best features are tucked away behind a subscription fee. I don't know whether it's worth it, but it is one of the coolest monitors around if you have the budget. Like WIRED associate reviews editor Adrienne So said about Nanit's previous Sleep System, this monitor is made for data-loving parents.

Photograph: Nanit

The Nanit Pro can do a lot of things. It will also notify you about them more often than you can imagine. Similar to any security camera, Nanit will ping you if it sees movement in the set motion area (I highlighted the entire crib mattress) or hears any sounds, which included my son's heavy sighs or kicks on the crib bars. You can choose to turn off any sound notifications that aren't cries, which I chose to do, but you can also turn down the sensitivity to get fewer notifications for those quieter sounds. I got dozens of notifications an hour until I changed my sensitivity settings for both sound and motion, and toggled general sound off.

Part of why I toggled sound notifications off is because I don't need them. Instead, I have the Nanit app constantly broadcasting sound out of my iPhone while my son is asleep. Since I can hear all his huffy breaths and when he rolls over, I don't want or need to be notified about it. It's easy to turn on audio broadcasting in the app—just tap the speaker icon below the camera feed twice, and a sound icon should appear on both sides of it—and it didn't drain my battery to have it running for several hours before I went to bed. I usually plug in my iPhone at night to ensure I hear him all night long, though.

Nanit can also notify you if your child is standing up in the crib. This one isn't as sensitive as the others—only once did I get a notification of my son standing when he was actually just sitting, and besides that I didn't get any rogue alerts.

The app also tracks humidity and temperature, and you can set ranges to get notifications if either one drops or exceeds a range you sent. You can also go to the app dashboard and review the room's environment throughout the night, which I like to do to check whether I need to switch out his sleep sack weight to stay comfy all night long.

One of Nanit's standout features is that it can track your child's breathing with the help of its Breathing Wear line. The Breathing Wear accessories come in four forms: pajamas, a sleep sack, a swaddle, and a band to be worn across the torso over pajamas and wearable blankets you already own. All four have the same geometric print across the torso, which Nanit's camera uses to track how many breaths your child is taking per minute.

The primary reason for this, of course, is to alert you if your child stops breathing during the night. The app has a “red alert” that will go off if it senses the child is no longer breathing, and you can only deactivate it by going up to the camera and covering it with your hand to ensure you've gone and checked on the child.

Photograph: Nena Farrell

I tested both a sleep sack and a breathing band with my 18-month-old toddler. I found he was too tall for the sleep sack designed for 12- to 24-month-old babies, but the breathing band worked great sitting on top of his pajamas and sleep sack. The only downside was, being a toddler, he noticed I had added something to his sleepwear, and that it was Velcro he could rip off. Some nights I was able to distract him from removing it before he fell asleep, while other nights it was a lost cause. It didn't bother him at all while he slept, but toddlers are perceptive and determined little people. He made it his mission to open the Velcro while he was awake.

It was cool watching his breathing on the app, and Nanit has a chart with breathing rates based on age, so you can use that to check how normal the numbers are. My son's breathing rate actually dipped to one below Nanit's expected range, but it didn't make the app alert me.

At 18 months, he's not really the target demographic for this feature; it's for younger babies and parents worried about SIDS. I didn't get any false alerts while using it, but technology like this isn't perfect and it's always possible to get a false alert. Still, knowing how many times I stared at my son while watching him breathe in those early days, I probably would've slept a little better if I'd had an alert system in place.

Many monitors use Wi-Fi, and Nanit is included in our list. Not all of us want a Wi-Fi-enabled camera staring at our kid all night long (and you, when you come in and out of the nursery).

It's not my preferred style of monitor. My favorite is the radio-based Eufy SpaceView (8/10, WIRED Recommends), and my husband continued to use our Eufy while I tested the Nanit. We found that the radio connection was a split second faster; cries and movement would come through on the handheld Eufy about a half-second before the Nanit app. Which makes sense—the Nanit has to send the feed to the cloud and then to your app, versus the direct connection between devices like the Eufy.

I often have issues with Wi-Fi connection in my apartment, but my network problems didn't cause any major disconnections for the Nanit. I would usually see one reported disconnection overnight (the Nanit app includes any connection drops in the overnight report of how the baby slept) but the camera would easily reconnect itself and continue working as normal.

Nanit promises that video is encrypted and is only pushed through their servers. The app only allows you to view videos for multiple days if you pay for a subscription, and Nanit confirmed for us that no videos are stored on their servers without a subscription. Nanit has three subscription plans to give you video storage: the Sleep plan, which is $50 a month (you have to sign up online); the Memories plan, a $120 plan with two days of continuous video history and 30 days of video clips (short videos that are triggered by sound or movement); and the Milestones plan, a $300 plan with seven days of continuous video history and unlimited video clips. You're also able to disable the continuous video feed if you want, but not clips that pair with movement and sound notifications.

I do find myself checking the app's recap of how my son slept each morning. It tells me how long he slept, how many night visits he may have had, and his average breaths per minute if he let me put the breathing band on him. It also shows me clips if he woke up. The report would have more information about his sleep position and activity if I had one of the memberships mentioned above, but I don't feel like I'm missing out. I still get a lot of information, and things like a fun little movement map included in the report that shows the baby's main sleeping areas in the crib.

Not every feature is necessary, but I love how it has made each night's sleep a fun little data report. If you're a data geek too and don't mind a Wi-Fi monitor in your kids' room, the Nanit performs well across its wide wheelhouse of features.