Over the years I’ve used several different networked and remote cameras. Most of them I use for the home security purposes, but I’ve also used an IP Baby Monitor Motorola camera which is the product most similar to this Philips Baby Monitor. There are several similarities, but also big differences, between these two cameras. I’ll outline some of them below.

PROS

1. Easy setup this is probably the number one reason why you would want a dedicated wireless camera with its own monitor over any of the other networked solutions. From my experience no other piece of consumer electronic equipment can come even close to the complexity of setup for an IP camera. Several companies that target average consumers (Motorola, D-Link) have all come up with models that purport to simplify this process. You may get lucky and be able to setup one of those cameras on the first try. More likely you’ll encounter some frustrating difficulties, some of which require the arcane knowledge of the ins and outs of computer networking. This is why the ease of setup of this Philips camera cannot be understated. You just turn it on and it works. As simple as that.

2. Night Vision. You’ll also discover that the most times when you do want to monitor your baby is in darkness or near-darkness. This is why this night vision feature is a must-have.

3. Sound/motion alarms. You want to be able to get notified about your baby’s waking up as soon as it happens. This camera allows you just that.

CONS

1. Small video monitor. The video monitor is good enough for just basic checking up on your baby, seeing if he/she is in the right position and/or sleeping. For everything else you don’t have the screen big enough to be useful.

2. Lack of pan/tilt. Unless you position your camera just right, and your baby doesn’t move much while sleeping (ha!), you’ll definitely want to be able to adjust your camera’s position in order to keep track of your baby’s moves.

3. Inability to view the video on other devices. In particular I would love to be able to get the video on my iPhone. Again, as this is not an IP camera, none of these features can be enabled natively.

4. Price. This video baby monitor is about twice as expensive as it should realistically be. You can get a very good IP camera with all the features of this baby monitor (and then some) for about $60. You should not have to pay almost four times that much for essentially nice design and the name recognition of the manufacturer.

To conclude, if you are looking for just a very basic functionality baby monitoring camera, you don’t want to be bothered with all the setup issues, and price is not much of a concern to you, then you will probably be happy with this product. Otherwise, there are several other options out there that you could potentially explore.