Baby monitor app or classic? An honest comparison
Radio baby monitor versus app baby monitor: range, reliability, privacy and cost compared, including the weaknesses of both solutions.
Classic baby monitors send their signal by radio straight to the parent unit. That is robust and simple. App baby monitors like VintageCam use the internet, an old smartphone and an app. Both have their place, and neither solution is better in every situation. Here is an honest comparison.
Range
Depending on the building, a radio baby monitor reaches through a few walls and sometimes into the garden. Beyond that, it is over. An app baby monitor works wherever your phone has a signal: in the garden, at the neighbours', on the playground, in a restaurant or on holiday. Anyone who wants to go out in the evening without the child and keep an eye on the nursery from the grandparents' or a babysitter's place benefits especially.
Reliability
Here the classic solution has a clear advantage: it needs neither Wi-Fi nor a server. An app baby monitor, by contrast, depends on several things: working Wi-Fi at the camera phone, internet at your end and the server in between. If one of them fails, you find out, because VintageCam reports when the camera can no longer be reached. Even so, anyone who leaves a child alone at night should not rely on a single technology exclusively, whichever it is.
Picture, sound and extra features
Even simple radio units transmit sound, and the better ones show a picture. With an app you get more room to manoeuvre: still image or live video, dated recordings to listen back to, talk-back, a sleep report and several cameras for several rooms. You can watch from several devices at once, for example from two phones and a tablet.
Cost
Radio baby monitors usually cost between 30 and 150 euros once, depending on features. An app baby monitor made from a phone you already own costs no hardware, but a subscription: with VintageCam from 0.99 euros a month or 7 euros a year, and the first 14 days are free. Anyone without an old phone has to buy one second-hand, which is usually cheaper than a new device.
Privacy
With radio baby monitors everything stays in the house; only cheap models without encryption can be listened in on with a bit of technology. With app solutions, picture and sound go through a server. At VintageCam nothing is stored as long as you are only watching or listening; only when an alert goes off are the event, photo and audio clip saved, encrypted, on a server in Germany and for at most 30 days. Details are in the article Where are my recordings?.
What suits whom?
Anyone who monitors a room in the same house, needs no extra features and wants as little technology as possible is well served by a radio baby monitor. Anyone who wants to be out and about, has several children or rooms, wants to share with a partner or values recordings and reports will find more in the app solution. Some families even use both: radio as the reliable basic cover, the app as a supplement.
What the setup looks like in practice is shown in the guide Old phone as a baby monitor.
