Baby monitors, advice please!!!

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I have managed to confuse myself completely with this!! there are so many on the market, I don't know which to choose.

I live in a 3 story house with the baby on the top floor, so need something reliable. I am looking for one that has no interference, so maybe digital? I quite like the idea of one with a video screen. Has anyone used one of these? what is the interference like?

As for breathing sensors that fit under the mattress, some people say they are great, others say that the alarm goes off all the time turning them into nervous wrecks!

Are the ones with built in room thermometers useful?

Does anyone have a recommendation, or what about ones to avoid?

ours is a lindam (digital with 20 or so channels, never had any problems with interference), with a built in thermometer, quite useful i think, when the weather gets cooler as you can decide how many layers to put on (with sleeping bag in our case). wouldn't bother with a camera or a breathing sensor (unless there's a specific issue for your child)

we've got a Tomy walkabout digital and its been great. There a slight buzz when you have it reasonably loud but I have never had any trouble with interference from others in the area.
I would definitely recommend one with a detatchable parent bit so you can walk out into the garden and not worry.
Our has a thermometer and night light on the baby unit, both have been very very useful.

I agree that the camera sounds a nice idea but when the baby is asleep its a chance for you to also get a rest or get things done so not sure how much time you'd want to spend looking over to a monitor.
The breathing sensors can certainly be useful but I have also heard that they turn you into more of a nervous wreck than without them.

hope this helps

mine's a tomy walkabout digital. I also live in a 3 storey house. It's great. It's portable- attach to you when wandering round the house or mains operated. It has a thermometer adn a night light. It cost £50 from Mothercare

To go against the concensus below i found the breath sensor pad great. You can see the light on the monitor showing their breathing and it is very reassuring i found and it never started to go off randomly until ds was older and rolling off it and then it was removed. I recommend that type of monitor to everyone.

I have tomy walkabout. If you are going to use it in the garden alot I would get the one that recharges. We didn't and its a pain when the batteries run out. We do get interference from neighbours (my own fault I recommended ours to them). But we just changed channel and mostly its ok. There is alot of buzzing and froglike noises when it is up full blast so I don't think you could sleep with it on in your room. All in all it seems pretty good.

Yes I agree with Morgan. Found it brilliant and very reassuring especially when baby is young. We have the "Maws
Reassurance Baby Monitor" which we got from Mothercare.
You can see the temperature and you have a button for extra loud! The part which is in the baby's room has a night light and you can detach the heart monitor thingy when the baby gets bigger. We have had no problems with this monitor and dd is now nearly 2 and has survived lots of bashing! However we did first get a phillips digital monitor and that didn't last five minutes!
Hope this helps.

We've got a tomy digital walkabout premier. It's pretty good no interference and battery is rechargeable, parent unit can be taken out of cradle and clipped onto a belt and the baby unit has a night light. Both units also show temperature readings of the baby's room. However the parent unit emits a beep if the temperature is under 16 degrees or over 22 degrees, you cannot shut the thing up which is really frustrating in summer when even with all the windows and doors wide open and fans on full temperature stays around 23 degrees, it can drive you nuts. The beeping is only emitted from the parent unit the baby unit has a little light which starts flashing and both units show hi or lo depending on which the temp is.

fuzzywuzzy, are you sure you can't turn off the beeping? I only ask because we have the Tomy walkabout (non-digital) and it has a similar feature. It drove us mad for ages until someone pointed out that the function could be turned off, but you have to take the monitor apart to do it. We had to get the instructions out to do it (it wasn't anything obvious). Once you have turned off the beep the light still flashes to warn you if the temp goes out of range.

We've found the tomy walkabout to be perfectly adequate, although we get quite a lot of interference (you do get used to it). However we need a new monitor as no. 2 is due later in the year and we can't always hear ds if he wakes up so need 2. Was thinking of getting the Philips digital actually - a friend had this one and the sound quality was fab compared with our tomy one. However, I'm a bit put off now after what juliehafrancis said - why didn't it last 5 minutes? My friend's is now broken after being dropped on the floor so I'm wondering if the Phillips one isn't very robust or something?

Thanx gingernut will see if I can dig out the instructions.. failing that I'll just take the thing apart anyway. Have to say for the tomy dd has hurled it across the room many times (she's just discovered the art of throwing sorry bowling dp is teaching her cricket!!!) and it's still working.

I have got a Tommy Walkabout Premier Digital which is great, the only problem is that it comes with an integrated termometer that it is not accurate at all so the alarm for too high/too low temperature was going off all the time, we took it back to ToysRUs because of the problem and they said it was not a failure and refused to exchange it, at the end DH found a way to turn the alarm off and everything is fine.

The quality of sound is very good, we can hear how DS breathes in his cot (so, louder than being in the same room) but also get the little noises made by other children in their houses across the street, and no, it's not interference.

Thanks all for the advice so far...

Morgan, can you tell me which breathing sensor you used?

Also, has anyone had experience of these small portable video monitors?

To turn the alarm of the temperature just unscrew the back of the parents' unit and just by the battery there are three switches, one has the word "alarm" just turn it off.
Hope it helps.

And a little warning about monitors: don't try to find it cheaper, it's a waste of time, the same model costs the same everywhere.

I wonder why they never have specials in this sort of equipment...