When Withings Home arrived, it felt like a glimpse of the future: a sleek little camera with no buttons, no clunky receiver and everything controlled from an app on your phone. Add a wide-angle lens, two-way talk, a built-in night light with lullabies and an air-quality sensor, and it made a surprisingly clever baby monitor.
Withings no longer sells Home, though, so it isn't a camera we'd set up in a nursery today. The good news is that the ideas that made it special are now standard on the best baby monitors, and in a couple of cases they've been done even better. Here's what we'd buy instead.
Our quick picks
- Nanit Smart Baby Monitor: the closest thing to Withings Home today, all app, with an overhead view of the crib and room-climate readings.
- VTech VM819: for parents who'd rather skip the app and the Wi-Fi altogether.
Nanit Smart Baby Monitor: what we'd buy today
If you loved the idea of Withings Home, Nanit is its natural successor. It's the same phone-first approach, with no separate screen to keep charged, and the camera design solves one of our biggest frustrations with ordinary monitors.
You know the moment: you lay the baby down, angle the camera just right, head for the living room… and by the time you sit down, your little ninja has rolled to the one corner of the crib you can't see. Nanit mounts above the crib and looks straight down, so the whole mattress is in view all night long.
Here's how it lines up with what made Withings Home so appealing:
- App control: live 1080p video on your phone with infrared night vision, plus Alexa screens.
- Two-way audio: start soothing your baby by voice while you're still on your way down the hall.
- Smart alerts: customizable sound and motion notifications that you can tone down overnight so a sigh doesn't wake you.
- Room conditions: where Withings measured air quality, Nanit tracks the nursery's temperature and humidity, so you know whether it's time to turn the heat down or switch on the humidifier.
- Shared access: two users are included, so you and a partner can both check in.
Nanit goes further with optional sleep tracking, too. Its Insights plan logs how your baby slept, offers personalized tips and saves video history. Live viewing doesn't need the subscription, so you can decide later whether the extras are worth it to you.
Shop the Nanit Smart Baby Monitor on Amazon
VTech VM819: the no-app alternative
Maybe your phone is already doing too much, or you simply like the idea of a monitor that never goes online. The VM819 skips Wi-Fi entirely: the camera sends an encrypted signal straight to its own parent unit, with no account or cloud involved.
It still borrows a few of Withings Home's best tricks. There's two-way talk, a nursery temperature sensor, and lullabies and white noise that play from the camera. The screen stays dark until your baby makes a sound, and the battery is rated for up to 19 hours of video on a charge.
It's a simple, reliable monitor that gets the basics right without any setup fuss.
Shop the VTech VM819 on Amazon
A few setup tips for any nursery camera
- Keep the camera and every cord at least 3 feet from the crib, and never rest a monitor on the crib rail.
- For a Wi-Fi camera, use a strong, unique password, turn on two-factor authentication and keep the app and firmware updated.
- Let the monitor help you listen and watch, and let safe sleep do the protecting: baby on their back, on a firm, flat mattress, with nothing else in the crib.
Want more options, including a split-screen monitor for two kids in two rooms? See our full guide to the best baby monitors.
Our verdict
Withings Home was ahead of its time, and the app-first nursery camera it championed is now the norm. If that's what drew you to it, get the Nanit Smart Baby Monitor: it keeps everything on your phone, shows you the whole crib from above and tells you how comfortable the room is. Prefer to stay offline? The VTech VM819 is the easy, no-app choice.
