Nanit: A Baby Monitor with Sleep Tracking

If you’re like me, you’re on a mission to get a good night’s sleep for you and your baby (or babies).

I failed at sleep training my first baby, and I’ve decided crib training is going to work best for baby #2. I’ve equipped myself with all the right gear for it: swaddles, a crib, a rocker and the Nanit.

The Nanit baby monitor not only keeps an eye on baby as they sleep, but claims to help parents track, measure and classify sleep behavior. It’s able to tell exactly when he/she fell asleep, how long that took to happen, how many times the baby woke up throughout the night, how many times a caregiver came into the baby’s room, total hours of sleep, their quality of sleep, room conditions, etc. Crazy, right?

Important Details

• The Nanit is a baby monitor that delivers real-time HD quality video to your phone or tablet in the Nanit app.
• It costs $279 for the Nanit and accompanying floor stand.
• Nanit offers a subscription service called “Insights” that amplifies your baby monitoring experience with sleep tracking analytics and video history, but it costs an additional $100 per year for the basic package with 30 days of data and $300 per year for all-time data.
• With a $40 multi-stand, the Nanit can become regular a nursery or travel monitor.
• As of January 2018, the Nanit can be integrated with Alexa Skills to give you a hands-free experience. They also introduced a new feature—personalized sleep tips. This is available through the Nanit Insights app on all monitors, not just new ones. It requires the subscription to Nanit Insights and/or an Amazon Echo or Dot.

What I Love

• Very easy to set up app and connect to my home WiFi
• Amazing video and audio clarity
• Fun sharing

The video quality is BEAUTIFUL, day or night ― high def and vibrant during the day, and surprisingly clear during the night.

I downloaded the Nanit app, took care of registration in two minutes and was guided step-by-step through assembly in the app with videos! Super easy. Setting up the camera was also seamless ― it synced up with my home wi-fi and then connected to my phone via Bluetooth. This setup allows you to check in on baby even when you’re away from home (like a nanny cam).

The app is clean and simple. It has a live video feed accompanied by interesting details like the temperature and humidity level in the room.

The video quality is BEAUTIFUL, day or night ― high def and vibrant during the day, and surprisingly clear during the night. Even when you pinch and zoom in to see baby’s face up close, there’s still a surprisingly solid amount of detail. The audio is also impressive. We were able to hear every little gurgle (and even the TV murmuring in the next room).

The Insights subscription tries its best to be your personal “sleep guru.” It captures video snippets of the highlights of your days and nights (crib visits, when baby wakes up, when baby falls asleep, etc.) and then it plays those videos in fast motion for you to review.

Insights also tries to draw conclusions for you and track sleeping trends which was very interesting. I appreciated seeing the exact minute Piper fell asleep and woke up, especially for tracking naps. It did not directly change how I was putting her to sleep, but it was reassuring to see that the app reflected my experience. When it said “Piper had a great night,” I thought “Yeah we did have a good night–woohoo!”

The app allows you to easily share live-stream access with multiple caregivers (three users max without the paid subscription). This is really nice for keeping all of baby’s caregivers on the same page. You can also share video highlights via text or on social media if you’d like. Random baby moments like this are fun to share (totally unrelated to sleeping, just a random wrestling match that took place in the same room as the crib).

What I Didn’t Love

• Notifications are too sensitive and take too long
• Must pay extra for Insights sleep analysis
• Designed only for a standard-sized crib against a wall

The crib stand was a bit awkward to construct since it’s heavy and doesn’t stand on its own (it must be attached to the wall either with screws or the adhesive on the stand clip). I didn’t realize that right away – but now you know.

This product (with Insights) is designed for a very specific sleeping arrangement: a standard-sized crib placed up against a wall. Sorry co-sleepers, bassinet users, mini-cribbers and middle of the room crib people. This can be a major drawback for many families who might be moving your baby from one bed to another and can’t use Nanit’s technology in multiple scenarios.

Without the Insights subscription, the Nanit app is not that exciting. You can see your baby’s crib on a live feed, but the tabs for “Activity” and “Nights” mean nothing unless you pay for Insights. You do get to try out the Insights subscription for free for 30 days. There are two levels of subscription: $100 per year for a rolling 30-days of data and $300 per year for unlimited data.

The notifications about movement and sounds are very sensitive and lag.

The Insights notifications about movement and sounds are very sensitive and lag. For example, if the light abruptly changed in the room from bright to dark, I’d receive a notification. Also, on several occasions I’d walk into my room, leave, and two minutes later a notification would pop up on my phone that movement was detected. I’d open the app to check the video snippet to find out the movement was me a few minutes earlier. I was annoyed that I had to check so many false notifications (because of the sensitivity), and I was left worrying that I’d miss my baby was crying or rolling over on her face (because of the lag).

The app allows you to leave notes on different video snippets. For example you could say, “She finally put herself to sleep!” I left a few notes for myself, but then struggled to find them later. You have to remember the exact day and time you left the note, otherwise you’ll need to just scroll through every day to try and find it.

What I Want to Add

Though I appreciate the ease of access that an app on my phone provides, I wish there was a separate handheld device available to monitor the video feed (like what is included with a lot of other baby monitors). I had to use my phone strictly as a monitor during nap time so I could keep an eye on baby since I didn’t trust the notifications.

The Nanit has the ability to play different sounds like white noise or birds chirping, and also has a soft glow night light! It’d be really cool if it could also project pictures on the ceiling so that I could completely replace my existing Nursery Projector & Sound System. Also, since the camera syncs with Bluetooth, I wanted to play my own music through the speaker (like what the 4moms mamaRoo does).

A moveable camera would also be nice! As a parent of two, I can imagine having a stationary look at a crib or a room won’t always cut it.

Bottom Line

The point of a baby monitor is to monitor your baby, and the Nanit does so with crystal-clear image quality and very sensitive audio. The additional bells and whistles of the Insights subscription are advanced and innovative though somewhat distracting.