Baby Monitors

Non-WiFi monitors use a closed, encrypted point-to-point radio link straight from the camera to the parent unit, so there's nothing exposed to the internet to hack -- the tradeoff is you can only view it on the included parent-unit screen, not remotely from your phone. WiFi monitors add remote phone-app viewing and often more features, but that convenience depends on your home network and account security being solid.

For a typical single-family home, 200-300 feet of real-world range (which is usually less than the marketed lab-test figure) is enough to cover a nursery from most other rooms and a decent chunk of the yard. Homes with more walls/floors between the camera and where you'll carry the parent unit should lean toward the higher end of a monitor's published range.

A dedicated parent-unit screen gives you an always-on, no-setup view with no phone battery drain and no dependency on your home WiFi actually working at that moment, which some parents strongly prefer for reliability. A phone-app monitor lets you check in from anywhere (not just at home) and often adds more software features, at the cost of that added complexity and dependency.

Optical zoom (physically moving glass elements) keeps the image sharp as you zoom in, while digital zoom just crops and enlarges the existing image, losing clarity the further you zoom. It matters most if you want to check fine detail (like whether your baby's eyes are open) from across the room rather than just seeing that they're generally still and breathing.

One camera is enough for a single nursery -- a second camera (or a 2-camera bundle) becomes useful once you have two kids in separate rooms, want a second angle on the same crib, or want to also keep an eye on a play area or another part of the house from the same parent unit or app.