I do not yet have any children of my own, but when my sister fell pregnant I decided to help her get everything she needed before the baby came, and I went on the hunt for certain items, one of which was a baby monitor.

The first and only place I actually looked for a monitor was on www.amazon.co.uk as not only did I have a gift voucher for the site, but they were having a 40% off baby stuff sale, sounded perfect to me, and off I went to Amazon to have a looksie.

I looked through what Amazon had to offer and found the Tomy Walkabout Classic Advance Baby Monitor. Tomy is a brand I new of before and also the Monitor was under £30, which was my budget for the monitor. After reading up on it, I decided to buy this monitor for my sister and hoped that it was good enough.

The monitors turned up in a yellow box with the main points of interest about the item written on the box and a picture of a baby on it too. The monitors themselves are quite a nice size, just perfect to fit in my hand without feeling too bulky, but not so small you won't know where you have put them. They are both white with blue aerials and the baby unit has a nightlight on it, and the parent unit has a light screen with red and green LED's to let you know when to panic lol.

Both units can be run by mains power or batteries, and they turn on and off really easy. There is a push button on the top of each unit, you just hold this down for a second to turn the unit on, or to turn the unit off. If the baby unit is turned off, the parent unit will sound an alarm to alert you to this fact, and also there will be a warning alarm if the batteries in the unit start to run low. This usually warns you about 6 hours before total battery death, but the noise is quite annoying as it goes off every 20 seconds or so until you change the batteries or plug the unit in.

The sound quality on these units is crystal clear, and there is a button which enables you to talk to your baby through the monitor should you need to, which I thought was a great idea. They have really good range on them too, my sister can run out to the car with the parent unit and still hear the baby in the flat upstairs, so if you need to quickly pop out of the house or into the garden, you can be rest assured you can still easily hear your baby.

When I baby sit for my niece, I always make sure these are on and working, as I am quite paranoid when it comes to looking after her. My sister is much more relaxed, but being a parent you understand a lot more what you are doing when it comes to children. I have found these to be invaluable when I look after my niece, as you really can hear every little noise she makes and it puts my mind at rest. They are also quite fun to sneak into my mothers room and make her think she is hearing voices ( Me and my Sister found this fun to do when we both still lived with my mother! )

I found these monitors to be perfect, and my sister loves them too, she has had no problem with them what so ever and she says they are very simple to use. She is easily confused by technology, so for her to say these are easy to use, they must actually be easy to use. The box comes with a manual of instructions and help should you need it, and you can set these monitors on many different frequencies, so if anyone else near you has these, you won't have worry about intereference or listening to someone elses baby!

My niece is now 15 months old, but my sister still uses this monitor every night, especially now as my little niece has an adult bed ( She literally refuses to sleep in anything else! ) There has been no drop in the quality of these monitors at all, they still work the same as they did the day of first use. This to me shows a total sign of great quality, and makes them amazing value for money.

I bought these for £29.99 and got free shipping on them too with Amazons super saver delivery. They arrived quickly and they really are the perfect item, I could not recommend them enough. If you are expecting a child, or if you already have one, I recommend you buy this monitor as it really is the perfect one, and it won't brea the bank too. If it does break, it comes with a years guarentee, so you can rest assured that you will have another one or it fixed very quickly, should any problems arise.

I give these monitors a 5 out of 5 and I totally recommend them for anyone with children.


*This review is also posted on Ciao under the user name of Hailee*