Keep an eye on your household with one of these nanny cams from Amazon, Wyze and more.
Updated Jan. 1, 2024 12:06 a.m. PT Wired Doorbell Camera
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The recent tech advancements have made many things more accessible. For instance, having a home security setup isn't exclusive to the rich and famous anymore. Keeping an eye on your home has never been more affordable with the use of nanny cams. The best nanny cams allow you to an keep eye on your infant children, pets, or anyone and anything else you want to feel secure about. With today's video surveillance smart tech, it's easy to monitor any of your cameras anywhere you are with your iPhone or Android device.
A smart nanny cam can help with this, but you might want something a little different from the usual home security-oriented features. I'm not considering concealed or hidden cameras for this list, since that gets into some pretty questionable territory with regards to privacy. Instead, I'm weighing all the needs you might want met for your nanny cam: two-way talk, quality real-time streaming, options for story footage storage, cost and field-of-view or pan-and-tilt functions.
Taking all these considerations into account, these are my favorite nanny cams.
Wyze's $50 panning and tilting camera is perfect for keeping an eye on the kiddos because it can follow them around the room -- or even multiple rooms, depending on how you position it. The camera can swivel 360 degrees, it's got two-way talk and it's super affordable, with or without a subscription.
What's more, you can have the camera scan the room periodically, checking for irregularities, or you can set it to follow motion -- so your whirlwind 4-year-old stays in frame while you're trying to ask him about his day.
While the Arlo Essential Indoor Cam is fairly standard for a $100 smart camera -- 130-degree field of view, 12x digital zoom, 1080p HD live stream, two-way talk, night vision, a built-in siren, etc. -- it has one design feature that might make it worth special consideration as a nanny cam: its privacy shield. When the camera isn't on, a quarter-sized white shield shows it's not recording. When it begins to record, the shield flips. This makes it easy for caretakers and children to tell at a glance whether they're being recorded, which makes maintaining privacy boundaries a little easier.
If you're less worried about keeping a digital log of your kids' or caretakers' activity throughout a whole evening than you are about dropping in to chat with them during that period, an Echo Show 5 kids edition may fit your needs better than a traditional camera. First off, you can drop in to chat, and the kids will actually be able to see your face. Second, your kids or caretakers can contact you through the device with a simple voice command. Finally, checking the activity log on the Echo is a nice, indirect way to see what your kids have been up to while you're out -- making sure not to intrude too much, but also give some helpful insights, depending on how much they use Alexa.
Hands-on testing is core to our evaluations of any home security products. In short, when it comes to security cameras, we pay special attention to resolution, night vision and latency, extra features, general performance and overall value. We evaluate all of these elements in a real home environment over the course of a week. If you want to read more about our review process, check out our in-depth article on how we test home security cameras and video doorbells.
Nanny cams do raise important questions about privacy in the home, parental reach and an array of other issues. Laws differ based on where you live, but it's almost always illegal to conceal cameras in places where privacy is presumed -- such as bathrooms. Otherwise, however, as long as the nanny or babysitter is watching the children in your home, you are generally within your legal rights to use a camera.
Whether you should or not -- or whether you should tell the nanny about the camera or not -- is a more complicated question, and one that you'll have to settle for yourself. Some experts recommend telling the nanny about the camera as a sign of respect, while others worry that defeats the purpose of the camera: to catch abuse or other problems when they happen. In general, such issues can be at least partly avoided by performing thorough background checks on caretakers, watching how your children behave around them, and dropping by the house at unexpected times to check in.
The short answer here is: probably, although it's not likely. That said, you can protect your device in a few ways. First, be sure to use a camera from a major developer with a solid track record when it comes to device security. Second, use additional security measures for your device, like multifactor authentication, local storage and video encryption, when possible. Third, use a camera with a clear privacy screen or a physical cover, so you can reliably disable it when you're not using it.
Although some parents hope to hide their nanny cams, our recommendation is to keep your cameras in an open space -- clearly communicating your expectations to your children and their caretakers about staying in monitored spaces, calling using two-way talk at certain times and so on. In general, establishing clear boundaries and expectations help build trust with caretakers and children both, while still giving you the ability to monitor your home while you're away.
Wireless Hidden Camera "Nanny cam" is a term used to talk about how a camera is used -- as opposed to how it's designed. You can easily use a smart security camera, a video baby monitor or any other camera as a nanny cam. Generally speaking, I recommend nanny cams based on their monitoring and communication features -- without factoring in devices made to be concealed.