As parents, we often worry (maybe a little too much?) about the sleep our babies are getting. Even when traveling, getting your baby to sleep on vacation is likely forefront on your mind but more importantly, so is the safety of your baby.
With so many options for hotel rooms with suits or Airbnb apartment rentals, it’s nice to have our own space after baby goes down. But we still want to keep an eye on our sleeping baby, without the risk of walking in the room and waking our sleeping baby. Having a portable baby monitor for travel, is a great way to enjoy the time while baby is sleeping while still having the comfort of knowing you’ll hear your baby when you need to.
We had fellow parent review the Nanit Pro Baby Monitor for travel. This popular baby monitor is great for at home, but does it make a good baby monitor to travel with?
Spoiler alert: It does!
Here’s what Brittany had to say about the Nanit as a portable baby monitor for travel.
This post contains compensated links.
All About the Nanit Portable Baby Monitor
We have used the Nanit monitor with a floor stand since our son moved to his own room at 3 months old. We love the clarity of picture, even in the dark, and especially the insights it provides on the quality of sleep.
We also like the swaddles with breathing bands and breathing bands without a swaddle. These give you the option to track your baby’s breath per minute and it will sound an alarm if something seems off. This gave us a lot of peace of mind when we moved our son into his own room.
When we started traveling with our baby we knew that we couldn’t live without our Nanit Pro. We still make use of the breathing band, since we’re typically spending time with family and friends during nap time and once bedtime begins. We don’t feel the need to have the video stream up constantly checking on him knowing that we will get an alert if something seems “off”.
The Nanit Pro is essential baby travel gear for sleeping and is now a staple on our baby packing list for any trip – no matter the length.
- The Nanit Pro baby monitor has two-way audio and background audio so you can listen for your sleeping baby even when screen is off or using other apps.
- It has real time sound and motion notifications plus the ability to monitor the temperature in the room.
- For those concerned about using a wifi baby monitor, it has user permissions plus two-factor authentication.
- In the morning, you can check your baby’s sleep stats plus a highlight reel of the night! With the purchase of a Nanit, you get one year of Nanit Insights sleep tracking.
- Optional accessories include Multi-Stand, Travel Case and Smart Sheets PLUS breathing wear swaddle.
- As you set it in up your baby’s nursery you have choice of wall mount or floor stand. For travel, there is a 130-degree wide angle lens that works with the optional multi-stand (which puts the travel baby monitor into multi-stand mode).
Using the Nanit Portable Baby Monitor for Travel
We’ve used the Nanit as a baby travel monitor for weekend trips to Connecticut to stay with friends and on longer trips like our 3 week family trip to Michigan. We’ve rented a house for both of these trips but have shared a room with the baby on them.
We’ve used the Nanit as a travel baby monitor with a pack n’ play. We were able to place the multi-stand on a nearby dresser to see right into the pack n play. We’ve also used the Nanit with a baby travel crib. We were able to see perfectly into our Dream On Me Travel Light Playard.
Read more on flying with a pack n’ play!
For those parents that own the popular SlumberPod, we’ve also used our Nanit portable baby monitor both with and without the SlumberPod blackout tent. We were impressed that the quality of the picture is still great even using it with a blackout crib canopy even through the plastic on the SlumberPod.
The Nanit will be coming with us anywhere that has wifi for the foreseeable future.
Use “BABYCANTRAVEL” to get 10% off the SlumberPod when you buy direct from SlumberPod!
Still not sure if you need one for traveling with a baby? Read my full review of the SlumberPod here.
What We Love About the Nanit Pro for a Travel Baby Monitor
- Nanit Insights
One of the best features of the Nanit is the ability to get “insights” on your child’s sleep. This is a premium feature but is free for the first year with the purchase of a new Nanit Pro camera.
Insights will tell you details like how long ago your child woke up or how long ago they fell asleep. It tracks if they fell asleep on their own or were helped to sleep. You can see a summary of the night: how long it took them to fall asleep, how long they were asleep, how many visits you made to their crib and their sleep efficiency rate. You can also see a video of all the wake ups/visits from each night as well as view a movement map that shows where in the crib your child is during their sleep.
The summary will indicate if the baby had a good, fair or poor night of sleep and explain which areas impacted their “score” based on what they consider normal (sleep onset of 35 minutes or less, 5 visits to the crib or less, time asleep of 8 hours or more and sleep efficiency of 88% or above).
I found this particularly helpful when things weren’t going well to understand what was considered normal or not. The app will also send you age appropriate tips like getting the most out of nap time, traveling tips to get your baby to sleep on vacation, dealing with illnesses, etc. - No Extra Screen Required
As traveling parents, we have enough baby travel essentials to pack! The Nanit is a wifi camera so there is no external screen to carry around. You view the video stream on your mobile device through their app, which we love, and you don’t have to be near the camera to see the video stream.
Where your phone gets service you can see the video stream from it. Since the Nanit is a wifi camera you can get alerts on your phone for movement near the crib, sound alerts and temperature alerts. You set the levels in the app settings, or turn them off completely if you choose. We like this because we don’t feel the need to be glued to the video stream knowing we will be alerted if he makes noise. - Size
The size of the Nanit makes it very manageable to travel with, especially if you’re using the portable mini stand. The entire device will fit inside a small purse, which is where I carry it to avoid it getting ruined when flying with a baby. - Multiple Monitors
If you have more than one child you may have two cameras in your one app. You can easily toggle between the two.
What Can Be Improved
While we love the Nanit Pro baby monitor, there are still some things that don’t work perfectly when it comes to traveling with this portable monitor.
- Wifi
The Nanit is a wifi monitor so you need decent wifi to use this baby monitor while traveling. Keep this in mind when planning to pack it, depending on your baby travel destination.
I have also seen that it won’t connect if you are on an unsecure public network. You’ll likely need private network access, which is typically available in Airbnb rentals and hotels.
To connect the monitor and it requires that you connect your phone to wifi first, then connect the monitor to the same wifi to work. It took us a few trips to remember how to do it all since it’s not very intuitive (you need to go to “settings”, “pair Nanit with your network” and follow directions to get the camera into pairing mode).
Each time you move the camera out of the house/hotel where you’re using it and connect to another network you will have to go through the process to reconnect to wifi each time.
Most people probably won’t experience an issue with this but for us, on our family trip to Michigan, we put our son to bed in one house and transfer him to our house after dinner. Moving the camera back and forth each night (and reconnecting to wifi at that) was a bit of a pain. - Room Set-up
If using the portable mini stand (instead of the floor stand attachment) you will need to strategize on where the crib or pack n play are set up because you’re limited by the cord length. This is a common problem, regardless of the portable baby monitor for travel you pack. You just never know how the room set-up will impact the ability to view the crib…
Other Considerations for Using the Nanit Pro as a Baby Monitor for Travel
When you purchase the Nanit Pro you can purchase the camera and wall mount or the camera and floor stand. For travel you’ll need either the floor stand or the portable multi-stand. Here are the pros/cons to each:
Floor Stand for Nanit
Using the floor stand for travel with the Nanit allows you to continue to see the insights on your baby’s overnight sleep. It’s also easy to get a full view of the crib because it allows for placement directly above the crib.
On the other hand, the floor stand is not small and it’s heavy. There are pieces that come apart so you can travel with it but it takes up much more space than the portable multi-stand. I prefer to not travel with the floor stand for the Nanit Pro, unless we have more space like when doing a road trip with baby.
Portable Multi-Stand for Nanit Pro
The Nanit multi-stand is small and easy to travel with. It all fits right in the optional travel case.
On the other hand, it’s more challenging to get the best view of your baby in the crib. This always takes some trial and error, and even moving some furniture around. You also won’t get to see the insights on your baby’s sleep – which is less of a concern when traveling. Typically you are off your baby’s regular sleep schedule when traveling anyways.
Where to Buy the Nanit Pro Portable Baby Monitor
The two best places to buy the Nanit Pro are at Target or Amazon. You can purchase either the Nanit Pro + Floor Stand or the Nanit Pro with Wall Mount at either. You’ll also find the multi-stand and travel case available at either location.
Final Thoughts on the Nanit as a Travel Baby Monitor
Let’s be honest, the Nanit is not cheap. However, we love that we don’t need a separate baby monitor for travel. The ability to easily travel with it, use your phone to view the video stream and get insights on your child’s sleep made the cost well worth it to our traveling family.
I considered some of the other best baby monitor options like the Owlet, Nest and Miku but overall for the price and functionality we chose the Nanit Pro.
One added bonus – our camera is filled with funny screenshots we take of our baby staring at the screen. We love to make jokes about what we imagine he’s thinking, like “I’m ready to get up you guys!!”.
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This post was written & edited by:
Brittany
An avid traveler before having her son Maddox, Brittany and her husband were determined to continue to travel once they became a family of three. She's researched many travel related baby products and tried many of them to make their travels together as seamless as possible and can happily say that she enjoys the company of her infant while jet setting and seeing more of the world.
Celine Brewer is the owner of Baby Can Travel. Not only does she have years of experience traveling with babies & toddlers, but she's helped millions of new parents travel with their babies and toddlers for over a decade. In addition to writing on her baby travel blog, she has shared her expertise on traveling with a baby or toddler by contributing to articles about traveling with a baby with the Washington Post, USA Today, the Lonely Planet magazine and Pregnancy & Newborn magazine.
Celine also writes about family travel on the site FamilyCanTravel.com, which she co-owns with her husband. Being from the Canadian Rockies, she shares her passion about her home and travel to Banff National Park and area on their site TravelBanffCanada.com.