Philips Avent SCD630/37 is a reliable and inexpensive baby monitor with the bare basic features. We are talking about no remote pan, tilt and zoom. We are talking about being able to connect to 1 camera only.
Other than that, SCD630/37 has excellent range, good video quality and a clear night vision. It is easy to use and most parents will be able to breeze through the setup.
Video & Audio Quality
Philips Avent SCD630/37 uses a 3.5-inch display, which is a decent size. Many baby monitors have switched to a 5-inch display and if you prefer a bigger screen, you might find 3.5-inch to be inadequate.
It has excellent video quality, and you can see in clear details what your baby is doing. The night vision is clear and parents have no trouble monitoring their baby at night.
It has good audio quality as well. There is VOX function enabled which transmits sound to your parent unit when it picks up noises in the baby’s room.
Together with its eco mode, which turns off the display screen by default and turns on if it detects activities from your baby, it helps takes off some of the monitoring time and doesn’t require you to keep looking at the parent unit. Eco modes also help to conserve battery life.
There are 5 preset lullabies in SCD630/37, which is helpful when it comes to soothing your baby to sleep.
2 way talk function
Philips Avent SCD630/37 comes with 2 way talk function, which allows parents to communicate with your baby without stepping into the baby’s room. Based on our testing, the 2 way talk is pretty choppy and doesn’t sound as natural as if we would speak to our baby.
We find it difficult to communicate with our baby through 2 way talk, and would still prefer speaking to our baby directly by going into the baby’s room.
Signal Strength
Philips Avent SCD630/37 has an excellent range. In open field, it is is able to reach up to a range of 1,000 feet. Based on our testing, it is more reasonable to expect a range of up to 170 feet with all the walls, interferences and obstacles that you will find in most house settings.
The signal is reliable and shouldn’t pose any issue.
Battery life
You get a good 7-8 hours battery life without the need to plug in to charge. It has enough battery to last through most parts of the day including their afternoon nap time. However, you do need to plug in power to monitor your baby throughout the night.
If you use the eco mode, you can probably extend the battery life to 10 hours without the need to plug in power. Also, it takes about 4 hours to fully charge the batteries.
Security
Philips Avent SCD630/37 uses a 2.4GHz wireless connection which is an encrypted FHSS signal. This makes it hard for hackers to hack as they have to be in local proximity and then decode the encryption, unlike Wifi baby monitors which hackers can hack if they got past the router’s security.
Safety
The wireless connection does emit electromagnetic frequencies (EMF) which can be harmful to your baby. What you can do is to keep the device at least 6 feet away from your baby. The parent unit emits EMF too, so keep it at least 3 feet away from you when you sleep at night.
If you want to understand more about radiation & baby monitors, you can read more.
The Verdict
Philips Avent is an established brand and has developed reliable baby monitors over the years. In SCD630/37,you won’t expect to see any of the premium features that many recent baby monitors are developing. However, you get good signal range, video quality and audio quality with this model.
As Philips Avent SCD630/37 isn’t a new model, parents can consider getting this is you can find a discounted version online if you are looking for a reliable and basic baby monitor. If not, you can consider Eufy Spaceview, which is an updated and feature-packed baby monitor as compared to SCD630/37.