I definitely wanted a video monitor, because my bedroom is upstairs and the baby is downstairs. Having a video monitor is great because you can check if the baby's awake or just squawking in his sleep before you go all the way in there. I've tried three: this one, the Mobi Cam, and the new Safety First version. Both the other two got constant static that caused the picture to flicker and a clicking sound to come through on the audio. This one is USUALLY static free, accept for a periodic BLARE, usually in the middle of the night. It's pretty frustating, but I've now found a low enough volume level whereby the static won't scare me out of bed when it hits but I can still hear if my son cries.
As for the other features, the "color" is pretty poor, but the night vision works fairly well. It's very nice that it's portable, and that you don't HAVE to mount the camera--you can place it on a flat surface and angle it to see. I also like that when it's unplugged, the video shuts off after a couple minutes so it doesn't drain your battery. Then you can pop it back on (or off) with the touch of a big button on top. When it's plugged in, the video will stay on all night, but I feel like it starts to get warm when I leave the picture on too long. I generally shut it off until he makes noise, then I turn on the picture to see what's going on down there.
Since I've tried THREE video monitors, and this worked the best in my house, I thought I'd pass the research along.