Sound Selection

An accompanying projector displays rotating images around your baby's nursery. These include a rainforest, night sky and sea. The image cartridges store easily in the back of the unit, allowing you to keep all the pieces together. You can tilt the projector angle so the images display on the wall or on the ceiling. This way, you can position the pictures in the best location for your baby to see them. You can use the projector separately or when playing the accompanying sounds.

A soft blue light emanates from the bottom of the baby sound machine. While this feature provides enough light to see inside your baby's room if you need to change a diaper or just want to check in, be aware that some studies suggest that blue light can negatively influence sleep cycles. If you use the nightlight frequently, you may want to keep track of your child's waking patterns to see if the light causes any adverse effects.

This white noise machine includes a timer that can be set to 15, 30 or 60 minutes. Once the allotted time is over, the Munchkin Nursery Projector turns off automatically. If you use the Timer Off setting and don't set a time, the sounds play continuously through the night until you manually turn off the device. If you're using one of the timer options, be aware that the sounds don't gradually slow down or get lower in volume. If your child wakes to abrupt changes in sounds, such as going from white noise to silence, she may react to the automatic timer shut-off.

Unlike many sound machines for babies, the Munchkin Nursery Projector has an optional voice-activation feature. When turned on, the device begins playing sounds or projecting images when your baby wakes and makes noise. This automatic restart can help your baby sleep by encouraging self-soothing.

Additional Features

This white noise machine measures approximately 5 inches wide, 5.25 inches tall and 5 inches deep. Its smooth surface is easy to wipe down with a cloth. The Munchkin Nursery Projector is lightweight and compact, allowing you to pack it easily when you travel. However, the machine does not run on batteries, so you'll want to make sure you have access to an outlet if you take the baby sound machine with you on vacation. You can use the AC adapter with American and European outlets.

This baby sound machine includes an adjustable volume control so you can play the device as loudly or softly as you'd like. That way, you can set the selected sound as a background noise or make it the focal sound in your baby's room. The volume control feature is particularly useful if you live in a busy neighborhood or have older children or pets who make it difficult to create a quiet enough environment for your baby to sleep uninterrupted.

Ease of Use

The Nursery Projector comes with four sounds: heartbeat, rain, ocean and white noise. There are also three Mozart songs ("Lullaby," "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" and "Twinkle Twinkle") and three baby lullabies ("Rock-a-bye Baby," "Hush Little Baby" and Brahms' "Lullaby"). This broad range of sounds is especially useful because the machine lets you alternate between music and nature sounds, adding variety to your baby's bedtime routine. This baby sound machine does not have an adapter for an MP3 player, which would allow more noise possibilities.