diff --git a/scvi/lightning/_callbacks.py b/scvi/lightning/_callbacks.py
index 6fcc13e8f5..337ec056c2 100644
--- a/scvi/lightning/_callbacks.py
+++ b/scvi/lightning/_callbacks.py
@@ -38,9 +38,9 @@ class SaveBestState(Callback):
 
     def __init__(
         self,
-        monitor="val_loss",
+        monitor: str = "elbo_validation",
+        mode: str = "min",
         verbose=False,
-        mode="auto",
         period=1,
     ):
         super().__init__()
@@ -100,8 +100,8 @@ def on_epoch_end(self, trainer, pl_module):
 
                     if self.verbose:
                         rank_zero_info(
-                            f"\nEpoch {trainer.current_epoch:05d}: {self.monitor} reached"
-                            f" {current:0.5f} (best {self.best_model_metric_val:0.5f})"
+                            f"\nEpoch {trainer.current_epoch:05d}: {self.monitor} reached."
+                            f" Model best state updated."
                         )
 
     def on_train_end(self, trainer, pl_module):
diff --git a/tests/models/test_lightning.py b/tests/models/test_lightning.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..542934b07f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/models/test_lightning.py
@@ -0,0 +1,12 @@
+from scvi.data import synthetic_iid
+from scvi.model import SCVI
+from scvi.lightning._callbacks import SaveBestState
+
+
+def test_save_best_state_callback(save_path):
+
+    n_latent = 5
+    adata = synthetic_iid()
+    model = SCVI(adata, n_latent=n_latent)
+    callbacks = [SaveBestState(verbose=True)]
+    model.train(3, check_val_every_n_epoch=1, train_size=0.5, callbacks=callbacks)