Munchkin Precision Digital Review

As most of the warmers on the market today do, the Munchkin Precision Digital Bottle Warmer is designed to fit all shapes and sizes of bottles, which we found to be true. The timer is easy to use and adjust , it's back-lit for easy night time use and gives off an audible beep when the warming cycle is complete.

Likes

We found it capable of accommodating all sizes of bottles, as well as baby food jars.

This warmer was easy to program with a light-up digital display. If you feel the bottle is getting too warm or needs a little extra time, you can add or subtract time with the touch of a button.

When the cycle is done or it runs out of water, it beeps and automatically shuts off. We feel this auto shut-off is so important when it comes to safety.

At 3 minutes, it has a minimal cool-down time between being able to heat another bottle.

A few other convenience factors to note would be that has a lift-out basket for easy bottle or bag removal… we burned our finger tips one too many times to not find this to be a noteworthy feature!

Also, like the First Years Nursery Bottle Warmer and The First Years Quick Serve this warmer heats with steam. However, there are NO frustrating vials to deal with. The Munchkin Precision Digital Bottle Warmer uses a reservoir system that you need only fill every three uses or so…so much simpler.

Dislikes

This big issue we have with this warmer, which we generally liked otherwise, was that the heating temperature goes well beyond the temperatures we found recommended in medical research for breast milk warming. As you can read in our article, Best Practices for Handling Breast Milk, breast milk quality starts degrading when heated to temperatures greater than 104 F or 40 C for sustained periods. While the bath water temperature is not the same as the milk temperature, the 199 F / 93 C bath water temperature we measured in our tests is simply too high to be safe in our opinion.

Our remaining dislikes are relatively minor.

Although we prefer the reservoir over the vials, it did leak a little for us after each initial filling. After one cycle, the leaking no longer occurred. So keep an eye out for this as it could pose a safety hazard. Munchkin does recommend that you unplug the unit when refilling the reservoir. Please refer to the complete manufacturer's instructions.

The Munchkin Precision Digital Bottle Warmer is sleeker than many warmers, but it is still on the large size (tall, not bulky). If you're pressed for space you might consider this.

Not recommended for use with milk storage bags.

As with most reservoir systems, their convenience comes with a little bit of a cost. As we recommend with the Munchkin Time Saver and Dr. Brown's Deluxe Bottle Warmer, we feel frequent (as in weekly) cleaning is necessary to keep any mold or mildew from building up in the reservoir. Again, please refer to your users manual for more on this.

Conclusion

Overall, we were very happy with this warmer's performance except for our very significant concerns that it heats at too high a temperature to preserve the full nutritional and immunological value of breast milk. The instructions made sense and were easy to adjust per our needs. We felt the heating time to be appropriate and consistent.

Average warming time:
4 oz. refrigerated bottle~3:30

5 oz. frozen bag~3:00 (Munchkin doesn't mention using milk storage bags in their instructions. When we tried it, the outer portion of the milk got extremely hot while there was still a frozen chunk on the inside. Plus it seemed to nearly melt our storage bag. We would recommend putting thawed milk into a bottle first.)

Bottom line: we don't recommend this warmer. Too high a heating temperature means too much risk of degrading breast milk quality.