The First Years Nursery Bottle Warmer Review

The First Years Nursery Bottle Warmer aims to make your life easier by saving you multiple trips to your kitchen, especially in the middle of the night. It's designed as a nursery/bedroom friendly mini-fridge with a portable cooler that attaches to the back, claiming to hold two bottles. It does hold two, as long as you stick to a narrower bottle. We had the same problem with the warming unit itself, as it barely holds the more portly bottles like Tommee Tippee. It kind of “rests” on the rim and we're not certain that's efficient or even safe.

Our other major problem with this warmer were the little vials it uses to add the water that creates the steam. They are very small and measuring water to the appropriate mark can be frustrating.

It really only requires a tablespoon or two to warm a bottle, so if you're off on the mark, even just a bit, your warming time is affected drastically. Plus, you have to refill for each warming.

Likes

Really, our favorite thing about this warmer is that it can keep prepared bottles cool in a room other than the kitchen. It kept our bottle at a consistent “cold” temperature for about 6 hours before the temperature began to rise.

It does have an illuminated light that goes off when the warming is complete and also, an automatic shut-off. We really appreciate both.

Dislikes

We touched on the vials…they're a pain. As a result, warming is inconsistent.

It doesn't receive overly wide bottles well, and the directions also say no to glass.

They state a 10 minute wait time between warmings, which is extremely inconvenient if, let's say, your bottle didn't get warm enough the first time, or…you have twins! We were able to run the unit immediately after a cycle had completed, but we don't recommend this. Please refer to the manufacturer's instructions.

Regarding the cooler, overall, we like this feature. We only wish it could accommodate larger bottles and it would have been nice if they included a spare ice pack. If you forget to put it back in your freezer in the morning, you'll be out of luck that night. An extra for back-up could be key.

Another gripe we have are the instructions!

They include a warming guide that is just overwhelming to figure out. Along with their other warmer the First Years Quick Serve, they were our least favorite directions to follow. In our case, trial and error became a better method.

Lastly, we worry the temperature could be too high. This makes it easy to overheat the milk accidentally. We measured the warming temperature (outside the bottle, not the milk) and got a reading of 176 F (80 C). This may mean that the milk in the bottle could be too warm. Studies have shown that the quality of breast milk is quickly degraded when the sustained temperature of the milk is significantly above 104 F / 40 C. With outside temps of 176 F / 80 C, we feel think you run a risk regarding the loss of breast milk quality.

Conclusion

It's clear we like the idea of the portable cooler here, but when it comes to actually using The First Years Nursery Bottle Warmer, we'd rather make multiple treks to the kitchen.

Average warming times:
4 oz. bottle from portable cooler~2:30 (or measure “7” on vial)
5 oz. refrigerated bag~2:30 min.(had to restart once; measure “1” on vial, added twice)