Is The Snoo Worth It? An Unpaid Snoo Review

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This post Is the Snoo worth it? contains affiliate links, but all opinions are 100% my own. I earn a small commission if you purchase through my links, but doesn’t change your price.

After 4 kids, we thought we had a pretty good handle on baby sleep schedules. Still, we knew life would feel even more crazy with 5 kids. Baby girl was due at the end of January, so for Christmas, Daniel surprised me with a Snoo bassinet. To be honest, my reaction was one of deep skepticism – I really wondered, is the Snoo worth it?

Baby girl has been here for 9 months now, so I wanted to share an unpaid Snoo review to help you decide whether the Snoo is worth it for you and your family. I couldn’t find a lot of unpaid Snoo reviews, so I wanted to share our unbiased, not sponsored Snoo opinions and the pros and cons of the Snoo. I’m not a healthcare professional, but hope our experience – along with the pros and cons of the Snoo Bassinet – is helpful to read.

Questions About The Snoo, Snoo Tips, And Our Snoo Experience

How We Decided We Should Buy a Snoo Bassinet

To be perfectly honest, I’d never heard of the Snoo before Daniel gifted it to me. Our other 4 babies were pretty decent sleepers, so I didn’t think we needed to mess with the formula. Still, with 5 little kids, he thought if it helped us get even a little more sleep, it would be worth it. But was it really the best baby bassinet?

A coworker of his was selling a gently used one, so he figured it was worth the cost. I was still very hesitant (those things are EXPENSIVE!), but he convinced me the resale value was extremely high (which is true). Plus, so many Snoo bassinet reviews sang its praises. So I agreed to give it a shot. But I had lots of questions, namely: is the Snoo worth it?

Our Bassinet Before the Snoo

For our first 4 babies, we used a very normal, very basic bassinet. We kept it by the side of our bed for the first few months, and the baby slept in the bassinet insert in the beginning. As s/he grew, we eventually moved them to the bottom portion of the pack ‘n play, and eventually to a full-sized crib.

We like having the baby close by for the first few months both based on AAP recommendations, as well as for ease of nighttime feedings. So we knew we wanted something that would conveniently fit near our bed.

How Does the Snoo Work?

The Snoo bassinet definitely had the same advantages of our previous small pack ‘n play. It has a pretty small footprint – it’s built for a young baby and definitely not for an older baby or toddler. We appreciated this as it meant it didn’t take up too much room by our bed. It’s also significantly more attractive than a pack n play.

The Snoo baby bassinet also has a number of features that a normal bassinet does NOT have. Dr. Harvey Karp, who created the 5S’s to soothe a baby, created the Snoo. So it incorporates several of the S’s into the bassinet itself.

Perhaps the most unique – and certainly the most appealing to us in our purchase – is the built in sensor that makes the bassinet jiggle when your baby starts to fuss. It has a built in white noise that turns on simultaneously while it rocks your baby. It also has a built-in swaddle to prevent your baby from rolling over dangerously, and mesh sides for airflow.

Finally, the Snoo is also a “smart sleeper,” meaning you can connect to it through an app and track wakeups, hours slept, or manually turn the white noise/swinging effects on and off. It also has a few other settings, like limiting the amount of motion and even a “weaning” setting fo Is r when you’re ready to transition baby to a crib.

Will the Snoo Cause Me to Ignore My Baby’s Cues?

In wondering is the Snoo worth it, I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t have a negative impact on my baby by supposedly magically helping her sleep. Would it jiggle my baby back to sleep and cause me to ignore hunger/diaper cues, or make baby push past other needs?

It turns out the Snoo automatically stops after 3 minutes of fussing, but recommends you go and get baby after 1 minute. It instructs that if babies fuss for longer than a minute, they probably need something else like food or a clean diaper.

In our experience, the Snoo has NOT caused our baby to ignore actual needs at all. When our baby is actually hungry or needs a fresh diaper, she continues to fuss. The jiggling and white noise don’t calm her at those times. That DOES help, however, when she is still tired but has woken before she’s ready to be awake, and before she has an immediate physical need. One of the best Snoo tips is to answer all your babies needs FIRST, and then rely on the Snoo to help.

Because I can track what’s happening on the app, it’s also easier theoretically easier to see when I last picked her up, if she’s fussing, or otherwise what else is going on. While I rarely actually used the app and trusted my baby instincts (baby 5, after all), I could see how the app could be useful in addressing her cues more quickly and accurately.

Will the Snoo Bassinet Cause Poor Sleep Associations or Habits?

I also wondered if using this contraption would cause my baby to become to reliant on it to sleep. What if she never sleeps again after she outgrows it? What if it causes an unhealthy dependency?

Turns out, I didn’t need to worry. In our experience, the Snoo trains good sleep habits with or without the bassinet, instead of causing babies to only sleep when in the bed.

I took 3 trips with the baby between 3 weeks – 6 weeks, and we only took the Snoo with us on the first of the 3 trips. She slept great – and exactly the same as she did at home – on each of the trips. This leads me to believe that the Snoo helped create good habits that transferred to another location and even another bed.

It ALSO leads me to believe that the Snoo is not the only factor in her sleeping well. While she clearly received some good training early on from the Snoo, our baby is clearly capable of sleeping without it, and is a naturally good sleeper. So while I think the Snoo is helpful, it’s not a cure all.

How Long Can I Use The Snoo? Is the Snoo worth it?

This is something that will vary by family and baby. Truthfully, I think we could’ve easily moved our baby out of the Snoo by about 4 months old. She had been consistently sleeping 11-12 hours at night for a couple months by that point. I think she would’ve been just fine in a bassinet.

But we knew we would be leaving shortly for an extended time of full time RV living. It was a small space, but the Snoo fit just perfectly in the spot next to our queen bed in the back. Since she still fit in it and was comfortable, it was nice to use that instead of needing to set up and take down a pack n play each day. So for us, it made the best baby travel bassinet for a bassinet in an RV. Our baby is tiny (1st percentile weight), so we could keep her in there for longer than the recommended 6 months. But developmental (not weight) milestones meant we still needed to take her out by 9 months for sure.

For the last couple weeks of our RV trip, we could tell that she was getting frustrated and waking up at night because she couldn’t turn over and move around. We did use the swaddle setting that allowed her arms out. Still, she wanted to be able to move more. We couldn’t leave her swaddle unbuckled since she was old enough to climb up and fall out, so we had to keep her buckled in. She hated that near the end.

When we returned home (at nearly 9 months), we put her in a regular pack n play and she slept perfectly again. So we feel confident she was just uncomfortable in the Snoo and with being strapped down by that age.

Snoo Bassinet Reviews:

Pros, Cons, and Is the Snoo Worth It?

Snoo Pros For Our Family

There are a few major pros of the Snoo for our family:

Table of Contents

Small, aesthetically pleasing bassinet

I mentioned before that the Snoo bassinet is attractive and doesn’t take up tons of room. I appreciate that. This was also especially helpful on our full time RVing adventure since, as I mentioned above, the Snoo fit perfectly into the space next to our bed (just the bassinet without the legs). It was nice to use a small bassinet that took up less space than a pack n play, and that allowed us to keep her in our “room” instead of in the main area of the RV with the other kids.

Helps baby fall asleep on her own from a young age

This is probably the very biggest benefit of the Snoo for us. With 4 other kids (especially this year when we’ve spent a lot of time at home), someone always needs something. That means in those early days, after feeding and snuggling baby, I could put her down to fall asleep on her own in the Snoo. This was easier than trying to rock her one-handed while helping an older child.

When very young a few of my babies have not liked to be put down, so they wake when I lay them in their beds. This means I either need to be holding or wearing them for much of the time in those early weeks. I love wearing my babies! But it sure is nice to have both hands free and for baby to fall and STAY asleep on her own.

Safety

This felt like another huge benefit to me. Because a few of my babies don’t love sleeping on their own at first, we’ve ended up co-sleeping with a couple of them. We take all the precautions (no blankets, obviously no smoking, flat surface, not near the edge, etc.) but it still makes me nervous. The Snoo baby bed makes it so that baby is happy to stay in her own bed.

The Snoo also facilitates extended swaddling. Our babies really like to be swaddled for a long time, but it isn’t totally safe once they can roll. The Snoo buckles them in so they can’t roll over on their stomachs while swaddled. So it allows babies to remain swaddled for longer while still being completely safe.

Cons of the Snoo

Cost

To me, the biggest downside of the Snoo is the cost. For a baby item, especially one that you won’t use for a super extended period of time, it’s definitely pricey. There are a number of gently used options available, though, so if you’re comfortable with that, I would start there and decide is the Snoo worth buying. Is the Snoo worth the price for your family’s needs?

Short amount of time

The other major con is that the Snoo really does have a limited lifespan. It’s unlikely to work for your baby for more than 6 months. A critical 6 months, but still only 6 months. My honest review of the Snoo hast to acknowledge that’s not that long.

Weight/Shape

The final big con is the weight and shape of the Snoo bassinet. This thing is HEAVY. It also doesn’t fold down. While the legs do collapse, the bassinet portion doesn’t at all. So that means you have to store a heavy, awkwardly shaped bassinet, which is somewhat annoying.

Does The Snoo work and Does It Help With Sleep? Snoo Bassinet Reviews

In the end, the biggest question for me was does the snoo work / whether the Snoo actually helped with our baby’s sleep. Mostly, I think it helped her FALL asleep, rather than stay asleep longer. Our baby was a naturally good sleeper. This was clear from the fact that she was able to sleep in other beds just fine even at a young age. It wasn’t necessarily the very best baby crib in the entire world, but it was helpful in teaching her to self soothe.

In those beds, however, she took much more effort to GET to sleep and stay asleep when we initially put her down. I needed to nurse her for much longer and comfort her for longer before she settled down, but she stayed asleep for the same amount of time once she was really down.

Our baby also has older siblings who were good sleepers, which provided us a good benchmark. The brother just older than her was sleeping 12 hours a night by 2.5 months old, which was pretty similar to what she did with the Snoo. (She was probably a couple weeks earlier.) Our oldest slept similarly to her – 8 hours a night by a month old, and 11-12 hours by 2 months. Our 2nd and 3rd children took a bit longer, but not by too much.

So overall, while she DID sleep very well, I don’t know that it was all because of the Snoo. My guess is that she’s a naturally good sleeper and the Snoo helped her figure out how to get into a good rhythm of putting herself to sleep. That was very helpful.

Should I Buy A Snoo / Is the Snoo Worth the Money?

As with most baby gear, this will vary by baby and by family. Here are some of the best reasons to determine if a Snoo Bassinet is worth it:

You want to be able to put baby down and teach her/him to fall asleep on their own. Perhaps you want to create good sleep habits from the start. Or maybe you have other children to care for who also need your attention.
You need a safe place to calm baby if you need to tend to other children for a few minutes. Or maybe you need to warm up bottles, or you have other things that may delay you in immediately helping baby. To be clear, this is NOT a substitute for caring for your baby. Rather, it calms baby for just a few minutes while you make your way there.
Postpartum recovery is tough for you. You need a place to put baby down calmly if you can’t hold baby for long periods of time.
You have mental health needs and do not want baby attached to you for long periods of time.
Your baby does not like to sleep on his/her own and wants to be held.
You worry about baby’s safety while sleeping. The Snoo can provide peace of mind by keeping baby securely swaddled and unable to roll over, it has airflow, etc.
Your baby really likes to be swaddled and you don’t want her/him to roll over.
You want an aesthetically pleasing, small footprint bassinet.

Is The Snoo Worth It?

The biggest question: is the Snoo worth it? To me, yes. I’m glad we have it. I’m glad I got some extra minutes and hands to help my other kiddos. I knew I could put baby in a safe space where she felt happy and calm while I helped them. It was worth the money to me to not have to have her scream because she was sad while I was in the middle of something else (like wiping a bottom).

The Snoo bought me a bit of time and freedom and flexibility, and bought her some peace and comfort. It also bought us a more convenient baby sleeping area in our RV. For us at this time, it was the best bassinet for baby.

Was the Snoo a magic sleep solution for our baby? I wouldn’t say so. I think it helped along an already good sleeper. I’m glad we were able to find a gently used one.

The pros make it feel worth it to me, but your family’s needs may be different. You may feel fine picking up babies often when they don’t like sleeping in their beds at first. You may not feel the need for more freedom, and feel just fine with a pack n play, crib, Dock a Tot, cosleeping, or something else. That’s okay! Or maybe you also have several little kids or just feel a need to be able to put baby down and have them feel peace without screaming. That’s okay, too!

Either way, I hope this unpaid Snoo review helps you decide whether the Snoo is worth it for your family. And if you own a Snoo, I’d love to hear your experience, too!