The SNOO is cheaply made and poorly engineered despite the incredibly high price- and there isn't much to it. It should cost ~$45, not the $1695 it actually costs.
I recently rebuilt a used snoo myself for my newborn nephew, and was shocked to see that it is built to move everything on rubber rollers, and those rollers use the wrong material, so they both slip and grind to dust quickly.
That said- it works. I would have given my right arm for one when my son was newborn and had "colic" and would literally scream continuously from 10pm to 4am everyday for months. I was up all night holding him by myself, using the method developed by Dr. Harvey Karp (who later founded SNOO)- which is exactly what the SNOO copies and replicates automatically, which is the only thing that would calm him. It was exhausting, and I started to hallucinate frequently, and make dangerously bad decisions from lack of sleep. I think the SNOO would have saved me.
We borrowed a snoo and set it all up before giving birth - everything was ready. Come home from the hospital with a one day old and it refuses to connect to the app. At some point after spending 45 min debugging and resetting the device I realized how awful this experience was. Internet of shit.
I remember my dad explaining this to me when I was a wee lad - his company was building hardware, and they were going to charge a fee once it was installed.
It seemed fucking stupid to me now when I was young and dumb, and it seems fucking stupid to me now that I'm old.
Was nearly hit by this just last week. ANOVA(sous-vide stuff) decided hey soon we will start charging new customers money. And not that small amount... Drop prices to compete with others and make shortfall elsewhere. Or likely fail to do so...
>Who will this impact? Only new customers will have to pay for a subscription. Existing customers who have an account with us before August 21st, 2024, will not be charged a subscription fee.
>What does it cost and what do customers get? The subscription will cost $1.99 per month or $9.99 per year USD.
"never buy hardware that requires a cell phone app to use" can be a frustrating and expensive lesson. At least you didn't have to pay for it with money.
That's a lesson you can't always follow. If you want internet-accessible surveillance cameras that you can view when you're not home, for instance, buying hardware that requires an app is basically a requirement.
An IP camera plus an Asus router with the built-in VPN enabled will do the trick just fine. It requires a small amount of technical know-how to get the VPN set up on your devices, but at that point it's all locally hosted under your control.
Still an app for the VPN, of course, but I'm assuming OP meant an app that relies on a cloud you don't control.
people have been setting up internet-accessible surveillance cameras they could view when they weren't home since 01991, long before you could install apps on phones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Room_coffee_pot
it's not a technically difficult thing to achieve (just plagued with annoying compatibility struggles, which have gotten much better since usb became widespread), and none of that hardware requires an app
Interesting, but how do you do that in the modern age, when you aren't allowed to have a fixed IP address or run a server at home, as is the case with most ISPs now?
tailscale, wireguard, scp to a vps, upload to s3, save to dropbox, zerotier, ipfs, passive-mode vnc, stream to twitch with obs studio, or just upnp or configure a bastion host on your cablemodem if you aren't behind cgnat. there are probably a zillion ways i haven't thought of
i mean maybe there's a packaged turnkey setup that i don't know about, too, i'm just saying diy isn't rocket surgery in this case
That was never the argument. You said it was impossible and you HAVE to buy the sketchy ass cloud camera. That's not the case.
As a side note, remember that Ring for a good almost decade allowed remote stalking via their cameras. That's right, MANY people were stalked and it was completely allowed by corporate security policy. That being, any employee had any access to any camera, anywhere.
There is a cost for convenience. People could do with being more technically minded. A few decades ago it was common for a run of the mill secretary to make and run SQL reports. Now people require goo goo ga ga level devices to do anything.
there's a difference between 'If you want internet-accessible surveillance cameras that you can view when you're not home' and 'if a two-dimensional gender stereotype wants internet-accessible surveillance cameras that they can view when they're not at home'
my friend ann was always pretty annoyed when people applied that stereotype to her, unaware that she'd written a commercially successful operating system in assembly language. and most of the things on the list are things my wife does in order to set up gaming servers on our residential cable modem connection
Getting downvoted for pointing out that regular people can't figure out complicated networking workarounds and set up their own DIY internet-accessible cameras... Definitely peak HN.
Yes and no, as long as you can connect P2P not with the mediation of some third party...
I do that for my home, simply via a homeserver (a cheap entry level celeron desktop) and wireguard to my mobile. I need a landline ISP and a mobile carrier with mobile data or something equivalent of course, but they are generic services, not product-bound ones, at least, so far...
yeah I was able to make it work, though we found that our daughter absolutely hated the automated rocking of the Snoo and there wasn't any automatic gentle setting. Pretty perplexing actually, it only had four levels and you could either set it to always rock at whatever level you want, or react to crying etc. and rock then, but with a minimum level of 2/4. Even that was too much and she just hated it.
We used the snoo passively, and the swaddle strap-down feature was actually a pretty nice setup that other basinnets could and should use, without any electronics at all. The swaddles used with the snoo strap down to the base and prevent the baby from rolling around. This passive feature was pretty nice, but not really the purpose of the device.
For people criticizing me for saying "it should cost $45" - that is based on what it actually costs for a lower end electric baby swing with sound[1], which is not fundamentally simpler or cheaper to make than the SNOO. I'm just guesstimating what a device of this (very low) quality would actually cost on the open market, if it weren't uniquely effective and patented, which it is.
I'm fine with them charging a lot for a unique invention that works better, but irked that they didn't then give it decent build quality.
"Stay near and watch baby during use. This product is not safe for sleep or unsupervised use. If baby falls asleep, remove baby as soon as possible and place baby on a firm, flat sleep surface such as a crib or bassinet. Never let the child sleep in this product."
as someone whose child at that age would only sleep when in the swing that gets ignored really quick after both parents are operating on 2 hours of sleep everyday for weeks on end. parenting infants was brutal
why though? the point was about build cost, complexity, and materials. The failure modes for the snoo aren't exactly dangerous mechanically or electrically, and would be similar to the swings anyway. There's just no justifiable reason for the cost aside from a lack of competition and marketing.
I never said that swing was a bassinet, I said from my experience completely dismantling and rebuilding a SNOO the build quality is on par with cheap baby swings, and not what you would expect for a device this expensive.
This is like pointing to a Vespa as proof that a BMW should only cost $7k. A BMW is clearly overpriced, but they are also not the same class of vehicle.
Thar seems a fine comparison when you're comparing quality. The SNOO is like a $200k luxury car, that once you open the hood you realize it's built like one of those mopeds from AliExpress that, because the people that made it don't want to be associated with it. Or the ones that say they're a "Yammaha"
This is irrelevant to my point but for the sake of argument- no it is not. Since it has soft mesh sides, and straps the baby down immobile in the center, it should not be used as a regular bassinet. The manufacturer claims it it’s dangerous to allow a baby inside it not strapped down.
I'm honestly a bit lost for words here. Babies aren't supposed to be mobile in a bassinet -- usually they're swaddled or wrapped up. If they're mobile then they're supposed to be in a crib.
A baby in a sleep sack in an unplugged snoo ("strapped down") is not wholly distinguishable from a baby swaddled in a soft-sided bassinet.
I'm not advocating for actually using it this way, nor for soft-sided bassinets, but... you compared the snoo to a swing. You are not making much sense to me.
I compared the build quality of the SNOO to the build quality of a cheap baby swing. If it helps to avoid confusion, one could compare it to something else cheaply made that isn't also a device for rocking babies back and forth.
It astounds me how much money people a willing to spend on crap like this. I mean, thank you for keeping the economy running, but also how do you afford to keep doing it?
Parent of a formerly colicky baby here, but I agree with OP. Products like this prey on modern parents who have unrealistic expectations of what is needed of them by their baby.
Our son didn't sleep for the first two weeks of his life. We tried everything, including swings and rockers and white noise. Nothing worked, and none of us were sleeping (very similar to OP's story). He was losing weight and the doctor was getting worried.
The breakthrough came when my wife decided to finally just leave him alone to cry in the (very dumb) bassinet. It took a few minutes, but he finally fell asleep and slept longer than he ever had before and woke up happy. From then on that's what we did—he went down crying, he woke up happy. He started putting weight on again and became a healthy happy kid. Based on the concern we were starting to get from the doctor, letting him cry himself to sleep probably saved his life.
Too many parents accept the unrealistic expectations placed on them by our culture, and I'm convinced at this point that those expectations have been largely crafted by people who benefit financially from selling the "solution".
Teach them difficult holds that temporarily work but are unsustainable, then sell them an incredibly overpriced product that automates the hold. Assure them that letting their baby figure out that life outside the womb doesn't have to resemble life inside is abuse, lest they realize that babies can and do sleep in beds and have for centuries.
People also don't understand what it means to actually stay up for a week straight until you do... they think "I've pulled all nighters in college" or something.
You completely lose your mind and start hallucinating. You feel extreme physical and mental pain. You can potentially fall asleep suddenly when it is dangerous to do so. You can get lost or confused in your own home- and be unable to remember the words to communicate simple ideas. You become reactive and easily startled and can become dangerous to people around you. Your entire body and its systems starts to progressively fail on you.
My extremely frugal friends bought one when their second came. It’s a night and day difference for them. They can actually live and enjoy a life instead of being constantly hounded by an infant that keeps them up all night.
Don't dismiss something you don't understand the need for. Even fairly poor people buy these when they can barely afford it because they need it, and there is no realistic alternative.
It effectively solves a desperate problem for people in a desperate situation so they can actually sleep and not go crazy and lose their jobs or get hurt (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41286547). Humans evolved to have lots of baby caretakers, and sometimes newborn babies need to be held and rocked almost continuously- yet not everyone has that kind of help available.
When my sister got one I couldn't believe the incredible disdain from older, non-working family members who raised their kids with the help of a big community that she had no way to access. These same family members that did not step in to help take care of the baby.
> built to move everything on rubber rollers, and those rollers use the wrong material, so they both slip and grind to dust quickly.
Sounds like it was designed deliberately to reduce the aftermarket supply. Maybe the first person can sell it, but avoiding the creation of a robust secondary market has been the dream of a great many MBAs.
Or just wast built to the correct tolerances. We loved our Snoo but it had a life of about 4 months before our son grew out of it. It doesn't feel like those rollers need more than a year or two of life, even with multiple owners.
That’s what they said. It’s only built to survive one, maybe two infants, but to avoid a secondary market the rockers purposefully fail. Both because it’s cheaper to buy material that won’t last, and because it makes prospective buyers more reliant on the manufacturer rather than a cheaper aftermarket supply.
You can get regular bassinets everywhere, and they're pretty much all "better" and "cheaper" but none will have the function the SNOO has of rocking the baby in a certain way, along with a certain sound, that is claimed to mimic the movement and sound of the womb, and is clearly extremely calming. You can do it with just your hands using instructions from "the happiest baby on the block" video, also made by the owner and inventor of SNOO.
If you can afford it, get a plain untreated wood crib/bassinet with a natural fiber flame retardant free mattress. I posted elsewhere in this thread about the theory that flame retardants might contribute to SIDS, and the plain wood is based on the fact that kids will chew on it, and get particles of paint or plastic in their mouth otherwise.
Yes, I was being hyperbolic, that should be obvious. No I am not going to 'look at a teardown' - my whole point was I tore it down to parts, rebuilt it, and fixed design flaws. I was extremely unimpressed by the build quality and major design flaws for something so expensive. It failed in the night with my newborn nephew on it.
I also said I would have paid a lot more than they're selling for, if it existed when I had a kid.
I love tech, but I'm anti shitty-quality-tech that isn't safe, and doesn't last, especially when a baby is supposed to sleep on it and it costs $1695.
You’re being a jerk, and insulting neurodivergent people at the same time. Why not just ask where I got that figure? I explained it here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41286278
Obviously a patented small volume item will cost more than its materials, but the fact remains that the build quality is low, and not what you see with other high end baby equipment.
FWIW I have run companies and invented and sold electronic devices… I understand very well the economics and practical issues involved.
>It was exhausting, and I started to hallucinate frequently, and make dangerously bad decisions from lack of sleep.
The Western (American, especially) approach to early infant care is mind-boggling. In many cultures and nations, often those less "developed", parents suffer little sleep deprivation.
Westerners will pay small fortunes for a cloud subscription bassinet but can't create the basics of a functioning community.
> Westerners will pay small fortunes for a cloud subscription bassinet but can't create the basics of a functioning community.
That is incredibly insulting, what would you have done in my situation specifically?
How the heck can you "create the basics of a functioning community" when you're struggling just to keep a baby alive and haven't slept in two weeks? People in those other cultures didn't create the culture, they were born into it.
The only place I could find work to support my newborn was 1000 miles away from my family and friends. The mom had serious postpartum depression and rage, and generally refused to help take care of our child. She was aggressive and abusive, and locked herself in a room for days on end so I was 100% on my own while trying not to lose my job. I begged people for help and advice but got only disdain "if you're having a hard time you need to just relax" and "parenting is easy for dads! they just play and the mom does it all!" There were no open spots in any kind of childcare around my house- they said "apply before you decide to have a kid." I had done so- but the person at the counter pocketed the deposit and quit. I eventually paid 110% of my salary for a nanny to help me, and burned through all my savings just to survive.
Now that I had this experience, I go out of my way to be there- by airplane if necessary for family and friends that need it.
> Westerners will pay small fortunes for a cloud subscription bassinet but can't create the basics of a functioning community.
What a weird way to phrase things. It has been systematically dismantled and taken away from them over the last few centuries by a relatively minuscule group of people with vested interests.
One of the big problems with American culture surrounding infant care these days is that a vocal group of well-meaning but misguided people persuaded everyone that letting a baby cry themselves to sleep is abuse that will ruin them for life.
Our oldest was inconsolable at bedtimes. We tried every kind of hold, rocking, swings, swaddles, nothing worked. None of us were sleeping for the first two weeks.
Finally and with much guilt my wife finally tried one last thing: leaving him to cry in the bassinet. Lo and behold, he was asleep within five minutes and slept longer than he had in his life. That became our routine: we put him down, he cried himself to sleep, then he woke up happy in a few hours.
I don't know who came up with the idea that babies shouldn't cry alone ever, but I strongly suspect that's the culprit that spurs demand for these products.
Yeah, there are definitely outliers and I'm not suggesting you did the wrong thing. But I do feel the need to push back on the ideas that got my wife and me into the place where we felt guilty letting our first baby cry.
We thought our baby was an outlier but it turns out we were just holding him wrong—that is, we shouldn't have been holding him at all. If we'd been better off at the time (and if it had existed) a Snoo could very easily have been the "solution" when all that was really needed was a realistic perspective.
My general advice to parents now is to ignore all advice and do what's right for your unique kid. For some kids that might be a Snoo. For most, though, it's a scam that deliberately preys on parental fears and inflated self-expectations.
I get what you're saying, and appreciate your understanding. I was also sleep deprived, alone, and didn't know what I was doing so may have done the wrong thing.
I and agree that much of the advice to parents is just nonsense- and a lot of it flip-flops every few years, and is sold to parents using terror, saying your child will die or be permanently harmed if you don't do every little thing you're told. It really can help to look at your individual situation and apply some common sense. The terror itself is more harmful than the advice helpful.
I also agree that it's fine to let a kid cry for a while when they had everything they need already and the parents need a break, but I don't think it's evolutionary or culturally normal to let a kid scream all night long alone. Traditionally, people would be in small groups with a lot of caretakers and would trade off rocking or holding a baby. Humans are hard-wired to be extra responsive to, and annoyed by crying: without a big modern insulated house you could not sleep when your baby is crying. Breastfeeding women get a milk letdown reflex when they hear their baby cry, etc. I'm pretty sure I could feel my stress hormones slowly climb as crying went on, motivating me to do something.
This is yet another of those flip-flopping advice things: once they told people if you comfort a crying baby it will make them soft, weak, and dependent. Now they say it will emotionally traumatize them if you don't, and they will develop attachment and social problems. Both ideas are terrifying to parents, and when they hear them will work hard to do what they are told.
I can assure you that the esame exact problem still exists in tightly knit communities. It's just that the burden is put on the grandparents or siblings. Even in those communities (I'm from one), it sucks to take care of a baby and anything that helps is used and there are tons of "oral knowledge" sort of tricks to calm down a baby or an infant. So this would still be incredibly useful regardless of how communal your life and social network is.
Do you think that those communities haven't adopted the modern diaper just because hey, the community takes care of their babies together? Because that's absolutely not the case (if they can afford to).
I can't even imagine spending $1700 on a bassinet in the first place. As the article notes, this thing gets used for ~5 months (6 if you're really pushing it) at which point the kid is done. If you're going to have another kid then you put it into storage for a few years before it gets a second round of 5 months of use (assuming the company you bought your smart bassinet from doesn't brick it in the interim).
At its simplest, it's a tiny bed on wheels and you can pick one up for free from a local parent. If you want to get really fancy you can get a self-rocking bassinet for <$400.
Who are these people who are willing to spend $1700 on a bassinet but then get outraged when the clearly-exploitative company decides to exploit them for another $100?
The aftermarket for these things means that the cost winds up being split between multiple parties in a lot of cases.
Anecdotally, most parents within my circle bought their Snoo used and sold it after use. I bought an unopened snoo from facebook marketplace for $X and sold it after 6 months for $X-200.
I was a little annoyed that Happiest Baby is meddling with the resale value (because I was expecting to be able to sell it on after a few months of use)
IMO even though the product is overpriced, I'd have happily paid 5k for the extra sleep I believe it gave me.
It would be an interesting case study on pricing and transaction costs to look at how much the resale value changes.
Does it go down by the $100 people will have to pay in subscriptions? will it go down by more than that because people dont want to bother with the subscription as an extra cost?
I question even using it past 2 months. That's around when babies begin to learn to roll over. Swaddling past 2 months has resulted in deaths. I know that you Velcro the baby down with the Snoo, but I wouldn't feel comfortable putting off that milestone for long. As babies learn to roll, they strengthen their neck muscles. This allows them to safely sleep on their stomachs eventually.
My wife's employer got us a rental for all of our kids. We had twins and it was amazing for them but around 3-4 months they were out of it and we returned it early. With our singleton, it didn't work at all. Kid hated it from day 1. We returned it after 3 weeks so that it wasn't eating up space in our bedroom.
The market is saturated. Four years ago we could buy a new one for $1300 or buy used on Craigslist for $800. We went with Craigslist, and resold six months later for $900 (not a typo).
The bassinet is well-made so it would be silly to throw it out after 2-3 kids. The fact that the resellers are other parents makes me trust a little more that they aren’t selling a broken/dirty bassinet, so why buy new for double the cost?
It depends. One of my rules is to never buy a secondhand mattress and I definitely wouldn’t buy one for my baby. I’m not sure off the mattress comes with this bassinet or not.
This article mentions that the Snoo was designed to prevent SIDS, but the number one factor predicting SIDS is a used mattress... and interventional studies have proven it is not caused by other confounding factors like poor familes or second children being more likely to have used mattresses- It can be prevented with a new mattress or non-permeable mattress cover.
The Snoo has an integrated mattress in a non-standard size, but you can buy new replacements from the manufacturer.
> the number one factor predicting SIDS is a used mattress
As a three-time parent who did extensive reading on SIDS prevention before the first one and brushed up before each of of the other two: What?
Do you have a citation for this? Because my recollection is that all of these show up on the list of things to avoid for SIDS but a used mattress never featured once in my reading:
* Smoking
* Fuzzy stuff in the bed (stuffed animals, blankets)
As an anxious parent and an academic scientist, I did a deep dive into the peer reviewed literature on causes of SIDS when I first became a parent, which admittedly was a few years back.
I came across what is called the "Toxic Gas" theory of SIDS, which is admittedly not part of the major recommendations for avoiding SIDS in the USA- but I read all of the literature on it, and I found the evidence quite convincing, and the dismissals to be lacking. There were however dismissals in many popular review articles and mainstream recommendations, but they never presented an articulate rebuttal of what seemed like a reasonable concept, and convincing evidence.
The idea is that fungi in an older dirty mattress metabolize flame retardant compounds and produce toxic gases, which were measured in high concentrations with a mass spec on the surfaces of mattresses where infants had actually died from SIDS[1].
Other studies found correlations with mattress age after controlling for other variables, and decreases in SIDS rates with interventions based on non-permeable mattress wraps [2, 3].
Thinking about it fits neatly with some of the other risk factors you mentioned, as they reduce airflow, or put the infants face closer to the mattress surface.
I think it needs a lot more systematic studying, but it seemed convincing enough for me to buy a new mattress without phosphorus, arsenic or antimony containing flame retardants.
I'm not 100% sure about this theory, but I would not let any infant in my care sleep on an old mattress, or a mattress with potentially toxic flame retardants.
Surely there isn't one single "cause of SIDS" as it is just death, and any person can suddenly die at any age for any number of different reasons.
That idea is missing something- one of the most basic physiological responses is panic when blood CO2 levels get high. A baby that isn’t getting fresh air should be really upset- crying, flailing, etc. which would move them away from the surface and or bring adult help. What is the cause for this system not engaging in these situations? These studies are actually measuring neurotoxins at concentrations expected to cause this, in the boundary layer of the actual mattresses babies died on. But I could imagine it also happens that in some newborns, perhaps this low CO2 response or the ability to act on it isn’t developed yet?
How do you explain the fact that SIDS rates have dramatically dropped as we've rolled out the mainstream recommendations that don't mention anything about fungi or used mattresses?
I already explained that in my long description above- most of those mainstream recommendations make sense in the context of improving airflow and ventilation.
These ideas and interventions are in no way mutually exclusive: the mainstream recommendations are mechanism agnostic, they are just doing things that have been shown to work. And the toxic gas theory also doesn't claim to explain all causes of SIDS, so if some interventions work but don't fit with that framework, it would suggest a possible additional mechanism. For example, I wonder how the smoking and heat fit in as factors since those are factors I would expect would lead to people trying to ventilate more, but I don't really know what behaviors like that correlate with those.
After hearing about this theory, my first thought was that ceiling fans should also be extremely effective at reducing SIDs rates, and it turns out they are massively effective- reducing rates by 72% [1].
As simple explanation is most recommendations pretty much come down to “less stuff with the baby”. That’s fewer opportunities for bad air to become trapped near the baby.
This is largely my hypothesis above. Remove bumpers. Remove blankets. Remove the opportunity for bad air to become trapped.
I took a look at the features that are locked out and they seem reasonable to be behind a subscription as they require costs to maintain. Almost all of the features that do not require some sort of cloud service connection seem to remain free. It's also free for people who use the rental option.
Backlash is also understandable as they are changing the status quo.
Disclosure: We rented a Snoo and it was made a huge difference between our first (no Snoo) and second child.
I think the backlash is overblown because they are only changing the status quo for new purchases with advance notice. Everybody else is grandfathered in.
It is pretty hard to empathize with the people who are complaining but buying the device anyways. Nobody is holding a gun to their head and making them purchase one.
About half of those premium features should not require a server or company-borne "costs to maintain." This seems like a pure cash grab: what subscription will the market bear?
What? Almost none of those features require costs to maintain:
- Car Ride Mode - adds extra bounces
- Level Lock - don't change rhythm
- Sleepytime Sounds - play sounds before and after sleep
and so on.
The only ones I can see? Tracking, Sleep Logs (but I'd also argue that given that this is a smart device, I'd say that they could be expected baselines).
But as for the other, without being argumentative, I am sincerely struggling why it seems reasonable to you that "extra bounces", etc. are a Premium "subscription" feature.
I'm not sure I understand the $1700 price tag. Self rocking bassinets can be had for a couple hundred dollars. Many have the same functionality, with cry detection and white noise capabilities. They also don't require the use of an app, it's just a self contained unit. Where is the 500% upcharge going?
Right but the comment you are replying to is making the argument that the same functionality, and the same increase in sleep, can be had for a fraction of the cost.
"like the snoo" appears to be the sticking point. What specific features do you think that A) are important for helping a baby sleep and B) are only found on the snoo?
I've never used the snoo or any other self-rocking bassinet (luckily my daughter is a decently good sleeper on her own), but this product [0] certainly looks like it's pretty similar for a fraction of the price, and it's even from a known brand.
Just google "self rocking bassinet", but that is also why I asked - so if you are confident enough to say it's not true, then please explain.
Does it just come down to a different controller/set of algorithms for governing the rocking/white noise capabilities? The product itself doesn't seem to cost $1700 dollars to produce - it seems to be a bassinet on rollers with a motor attached that can play sound.
I'm so fed up with Internet of Shit stuff that these days if I need some random thing like a cradle rocker I'll first check to see if there's a DIY Arduino-based solution out there. In this case, sure enough, there is:
I made a DIY rocker for my son in 2 minutes at home when he was born... I took a breast milk pump that has an oscillatory vacuum, hooked it to a large syringe used for marine epoxy, and taped the syringe to one end of a removable car seat that had a curved rocking bottom.
A simple rocker or swing isn't as effective as a snoo, however.
> sensors that detect when the baby is crying and simulates the sounds of the womb to help keep babies
I realize this may come off as a bit insensitive but isn't this taking away a chance to bond with your child? Children not being physically held enough at young age has lifelong implications
On the cutting edge: I've seen techies using ChatGPT to make up and read bedtime stories to toddlers, or to tutor them during the day, so that the parent can stay focused on their career. I don't know that it's harmful, but it seems messed up. I wonder if a kid raised this way will end up tripping LLM text detectors for life...
The lower-tech equivalent of this is a toddler being raised by a tablet or a smartphone. Not necessarily because the content is harmful, but because it's neglect - just like leaving a kid in front of a TV back in my day.
Eh, I used chat-gpt to make up a story (with elements specified by the little). Was quite good for keeping them entertained in the car for the 10 mins mommy was in the store picking up a prescription.
Bedtime stories seems unnecessary. Like there is no shortage of good books out there. Plus, I would feel a sense of loss if I didn’t get to do pirate voices when reading treasure island.
Tutoring … lol. Those kids must be better behaved than mine if they can be trusted to do that sort of thing autonomously.
> I realize this may come off as a bit insensitive but isn't this taking away a chance to bond with your child?
Having a Snoo doesn’t mean you never hold your child. Newborns provide many such opportunities. You don’t need to take them all. See the comment above about a newborn that needed this for 6 hours a night for months.
> Children not being physically held enough at young age has lifelong implications
Citation needed? This is the sort of thing that people use to argue against sleep training, too, but I don’t believe much evidence has been found for that.
> Citation needed? This is the sort of thing that people use to argue against sleep training, too, but I don’t believe much evidence has been found for that.
Indeed, I didn’t mean to imply that “if the offspring is completely deprived of adequate touch or if the infant or toddler experiences only violent or painful touch stimuli” (to quote one of those) then things would be fine. Honestly, maybe I’m generalizing unfairly, but I’d be surprised if that outcome was likely from the parents that buy a Snoo. Maybe it’s a fair thing to warn buyers about. But sleep deprivation among parents presents massive risks both short term and long.
Sorry – I didn't mean to imply that using a Snoo is bad! Many cultures have used different forms of rocking cribs for ages, I'm sure it's absolutely fine if used with a bit of discretion.
The first 3 months after my daughter was born I slept next to her while she was in this. If she was hungry or needed a change she'd let me know. This helped her sleep and helped the rest of us get some rest as well.
The Snoo is great and the key feature that actually helps prevent SIDS is the restraints and swaddle, which is not being moved to a subscription here. It's actually FDA approved to reduce the risk of SIDS. The "bonus" rocking and soothing noises just help parents get more sleep.
The Snoo is very expensive and easy to pass down or buy used. I think they probably screwed up by selling it outright. You can rent the Snoo, which is probably a better model for everyone. This is kind of a janky way to pull back some of the rental revenue they lost by selling a durable product that people only need for a few months.
It feels gross, I get it. But it's effectively a $100 per child fee which is quite reasonable given the benefits. And there's no realistic way to charge for that other than subscription for the premium (non-safety) stuff. The alternative is to keep developing new models with new features and adding crap people don't need. One thing I love about the original Snoo is that it works fine without an Internet connection or app. I used the app and it was great, but it's nice to know that when you travel or lose power, it can still rock your baby and soothe them. I hope that's still the case if there's a subscription involved.
> the key feature that actually helps prevent SIDS is the restraints and swaddle
Just a note that the NIH guidelines specifically call out this marketing claim as BS:
> Even though swaddling does not reduce the risk of SIDS, some babies are calmer and sleep better when they are swaddled. Even though swaddling does not reduce the risk of SIDS, some babies are calmer and sleep better when they are swaddled.
They also call out the monitors specifically as also useless for SIDS and issue a general warning that products that claim to reduce SIDS are nearly-universally not useful and are often counterproductive.
> And there's no realistic way to charge for that other than subscription for the premium (non-safety) stuff. The alternative is to keep developing new models with new features and adding crap people don't need.
There’s another alternative: simply sell them for a little more than they cost. Just keep doing that. Solid business plan.
I feel differently about that. (And it is possible that it is just because I don't understand what Snoo does)
To view a baby camera over the internet someone has to run a server. To run that server costs money. (If you think that the actual server/bandwidth cost is negligible, make sure to also include the cost of keeping the team employed to maintain those servers.) Someone has to pay for that. Based on what you say it sounds like the Nanit baby camera degrades gracefully to the local only features if you don't pay the subcription. That is kind of the only honest way to run a business with a connected component.
As long as they were up-front about this at purchase I can't see a problem with that.
How is this different from Snoo? Quite frankly I don't see how the baby rocking function requires a remote connection. It should be totally implemented locally inside the basinet and there should be no on-going cost. Therefore the only reason they might lock the feature away is due to greed.
> To view a baby camera over the internet someone has to run a server.
In an alternate universe with better technology, this would not be true. You'd connect to a host over the WAN just as you connect over the LAN. Unfortunately ISPs and firewalls and NAT have made this much more difficult and complicated than it should be.
My heart aches when I think about how many company servers are out there running only to facilitate "doing X with your LAN, but from the Internet".
My point is that the app does that for free even from a distance. It’s simply website access that costs even though it should have 0 more marginal cost
The Dormi baby monitor app works extremely well, and you can install it on any old smartphone to repurpose as a baby monitor. For my son, I just velcroed an outdated phone with a worn out battery to the wall. It is really well designed because it also notifies if the connection is lost or if anything goes wrong, which a lot of expensive commercial cameras don't.
It has a few bells and whistles that are worth having. We combined a Nanit camera and an Owlet sleep sock and that gave us god peace-of-mind at night. I only wish we’d topped it off with an analog walkie talkie as a backup in case the Wi-Fi went down.
We used a similar setup, but opted for two sets of analog walkie talkies (instead of one set), so that we could fall back to the secondary set if the batteries ran out in the first set (we replaced the batteries in the two sets of walkie talkies at one-month offsets so that they wouldn't run out at the same time). We also had the two sets running on different channels, to avoid concurrent outages caused by unexpected radio interference. We did the math afterwards; overall availability of the child monitoring system was four nines. Satisfactory.
Am I the only one who thinks this is unfair? If you use the Snoo successfully it gets you two-plus hours of sleep a night. That’s magical as a parent of a newborn.
We’re talking about a critical app for a hardware device that has a lifespan of several babies (ours is going on six as it circulates among friends). We should reward people who make hardware so durable and effective that they’ve sold so many of them they need to find another revenue stream.
We talk a lot in this community about maintainers getting paid. Here is a company within a ferociously regulated and risky market doing that.
I bought a Miku camera because it has a few extra features that I wanted and unlike the competition there was no monthly fee.
Well then they screwed up by pushing a bad over the air update that literally bricked all operating cameras. They made that right by replacing them all, but then they went bankrupt.
A new company bought their assets during bankruptcy and the first thing they did was add a monthly fee to use any of the “advanced” features (all the reasons I bought it in the first place.)
Ditto. If you’re able to run an old version of the Android app, then you still have access to all of the Miku features. I haven’t found a similar workaround for the iOS app.
My wife and I are currently borrowing a Snoo from a friend and have found it very helpful. Our daughter is 8+ weeks and regularly sleeping 7+ hours in a single stretch each night, probably heavily due to the Snoo. When we first got the Snoo, we saw an immediate change in our daughter's sleep where she went from having a unreliable 2-3 hour stretch between feedings to a solid 3+ hours between feedings with less fits during her sleep and also falling to sleep faster when we put her in the Snoo.
We understand the desire for the company to make money, but we feel there's a happy middle-ground where the Snoo could have the premium app subscription waived for the first child (6-12 months premium subscription free), but require a fee for the app for future children. That being said, the Snoo has been advertised for years around the core features that are now being locked behind a subscription.
We are very fortunate to be borrowing the Snoo from our friend, but it definitely makes us second guess buying a Snoo if the price goes up due to the "mandatory" subscription fee. Would we still use the Snoo even if we had to pay the subscription fee? Most likely, because one is ultimately buying sleep back by using a Snoo. At the same time, the Snoo does not work for every child and we've heard of multiple parents in our friend circles who bought the Snoo but didn't end up using it because it didn't work for their children. It's kind of an expensive, risky bet to make for the potential chance that it may not work out.
I personally think the Snoo is overpriced and think the true price is probably around $1,000, but it sounds like there are inefficiencies to be ironed out on Happiest Baby's side. The "mattresses" the Snoo comes with are simple foam and it's made up of a ton of plastic. Not being a physical product engineer myself, I think it could probably be re-engineered to bring the cost down while retaining the same feature set.
Based on the article, it sounds like Snoo hasn't yet started charging a transfer fee when a parent goes to sell the crib after 4 or 5 months. I have to assume that fee is coming soon to a bassinet near you.
Why don't they just rent the thing entirely, six months at a time? Recurring revenue, tiered pricing, no secondhand market, and less waste from planned obsolescence.
Happy Baby customers received an email in June alerting them to the change in pricing. Buyers who picked up a Snoo before July 15 were grandfathered into the previous structure, while anyone who bought after that was locked into the subscription model.
A tragic catch-22. You design and build the app-enabled internet rocker crib, but cannot justify supporting the app or the internet support without a subscription fee.
Reminds me of the "Someone Who Is Good At The Economy Please Help Me" memes.
> The company's founder, Harvey Karp, said the pricing change was necessary to "bring in revenue," noting that the company was not underwritten by a university or the government, and must survive on its sales alone. He said his ultimate goal would be to see the Snoo paid for by the government or by insurance companies, but it's unclear if there has been any substantive movement toward achieving that end.
They want the government/insurance to buy them in bulk and then rent seek for everyone using them. There's zero reason why for the price this couldn't be done completely local and not cost Snoo a cent to run. They just don't want to because the long term strategy is to collect revenue forever.
Your quote doesn't contradict the parent comment. Snoo may need to "bring in revenue" because they're losing money. They may, simultaneously, want to have their product purchased in large quantities, as that would be another way to "bring in revenue".
We had a Snoo for our kid. I cannot see how anyone knowing our kid was a poor sleeper when he was born, and improved over six months, would be worth anything to anyone. “Parents are sleep-deprived” is a pretty well-known fact at this point.
a rocking basinet is a pendulum, thus mass of the child may be determined on a day to day average, thus inference may be made, such as when larger clothes are a good ad to push.
I was actually using irony to highlight how "helpless" companies act when they deliberately engineer a flaw that "forces" them to charge a recurring support fee. The scenario where they didn't consider this outcome is impossible; they knew they could charge a recurring fee by removing all physical controls. They did 90% of the work and charged you monthly for the remaining 10%, not because the last 10% is hard, but because you have no other choice.
This is not a bad decision, but an intentionally insidious design pattern intended to separate owners from the functionality they paid for and own. The people that greenlit this design deserve to be held criminally liable. The business in this instance deserves no empathy.
Your preference is starting to cause substantial market harm that can only be resolved with regulation and antitrust legislation. Suffice to say you may want to tweak your outlook on the free market apropos of the internet and other such technologies our forefathers failed to consider.
Why do you think there is meaningful harm and why do you think it needs to be resolved with legislation?
In my mind, making sure that yuppies get a slightly cheaper $1700 bassinet is completely outside the scope of the roles and responsibility of government.
Like every smart device, the Snoo isn't actually that smart. We have a 1 month old and bought a Snoo second-hand in anticipation and way before they changed the terms of their app.
Where you'd expect the Snoo to dutifully monitor the baby and gently increase the intensity of the motion to soothe the baby, it rapidly goes from a baseline to the highest level of motion and sound within a minute or so, which is both annoying for the parents and stressful for the child.
The motion locking feature was how we got around that poor excuse for engineering, but now that pretty basic feature is now behind the paywall. We just use it as a standard bassinet.
I haven't signed up for the added features yet, our kid is a pretty good sleeper at this point, but those features are a necessity to operate the Snoo properly, so I'll end up paying the premium (begrudgingly). As a parent I know companies are doing everything they can to get my business, so I'm not surprised by this behavior, but it's just a disappointment and annoyance.
Meanwhile Finnish babies sleep in the cardboard box that originally contained a government-supplied cache of baby clothes, pillows, blankets, and even a toy and book or two, while their parents are both given 160 days (32 five-day work weeks) of paternal leave to care for the kid.
new parents are so easy to scam, they all want the best for their new child, and they think that means blowing $$$$ on too-deluxe baby gear they will only use for a short period of time
we fell for it...plonked down $$$ for the deluxe stroller...used it four times
I’m curious why you only used the stroller 4 times. We also decided on a very expensive stroller and infant cat seat, and we’re pretty happy with them. Assuming the stroller continues to work well for 3ish years I think we’ll have no regrets.
Of course, we don’t know how happy we’d have been with a cheaper option. That probably would have been fine too. But the build quality seems noticeable and it doesn’t feel like we got taken advantage of.
You bought into a walled garden, now you're upset when the owner of that garden decides to do some landscaping. Something tells me people aren't really getting this whole "you need to own stuff to have control over it" thing.
When you buy a PlayStation 5 or an iPhone, you’re buying into a walled garden. People generally understand the implications of their choice of garden.
Looking at this product on Amazon right now, there’s zero indication that there’s some subscription component, nor would I have any reason as a potential buyer to suspect that there’s a garden, much less a wall.
To say nothing of the ridiculousness of the restriction itself. For all of the problems with walled gardens, they generally come with tradeoffs, some of which are beneficial.
This looks like nothing but pure dark patterns and greed.
You imply there is some moral relevance to commerce. There is not. You either own a thing to control it, or you do not. I'm not saying relying on goodwill and enforcement is naive, but you always have to keep the possibility in mind that somebody somewhere will implement some new feature locking you out of the experience you expected, unless you own the thing.
It's unclear what point you're attempting to make here.
You began by strongly implying that people should have known better for buying into a walled garden.
My point is that people had no reason to believe there was a "walled garden" (which seems like a misnomer), nor any reason to believe they would not "own" the bassinet they purchased.
I began by strongly implying that people should know how their money will be used in cases when they own the product they bought vs when they are paying for a service via subscription. If someone you paid has control over a thing and the legal cover to change it out from under you, it seems reasonable to be disappointed but completely unreasonable to be upset or not to expect something like this to happen.
They have every reason not to believe they own the bassinet, by the simple fact that a subscription is required to use it!
Not quite, dear customer: You own the motionless hunk of plastic, and you only rent the functionality. See also streaming hardware, BMW heated seats, textbooks, and home security systems.
I recently rebuilt a used snoo myself for my newborn nephew, and was shocked to see that it is built to move everything on rubber rollers, and those rollers use the wrong material, so they both slip and grind to dust quickly.
That said- it works. I would have given my right arm for one when my son was newborn and had "colic" and would literally scream continuously from 10pm to 4am everyday for months. I was up all night holding him by myself, using the method developed by Dr. Harvey Karp (who later founded SNOO)- which is exactly what the SNOO copies and replicates automatically, which is the only thing that would calm him. It was exhausting, and I started to hallucinate frequently, and make dangerously bad decisions from lack of sleep. I think the SNOO would have saved me.