Snoo Vs mamaRoo Sleep – Which is the best smart bassinet?

If you are looking for a smart bassinet that rocks your baby to sleep then you’re probably tossing up between these two incredibly popular and innovative smart bassinets – the mamaRoo sleep and the Happiest Baby Snoo. 

While these two smart bassinets have a lot in common, there are some significant differences. So I’m going to help you choose which of these two innovative baby products is right for you.

What They Have In Common

The overall concept and purpose of the Snoo and the mamaRoo Sleep are the same. They are smart bassinets that rock your baby to sleep so you don’t have to. They are designed and marketed to make parents’ lives easier in those early days when sleep is so precious. 

They both share the following features:

• Suitable for newborns up to approximately 6 months old.
• Can be operated remotely with an app on your phone. 
• They plug into the power so there’s no charging or downtime. 
• Multiple movement settings and white noise to find the best way to help settle your baby. 

Why Choose The Snoo

The Snoo does offer a few more features compared to the mamaRoo Sleep with automation and tracking your baby’s sleep. 

You can set your Snoo to respond to your baby’s cries, so if Baby wakes and starts to fuss in the night the Snoo will self activate to try to settle your baby so you may not need to get up. The Snoo will also alert you through the app if your baby won’t settle – functioning like a baby monitor if you’re unable to hear your baby’s cries.

So this extra automation might mean you can sleep through your baby’s minor sleep interruptions if the Snoo is able to quickly resettle your baby. 

The Snoo also tracks your baby’s sleep for you, recording awake and sleeping periods, so you can record sleep improvements or regressions. 

Lastly, the movement offered by the Snoo is a side to side rocking motion with varying speed options. So it can be set to a smooth rocking movement or sped up to a more rapid jiggle. I’d say based on my own babies I think that the jiggle movement looks like it would be quite effective at settling or re-settling my babies. As both my babies responded more to a quick, shakey jiggle  rather than a soft, slow sway. 

Why Choose the mamaRoo Sleep 

The mamaRoo Sleep does offer more movement settings. The movement options for the mamaRoo Sleep are – Car Ride, Tree Swing, Rockabye, Kangaroo and Wave. Then you can also adjust the speed to find what works for your baby.

The mamaRoo Sleep has the option of a timer so it can be programmed to turn itself off after a period of time – which is especially helpful if you’re just wanting to use the mamaRoo Sleep to settle baby at bedtime but don’t want them to become too accustomed to being rocked all night. But that switch off timer is the only “automatic” feature.

However, through the 4moms App on your phone, you can turn the mamaRoo Sleep on or off, increase or decrease the speed, change the style of the movement and also switch on, adjust or change the white noise. So this can be done at night without necessarily having to get out of bed, but you will obviously need to wake up to operate the app.

Pricing and availability

I think the biggest difference between the mamaRoo Sleep and the Snoo is the price and availability in Australia. 

The mamaRoo sleep RRP is $749 and can be found in all big baby retailers in Australia – often on sale for around $640-$650.

The Snoo RRP is $1395 USD (approximately $1900 AUD) and from what I could find is only available through a couple of online retailers. So at this stage it appears there’s no store to go into to touch and feel the Snoo before you buy. 

Final Thoughts

Based on the price and availability I think the mamaRoo Sleep is the obvious choice.

The mamaRoo Sleep is a very expensive bassinet, but it’s practically a bargain compared to the Snoo.

The Snoo does offer some pretty cool features and I can definitely see the appeal of not necessarily being woken up every time your baby fusses at night. However, I know for myself if my baby cries – even if the Snoo was able to resettle them for me – I would be awake anyway. 

And even if the Snoo might be “better”, I don’t think it’s 2-3 times better to justify the price difference.

Also, both the mamaRoo Sleep and the Snoo have the same mix of reviews. It seems like they work for most babies and so most of the reviews are glowingly positive. However, both products have reviews from parents saying it didn’t work for their baby – their baby still woke or wouldn’t sleep and they needed to be rocked or fed to sleep by their parents. 

So no matter which you choose there is no guaranteed magic sleep solution.

I hope that helps! 

Please comment below if you have any questions. Or if you have used any of these smart bassinets with your baby I’d love to hear your thoughts. And check out our other parenting product reviews here.