We Rented a SNOO, Here’s What We Thought

When you’re getting ready to have a baby, one of the first items you’ll need when you come home from the hospital is a place for your baby to sleep. 

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There are so many different options for baby sleep – it can be overwhelming. Crib or bassinet? Traditional bassinet or tech-enabled rocker? 

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We were new parents living in a small apartment, grappling with this decision. Our priorities were: 

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1. Health & Safety: We wanted to pick an option that would be safe for our daughter in her first months of life.
2. Cost: We were careful about budgeting and wanted to avoid spending on things we didn’t need. 
3. Space: We live in a small apartment in a city, and don’t have a lot of extra space. 
4. Sustainability: Sustainability is important to us in all of my purchasing decisions, but especially when it comes to baby things. We want to spend our money on fewer, higher-quality things made of safe, sustainable materials from companies we believe in.

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We ended up trying out multiple options. We rented the SNOO Smart Sleeper Bassinet, received a hand-me-down Graco Pack ‘n Play and a hand-me-down Stokke Sleepi Crib, and bought a pre-loved Baby Bjorn Travel Crib, which we used at different times and for different purposes. I’ll break down more about our decisions and why they evolved.

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First, Decide if You Want a Crib or Bassinet

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A decision on what kind of bassinet or crib is right for you really depends on what you’re optimizing for. No one option is right for everyone.

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Bassinets tend to be more compact and a better fit for small spaces, especially if your baby will be sleeping in your room in the early months. However, they have the downside of only being usable for a few months (typically for the first 4-6 months). 

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We wanted to have our baby sleep in our room for the first four to five months, until we started sleep training. Since we live in a small apartment, there is literally no space for a crib in our bedroom, so we knew we’d need a bassinet for a few months.

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Cribs tend to be larger but also longer-lasting. Many cribs are designed so that they can grow with your baby through toddlerhood. We loved the idea of going straight to a crib that our child could grow with for years – but practically speaking, we knew we’d have to wait until we moved our child to her own room to have space for a crib. 

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What is the SNOO, and Is It Worth It?

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If you, like us, are considering a bassinet, then the SNOO might be on your radar.

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The SNOO Smart Sleeper Bassinet is “a responsive bassinet that adds sleep by responding to a baby's cries with white noise and motion to soothe fussing.” It was developed by Dr. Harvey Karp, a pediatrician and author of the popular book on sleep, “The Happiest Baby on the Block”.

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I’ll admit, I was skeptical. A $1,700 wifi-enabled smart bassinet that I’ll use for a few months? It went against every fiber of my cost-conscious, sustainability-oriented being. In Finland, babies sleep in cardboard boxes, for goodness' sake!

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Even compared to other popular crib and bassinet options, like the Graco Pack N’ Play ($80) or Halo Bassinest Essential Sleeper ($150), it’s truly an order of magnitude more expensive. And it’s not guaranteed it’ll work for you. Not all babies react well to the SNOO, and some parents say it didn’t help at all.

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That said, many parents and experts swear by the SNOO. In those first few months when sleep is truly precious, many parents believe anything that can get them a few more hours of sleep a week is worth it.

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We wanted to try it to find out if it would be worth it for us, but we found it really difficult to shell out $1,700 for a brand-new one that we would only use for a few months.

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The good news? There are multiple options that make it affordable to try out a SNOO without buying a new one outright. Buying a pre-owned unit or renting reduces the up-front costs and the risk that it won’t work for your child, while also limiting the impact on the environment. From a health and safety perspective, it was reassuring for me that the company Happiest Baby manages these programs directly. They guarantee that the items are clean and safe, and the products have a one-year warranty.

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On the Happiest Baby website, it costs $159/month to rent a SNOO, or when they have a special offer, it can cost just $499 to rent one for 6 months. A certified, pre-loved SNOO goes for $1,195.

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In the end, it was definitely worth it for us to rent a SNOO for 6 months. Our daughter loved it from day one, and it definitely helped her sleep. That means it got us many hours of additional sleep, too. There were many nights when we put the SNOO on and lay in bed, grateful.

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Even though the SNOO rental was still more expensive than other bassinets, if you compare it to the cost of a night nurse (which can be $20-$60/hour), or a few hours with a sleep consultant (which can cost anywhere from $250 to thousands of dollars) – which we definitely considered in the wee hours of the morning with cries reverberating in our heads –  it starts to feel a lot more cost effective.

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Also, the safety swaddle in the SNOO really gave us peace of mind. In those early weeks and months, it’s really hard to know if you’re doing a swaddle right. The Sleepea swaddle’s velcro straps were really helpful. That said, you can buy the Sleepea swaddles on their own and use them with any other bassinet or crib option (they just won’t clip in).

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Benefits: What we loved about the SNOO

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• Automated rocking and soothing: The SNOO really is good at what it says it does – it rocks and plays white noise in a way that is responsive to a baby’s cries and movement. It often helped soothe our baby back to sleep, so we didn’t have to.
  
  
• Affordable rental option: The option to rent a SNOO directly from Happiest Baby made it affordable for us. At $499 for 6 months, or $159/month, this helped us save money and also lower our environmental impact by spreading out the environmental and carbon costs of producing a SNOO over multiple uses.
  
  
• Safety-focused design: The swaddle and specialized clip in the bassinet frame help to keep babies sleeping on their backs. This was something we were particularly worried about in the first months, so knowing that the SNOO had earned FDA De Novo approval (as the first government-certified device to enforce safe sleep posture) gave us peace of mind.
  
  
• Easy setup and disassembly: It was really straightforward to assemble the SNOO. My parents live nearby, and we ended up disassembling and reassembling it multiple times to carry it back and forth (that’s how useful we found it). It’s bulky and heavy, but it was easy to set up each time. 

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Drawbacks: What we didn’t love about the SNOO

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• Higher cost: Even with the rental and pre-loved options, the SNOO is still more expensive than other standard bassinets and cribs. And if you have space in your home for a crib from day one, you might not even need to buy a bassinet. 
  
  
• Doesn’t work for every baby: Some parents report that their infant didn’t respond well to the motion, noise, or swaddle system—some even found it buzzy or overly disruptive.
  
  
• Re-packing it wasn’t easy: While it was super easy to disassemble the SNOO and to schedule a pickup from USPS, the only thing that we found difficult was repacking the SNOO into its original cardboard box. We ended up using copious amounts of tape to keep it together.
  
  

How Sustainable is the Snoo?

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Materials & Supply Chain

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In some ways, a SNOO has some similar characteristics to other bassinets. Its walls are made of a mesh fabric blend of polyester and nylon. While supporting breathability and airflow, unfortunately, these are both petrochemical-derived materials.  

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SNOO sleep sacks and sheets are made from 100% GOTS-certified organic cotton. However, the SNOO mattress (like most mattresses) is made of from polyurethane, which is derived from fossil fuels. 

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The SNOO also has a wooden base and metal legs. It plugs into the wall and has some machinery associated with the rocking motion. We don’t have the exact specs of the full material breakdown. Ideally, SNOO would have more transparent reporting there. However, weighing in at 38 lbs, significantly more than most bassinets, it’s safe to assume that it likely requires more materials, energy, and resources to manufacture and transport than most bassinets.

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Slow Consumption

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We were incredibly impressed by Happiest Baby’s dedication to circularity programs. 

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The SNOO was the only bassinet we found that offered a company-owned and operated circularity program. Especially given the safety concerns around buying a used bassinet or crib, we really appreciated the company quality and cleanliness checks that the company-owned circularity programs offered. And at the high price of the SNOO, these circularity programs help mitigate the environmental and financial cost of the SNOO. 

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Happiest Baby offers fully refurbished, safety-certified SNOOs for sale on its website for $1,195. Importantly, these SNOOs have the same 1-year guarantee as a new SNOO. 

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They also have a unique SNOO rental program, which costs $159 a month. At the time of this piece was written, they also offered an exclusive 6-month discount – a $469 one-time payment for 6 months. 

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Both of these circular programs, run through Happiest Baby, offer safety guarantees, two free sleep sacks and one free sheet, customer support, and free shipping within the continental US. At the end of a SNOO’s life, they also offer recycling services. 

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Accountability

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Happiest Baby does publish some sustainability information on its website. However, this reporting does not mention any measurement of company emissions, efforts to reduce overall emissions, or emissions targets. They do mention efforts to offset, but only the shipping of products, not the production of them.

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Overall

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Renting or buying a pre-owned SNOO significantly should reduce the financial and environmental costs of using the SNOO. These options allow the product to stay in use for many years – potentially even decades – rather than just a few months. 

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Participating in the circular economy is an effective way to save money and reduce the environmental impact of an item like a bassinet, which is typically used for a short period of time. 

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Other Sleeping Options We Loved

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Before our baby was born, we got a hand-me-down Stokke Sleepi Crib that we love. It’s made of real wood, with a sturdy, clean design, and can grow with our child through age five. It’s also an aesthetically pleasing piece of furniture that looks nice in our daughter’s room. 

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Another option is to use a Graco Pack ‘n Play instead of a crib. It’s not the most beautiful addition to the room, but it’s light, sturdy, practical, and practically indestructible. We got a hand-me-down Pack N’ Play that was 7 years old, and it still feels like new. It’s actually been super helpful to have the Pack N’ Play in the apartment. It’s acted as a safe play area for our child when we’re in the kitchen or living room and need a place to put her. The higher bassinet setting made it a great option even from the first week we came home from the hospital, and if you get the diaper changing add-on, it doubles as a diaper changing station. 

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If you plan to fly with your child when they’re young, my pick would be a Baby Bjorn Travel Crib or a Guava Lotus Travel Crib instead of a Pack ‘n Play. Why? At 21 lbs, the Pack N’ Play is heavy and bulky. It’s truly a pain to fly with – and to lug around at the airport, or to fit in a rental car. After our first trip, we decided we were never taking our Pack ‘n Play on a trip again. 

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The Baby Bjorn – which we found on Facebook Marketplace – is just 13 pounds, and packs into a neat little carrying case. The Guava is 15 pounds and has a backpack carrying case, and was our second choice. Either one could double as a portable playpen at home, too. The downside of both these options is that they’re low to the ground (it’s not easy to bend over to pick up and lay down a sleeping baby – especially for grandparents).

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If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that your needs will evolve over time, and in ways that are difficult to anticipate. For us, buying or borrowing pre-loved options gave us the flexibility we needed to try out what worked for us and move on when something didn’t meet our needs anymore.

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If you’d like more guidance on shopping for a sustainable crib or bassinet, check out this article.