The 6 Best Bassinets and Bedside Sleepers of 2025

Best for: Folks who are willing to pay (significantly) more for a responsive bassinet that might help their family get more hours of sleep during those desperate early days of parenting.

Why we like it: The Snoo Smart Sleeper is an expensive, well-engineered smart bassinet that makes a lot of big promises about increasing your baby’s sleep. Specifically, the claim is that it will add one to two hours per night to their schedule and sleep-train your baby. (For our full assessment of the Snoo, see Is the $1,700 Snoo Smart Sleeper Bassinet Worth It? What to Know Before You Buy.)

The bassinet is outfitted with a microphone and sensors that allow it to tell (via sound and motion clues) whether your baby is awake and in need of soothing. The bassinet responds accordingly with automated swaying and shushing, coaxing the baby to sleep and ultimately allowing parents to get more rest during the bleary, exhausted first months of newborn life.

In our case, it actually worked. But for every Snoo devotee out there, you’re likely to find a hater or—more commonly—a parent who paid a pretty penny only to be underwhelmed when their infant didn’t follow the script.

The concept behind the Snoo isn’t anything new. It was designed by Harvey Karp, MD, a pediatrician who popularized a method of calming babies, called the 5 S’s, in his best-selling book The Happiest Baby on the Block (first published in 2002). Caregivers have long been responsible for implementing the S’s (including swaying, shushing, and swaddling). But the Snoo lets you outsource—er, automate—some of them, enabling an infant to sleep longer and more deeply with less parental intervention.

It’s not like humans are totally forgotten in the process, though: The Snoo’s features are designed to mimic the relaxing sounds and motions of the womb. The idea is that a baby feels comforted by the familiar at a time when the outside world is an unfamiliar and unsettling place.

At first glance, there’s nothing that reads particularly high-tech about the Snoo. It looks like a sleek and stylish bassinet, with white mesh walls anchored by a wooden base and chrome legs that give off a vaguely Scandinavian vibe. The cover of the mattress is water-resistant, and the mattress and mesh can be spot-cleaned with a mild soap or detergent.

At 38 pounds, the Snoo is heavy to move, but it’s easy to assemble without tools, and it has a compact footprint. The bassinet comes with an organic cotton sheet and a starter pack of Snoo Sleep Sacks—proprietary swaddles you zip your baby into and then hook onto two plastic clips affixed to the bassinet’s base. (The Snoo’s motion function cannot be activated if the swaddle is not attached properly to the hooks.) By attaching the swaddle to the mattress clips, you are effectively immobilizing your child on their back within the bassinet.

The Snoo’s app is easy to use. As of July 15, 2024, Happiest Baby, which makes the Snoo, offers two subscription options for the app.

The basic version is available to everyone free of charge; it includes the ability to control the Snoo’s speed and sound, and to receive alerts if the baby needs attention.

Along with the functions of the basic app, the premium version lets you track your baby’s sleeping and eating patterns over time. It also has some advanced settings for motion and sounds, and more. The premium version is free for nine months for those who buy the Snoo directly from the company or an authorized seller; those who rent it get the premium membership for the length of the rental plus one extra month. For people who buy their Snoo secondhand, borrow from a friend, or want to extend the membership beyond nine months, it costs $20 a month.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

For most families, the Snoo’s price will be its biggest drawback. At the time of publication, it was $1,700 purchased at full retail (though it does go on sale); this is a number that might sound outrageous or reasonable, depending on your budget and desperation for more sleep.

Still, the Snoo is known for having a healthy resale market, so you’re likely to be able to recoup a good portion of your initial investment. Or a Snoo can be rented directly from Happiest Baby, for $159 per month or $469 for six months (plus a $100 reconditioning fee for both options). You should also factor in the cost of purchasing additional Snoo Sleep Sacks, which come in different sizes, if you want to have extras.

The criticisms about the Snoo should not be rejected out of hand. Some parents we surveyed complained that it simply didn’t work for them—their babies just didn’t like it. Others had difficulty weaning their babies from the Snoo and moving them to a traditional crib after four to six months.

I interviewed multiple experts who were in favor of the Snoo, but I also spoke to experts who voiced concerns. Among the issues? The Snoo can work so well that babies may not wake up on their own to eat. If parents aren’t diligent about setting alarms every two to four hours for feedings, babies could potentially end up suffering from “failure to thrive.” This is the term for when a child’s weight or growth rate falls significantly below that of their peers, cautions Aleesha Burke, a lactation consultant in Layton, Utah.

Stacy Conder, a physical therapist, and Susan Klemm, an occupational therapist—both of the Carolina Kinder Development pediatric practice in Charlotte, North Carolina—also advise against using the Snoo. Because Snoo babies aren’t repositioned often enough, they said this could potentially exacerbate head and neck conditions such as plagiocephaly (back-of-the-head flatness), torticollis, and brachycephaly.

And since the Snoo Sleep Sack pins the baby to the bassinet surface, it keeps the infant from practicing developmental skills, like rolling over, as they grow. A pediatrician I spoke with didn’t name the Snoo specifically, but they suggested that a smart sleeper that uses prolonged swaddling could hamper gross motor development, by preventing a baby from trying to roll in the two- to four-month window. The Snoo’s maker says it can be used for up to six months. But six months is a long time to go without the freedom to roll over, considering how many hours infants log in their beds. Finally, the Snoo provides no storage space.

For more on our personal experience with testing the Snoo, see Is the $1,700 Snoo Smart Sleeper Bassinet Worth It? What to Know Before You Buy.

Key specs

Assembly time: 3 minutes
Dimensions when assembled: 35¾ by 19 by 31 inches (LWH)
Bassinet weight: 38 pounds
Baby weight limit: 25 pounds
Adjustable: no
Storage: no
Included accessories: three Snoo Sleep Sacks (S, M, L) with Snoo purchase or two (S, M) with Snoo rental, one fitted sheet
Other special features: responsive swaying, white noise