Best Budget-Friendly: First Years 2-in-1 Simple Serve Bottle Warmer

For you novice parents, a quick caveat on bottle warmers—ALWAYS check the temperature of a baby bottle on your skin first before giving it to a baby. Even the best bottle warmers can overheat a bottle.

And a word on cleaning: all of these bottle warmers work in a similar way—you add water to a reservoir, which is heated to heat the bottle. Unless you use distilled water, this reservoir will require regular cleaning. That’s because tap water has minerals, which will lead to grime in the bottle warmer when heated.

This bottle warmer earns our best budget-friendly pick—it is much easier on the wallet than fancier bottle warmers that can run three or four times the price! Here’s more on how this warmer did in our tests.

What We Liked

• Easy to use. The controls are simple—just one button to push!

• Affordable. 

• Auto shut off.

• Pre-filling reservoir is a time saver. Other bottle warmers require you to add water with each bottle.

What Needs Work

• Takes longer to heat up a bottle. In our tests, it took about 5 minutes to take a bottle from room temperature to serving temp. That is about 25% slower than our next pick.

• No timer.

• Can overheat bottles.

• Inconsistent heating times. This warmer oddly heated slower and slower over time.

• Harder to clean than others we researched.

Best At Warming Fast: Philips Avent Fast Baby Bottle Warmer

This model took the crown in our recent tests of bottle warmers—just 4 minutes to warm a room temperature bottle to serving temperature. And a bag of frozen expressed breast milk was ready in just 9 minutes on the unit’s highest settings. That was a land speed record compared to other units. We found it heats bottles quickly and evenly.

Here’s more on why we recommend this bottle warmer.

What We Liked

• Evenly heated bottles with no hot spots.

• Easy to use controls. Nothing fancy—just a big dial to turn.

• Easy to clean.

• Fits many brands of bottles, not just Avent bottles. And it can heat jars of baby food.

• No wasting of water. The alternative to using a warmer is to run a bottle under hot water for a few minutes. But it can take several minutes for water to get hot, depending on how fast your hot water heater is. So there is a good amount of water wasted with this method.

What Needs Work

• No timer or automatic shut-off. That was the biggest complaint we have with this warmer—you have to remember to turn it off.

• Inaccurate estimates for warming. Our testers also said the manual estimated warming times were off—real world testing was slower than the manual suggested. As such, dissenters who didn’t like this warmer said they didn’t quite see a difference between using a warmer and a pot of hot water.

• Can overheat bottles if you aren’t careful. That’s where a timer would come in helpful!

Best Adjustable Timer: Dr. Brown’s Deluxe Baby Bottle Warmer

If you are thinking of giving a bottle warmer as a gift or want one with an adjustable timer, our choice would be Dr. Brown’s Deluxe Baby Bottle Warmer. The additional features may be worth the upgrade, especially if you plan to have more than one kiddo. Here’s more:

What We Liked

• Adjustable timer. Strangely, that is missing from most other bottle warmers.

• Auto shut-off. This prevents bottles from over-heating—and, again, other bottle warmers omit this.

• Cycle memory. It can remember your preferred heating time. We thought this feature worked well.

• Adjustable basket holds other brands of bottles besides Dr. Browns.

• Easy to use.

What Needs Work

• Frequent cleaning necessary. Yes, this bottle warmer can be filled with enough water to heat several bottles. But the downside is cleaning—you have to stay on top of it or mold can grow. And some users say it is difficult to keep clean.

• Inconsistent heating. For some reason, the heat time is oddly inconsistent—sometimes four minutes is enough, other times four minutes can overheat a bottle. That’s disappointing in a bottle warmer that is this pricey.

• Leaks. The unit we tested didn’t leak, but we see reports that some folks had leaks. While this is a minority of users, it points to possible quality control issues in production.

• Pricey.

Best Compatibility: BabyX Fast Bottle Warmer

When testing bottle warmers. we found that while many claim they can accommodate other makers’ bottles, that ability is limited by the warmer’s overall size/shape.

That’s one key advantage for BabyX’s Fast Bottle Warmer—it can be used without the lid on. That gives it compatibility with more bottle brands than others we tested.

What We Liked

• Heats both bottles and baby food.

• Time to heat a bottle (just under 4  minutes) is about average compared to others we tested.

• Sterilizes toys and pacifiers. It did a good job at this in our tests.

• LED indicator light.

• Includes tongs to remove bottles.

• Works with more brands of bottles than others.

• Requires cleaning only once every 4 weeks.

What Needs Work

• Indicator light is frustrating. Oddly, it goes off when water gets to the desired temperature . . . but that doesn’t mean milk in the bottle is heated through yet.

• To heat baby food, you must use special container (sold separately).

Why Trust Us

We’ve been rating and reviewing baby gear, including high chairs, since 1994. We do hands-on testing—we buy the products with our own money and evaluate with an eye toward safety, ease of use and affordability.

Here’s another key point: we don’t take money from the brands we review. No free samples, no sponsors, no “partnerships.” Baby Bargains is your independent and unbiased source for expert baby gear reviews.