Excellent product; saves a fair bit of time and effort vs. boiling or using a microwave steamer. There are a lot of bottle sterilizers out there but this was the only one I saw that also dries, and that made the decision for me.
You can sterilize without drying, dry without sterilizing, or both dry and sterilize. You also have the option of 30-, 45-, and 60-minute drying cycles. I've found that the default (45) works great. All you need to do is pour a little water on the warming plate, load it up, put the cover on, and press two buttons. It's very quick and easy to use.
There's one nice touch that I discovered after a couple weeks of use and was very impressed with: if you try to run a cleaning cycle but forget to put water in, or don't put in enough for a sufficiently long cleaning cycle (however they define that), the backlight on the screen turns bright red...it's otherwise blue when running, so it's pretty unmistakable that something is wrong. They clearly designed this thing with deliriously sleep-deprived parents in mind! Well done.
It works great with the Dr. Brown's bottles (both 4oz and 8oz). It feels like it was designed with them in mind, which wouldn't surprise me as they're pretty popular. Pro-tip: the smaller orange posts on the bottom plate rotate 90º, and if you do that they hold the blue vent-tube parts *perfectly*. It's very easy to load 6 bottles and all of the associated parts. You still have room to spare in the middle for pacifiers, breast pump parts, caps, and the like.
I recommend using distilled water. Otherwise you'll end up with some nasty-looking mineral crud on the heating plate. It cleans easily enough with vinegar, but if you just use distilled water you can avoid it altogether. It doesn't take much water to run it; we use ours 2-3x a day on average (twins) and a gallon lasts us a couple of weeks.
If you have multiple people in the house using the machine, I recommend coming up with a convention to avoid confusion about whether bottles are clean or dirty (are you really going to remember at 3AM whether you ran it at 8PM or not?) What we came up with as a rule is that we never partially load it with dirty stuff. We rinse everything as we go, let it pile up in the sink, and when there's enough we load it and run it immediately. This way, as long as we stick to that, anything in the machine can safely be assumed clean. I try to always unload it in one go as well, but at 3AM when you have a screaming baby and just need one bottle, that might not happen...
Overall, great product! With newborn twins eating every 2-3 hours, that's a whole lot of bottles in a day. I'll take any time-saver I can get.
| Product Dimensions | 16.5 x 11.5 x 11.5 inches |
|---|---|
| Item model number | BRZ0098 |
| Is Discontinued By Manufacturer | No |
| Target gender | Unisex |
| Material Composition | 95% plastic, 3% stainless steel 2% silicone |
| Additional product features | Stainless steel heating plate protects against rust and hard water build-up |
| Number Of Items | 1 |
| Style | Sterilizer-Dryer White |
| Batteries required | No |
| Dishwasher safe | No |
| Bottle type | Self-Sterilizing Bottle |
| Item Weight | 5.5 pounds |
| Country/Region of origin | China |
