We Asked 1,000 Parents to Tell Us What Baby Bouncer to Buy, and the Winner Had Too Many Rave Reviews to Count
Parenting is hard, but discovering what baby essentials to buy shouldn’t be. If you’re looking for nursery ideas, you may be focused on pinning all the baby boy nursery ideas or baby girl nursery ideas you can find. But we know you’ve also got baby gear on the mind, like a baby bouncer. We asked 1,000 parents to share with us the best baby bouncer to buy, and one product reigned supreme.
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Why You Should Trust Us
This is a best list that comes with real chops. Cubby is helmed by a small yet vibrant team of design-savvy parents who are unusually invested in finding the best products for life at home with kids, beginning with the nursery. Faith Durand (SVP of Content at Apartment Therapy Media, two kids, pro pinner of all the things), Cambria Bold (Executive Editor of Cubby, two kids, hobby designer, avid product researcher), and Laura Schocker (Chief Content Officer at Apartment Therapy Media, one kid and one on the way, small-space/city-living expert) have 40 years of digital editorial experience between them. They’ve already read about, researched, and purchased many of the baby products that you, as a soon-to-be parent, are wondering about right now. They’ll tell you exactly what you need to know about what to get.
If they don’t know the answer, they know plenty of people to ask — fellow editors, parenting experts, designers, and Cubby readers — so you can be sure that these recommendations come from real-life experiences.
Most importantly, we don’t just “office test” these products (read: order a bunch and shake ‘em around in our office “lab” with a fake baby doll) because that is helpful to approximately no one. The products we recommend here are ones we or fellow parents have actually purchased ourselves for our nursery and used for at least a few months (and sometimes way longer). The rave reviews are real.
How We Chose These Products
We asked readers (and parents!) of Apartment Therapy Media, which includes Cubby, Apartment Therapy, and The Kitchn, to tell us what baby bouncer they purchased, and why or why not they’d recommend it to other parents. We received over 1,000 responses. We took the top recommended baby bouncer from this survey and then assessed our own firsthand experiences with the product. If the baby bouncer came strongly recommended by our survey parents and was personally used for a significant period of time (with positive results!) by one of our editors, it made it to this list!
The Best Baby Bouncer: The BabyBjorn Bouncer
Sometimes the reviews are so glowing you wonder if everyone got together and talked about it ahead of time, but … nope. It’s just the universal experience of every parent who bought a BabyBjorn Bouncer, both the Bliss version and the Balance Soft version. (They’re basically identical; the only difference are the color options.) This thing inspires devotion. Multiple parents described it as “the best thing” or the “most favorite thing” they purchased for their baby. Our survey parents love that BabyBjorn’s bouncer is lightweight, portable, collapsible, and 100% baby-powered. As one parent told us: “OBSESSED. It’s the single most useful piece of equipment I bought. My baby loves it.”
Bouncer Bliss
Bouncer Balance Soft
What Parents Said About the BabyBjorn Bouncer in Our Survey
“The absolute BEST thing we invested in, hands-down. Kept [our son] entertained and contained and is now his own little chair.”
“100% best product! Love the varying levels it can be put into and the baby loves the bounce!”
“A lifesaver must-have — to give yourself a break or you can do something else while bouncing them. The only bouncer my kiddos liked.”
“Our most-used item in the house! Whenever you don’t know where to put the baby, the bouncer chair it is! He loves it and you can add a lot of fun toy bars for entertainment and learning.”
“Natural bounce. Not too aggressive.”
“We loved this one!! It’s a higher price tag but so worth it. It’s easy to wash the cover and my baby loved the movement of it.”
“Yes, it has been magical for our daughter. She prefers it to the Mamaroo.”
“Baby loves kicking her feet to make herself bounce. It also allows me a safe place to put her while I cook.”
“It was the best bouncer out of the four that we had. Easy and fun for baby.”
“It was fantastic and easy to wash.”
“This is maybe my favorite thing we ever purchased. It is so useful and simple and it stores easily.”
Bouncer Bliss
Bouncer Balance Soft
What Cubby Editors Say About the BabyBjorn Bouncer
Apartment Therapy’s Chief Content Officer, Laura Schocker, loved her BabyBjorn bouncer: “The BabyBjorn bouncer was great for my daughter. I love that it collapses to fit under the couch. We borrowed one from a friend, which was great. We carried it from room to room so we could get things done, and we even put it on the table so she could “sit” with us while we ate meals. She also liked the toy bar.”
Cubby’s Executive Editor, Cambria Bold, also wrote a review of the BabyBjorn Bouncer. Here’s what she says: “When I was putting together my baby registry many years ago, one baby product that kept coming up in my research was a baby bouncer — and not just any baby bouncer, but BabyBjörn’s Bouncer. It was kinda pricey ($209 now, $140 when I purchased it almost a decade ago), but the reviews were unanimous: This thing was worth it. Get it. Get it for your baby! Get it for your sanity! Just get it. So, in the throes of nursery nesting, I used a gift card I’d been saving to purchase said bouncer, and two kids and four years of use later, I now can say unequivocally: Yep, everyone was right. That bouncer was 100% worth it.”
Read her review of the BabyBjorn Bouncer here: The Best Baby Bouncer of All Time (Every Parent We Asked Agrees!)
