Philips Avent vs Tommee Tippee glass bottles: which one to buy

Our verdict, if you don’t read another word: in the Philips Avent vs Tommee Tippee glass bottle question, the Avent is the better bottle to feed with and the Tommee Tippee is the more useful thing to own. We feed with both, and they are the two glass bottles we use most. The Avent rates 4.8 out of 5 for its nipple. The Tommee Tippee rates 4.5 for its lids and its price.

One honest note before anything else. We review gear. Anything to do with latch, colic, reflux, preparing formula or how long milk keeps is a question for your pediatrician, an IBCLC lactation consultant or the CDC, not a blog. What we can tell you is what these two bottles are like to fill, feed with, store and wash.

The quick verdict

Both are wide-neck glass bottles, both wash beautifully, and both carry the usual glass trade-offs of weight and breakage. Where they split is what happens during the feed and what happens around it.

Buy the Philips Avent Natural Response if the feed itself is the thing you are trying to get right, particularly if your baby moves between the breast and a bottle. Buy the Tommee Tippee Natural Start if you want glass at a sensible price and like the idea of storing milk in the same bottle you feed from.

The one difference that decides it: the nipple against the lids

The Avent’s Natural Response nipple only lets milk out while the baby is actively sucking, and it stops when she pauses. A standard nipple drips under gravity, so milk keeps arriving even while a baby stops to breathe. With the Avent, she sets the pace. That is the feature you are paying for, and in our house our baby moved between the breast and these bottles without a fight.

The Tommee Tippee’s nipple is a conventional vented silicone one, shaped to encourage a natural latch. What sets this bottle apart is not the nipple at all. It is that the same glass body takes three different tops: a nipple and ring, a sealed travel food jar lid, or a cup ring.

So the Avent wins the feed. The Tommee Tippee wins everything around the feed.

Side by side

Our ratings are our overall judgment, not an average of this table.

Philips Avent Natural Response: the better feed

4.8 / 5our rating

A wide-neck borosilicate glass bottle with the Natural Response nipple and an integrated valve that lets air into the bottle as milk leaves it. It assembles from four parts: bottle, nipple, screw ring and cap. It is safe in the dishwasher and for steam, UV and boiling sterilizing.

The valve is designed to send air into the bottle rather than into your baby. That is a mechanical claim about the bottle, and we will not tell you it fixes colic, because nothing in a bottle can promise that. We take that question apart in anti-colic baby bottles. The full review, including the flow-number caveat, is our Philips Avent glass bottle review.

Tommee Tippee Natural Start: the more useful set

4.5 / 5our rating

A wide-neck 9 oz bottle in medical-grade glass, with a vented silicone nipple, screw ring and cap. The set we own also includes travel food jar lids and cup rings. The glass is heat and thermal shock resistant and self-sterilizes in about three minutes, and the assembled bottle is leakproof upside down.

We have not reached the cup ring stage yet, so we will not tell you how well that works. The bottle and the storage lid are the pair we use daily. One warning before you buy: listings count pieces, so a nine-item set is three bottles. The full review is our Tommee Tippee Natural Start glass bottle review.

Ratings compared

Every product on this page, ranked by our overall rating. These are considered verdicts after living with them, not the average of any table above.

#	Product	Our rating
1	Philips Avent Natural Response Glass Baby Bottle	4.8 / 5
2	Tommee Tippee Natural Start Glass Baby Bottle	4.5 / 5

Which one fits your house

If you are moving a breastfed baby onto bottles, start with the Avent. A nipple that only flows when she draws on it keeps the feed closer to what she already knows, and that matched our experience. Your pediatrician or a lactation consultant is still the person to ask about any feeding concern.

If you feed formula, the Tommee Tippee has the practical edge. It is leakproof upside down, the wide neck takes a scoop cleanly, and a made-up feed can sit in the fridge in the same bottle with its storage lid on. It placed well in our best baby bottles for formula feeding for those reasons.

If you pump and store milk, the Tommee Tippee’s lids save the decanting step entirely. How long stored milk keeps is a question for the CDC and your pediatrician.

If budget is what has kept you away from glass, buy the Tommee Tippee. Its price is the reason it is in our house.

If you want one bottle system for a long stretch and the feed matters most, buy the Avent and keep a few plastic bottles for days out, which is what we do.

What both share

They are both glass, so they share glass’s strengths and weaknesses. Neither picks up a milk smell, stains or goes cloudy, and a glass bottle that looks clean is clean. Both are heavier than plastic, which becomes a real question once your baby holds her own bottle, and both can break on a hard floor. A chipped or cracked bottle goes in the bin rather than back into the rotation.

We keep glass at home and plastic in the diaper bag, and we set out where each material wins in glass vs plastic baby bottles. The cleaning and sterilizing routine for both is in how to sterilize baby bottles.

Other glass bottles we have fed with

These two are not the only glass bottles in our house. We have also fed with the Dr. Brown’s Options+ wide-neck glass bottle and the Thyseed anti-colic glass bottle, and those two are ranked against the Avent in the best glass bottles for breastfed babies. If you are choosing a warmer for either of these bottles, wide-neck glass is the dimension to check against the warmer’s chamber, which we cover in how to choose a baby bottle warmer, and the warmers we would pick for glass are ranked in the best bottle warmer for glass bottles.

The bottom line

The Philips Avent Natural Response is the better feeding bottle, and its 4.8 comes from a nipple that lets the baby set the pace. The Tommee Tippee Natural Start is the more useful set, and its 4.5 comes from lids that make one glass body do three jobs at a price that does not put you off glass. We own both and would buy both again.