Tommee Tippee bottle warmer review: the Easiwarm, and the dial habit it needs

Our verdict, if you don’t read another word: this Tommee Tippee bottle warmer review lands at 4 out of 5. The Easiwarm is compact, it warms well, and it is the cheapest of the three mid-range warmers we own. It loses a point for one thing. The timer and the ready light switch off on their own, but the water keeps heating until you turn the dial off yourself, and the instructions did not make that clear to us.

One honest note first. We review the gear. How to store, thaw and warm your baby’s milk safely, and what temperature it should reach, is a question for the CDC and your pediatrician, not a blog. What we can tell you is what this machine is like to live with.

What the Easiwarm actually is

A small corded countertop warmer for bottles of expressed breast milk and ready-made formula. You control it with a dial, and there is a single indicator light. That is the whole interface.

4 / 5our rating

From our own use:

• It warmed a bottle within five minutes.
• It has three settings, designed around warming a feed from frozen or from the fridge.
• It fits most brands of bottle, yet it is compact enough to sit neatly on a counter.
• It has an automatic shut-off timer that switches off when the feed is ready.

On top of that, Tommee Tippee states that all its warmers, sterilizers and bottles are BPA-free.

The shut-off is the part that needs explaining, because the timer stopping is not the same as the warmer stopping. That is most of this review.

The light and the dial: what confused us

Most people buy a bottle warmer expecting the light to be the signal. Light on, it is working. Light off, it is done and safe to walk away from. On the Easiwarm that is only half true.

When the bottle is ready, the timer shuts off by itself and the light goes off with it. That part is automatic and it works. What caught us out is that the dial is still on, and for as long as it stays on, the water keeps heating. The only thing that stops that is turning the dial back to off by hand.

So the auto shut-off does its job for the timer, but the light going off is not a sign that the heating has stopped. The instructions did not make that clear to us. The manual that ships with your unit is the authority on how it should be run, so read it with this in mind.

That is why it rates a 4. It works, and it works well, but a warmer shouldn’t need a paragraph of explanation from a blog before it makes sense.

How we run it now

Once we understood it, the fix was one extra movement. Bottle in, dial on, wait for the light, bottle out, dial off. Every time, whether or not the light is still lit.

It sounds fiddly written down, but it became routine once we got used to it, the same way we got used to switching off the Philips Avent, which has no auto shut-off on older units either. If this is your first bottle warmer, you won’t have another machine’s habits to fight, so you may simply learn it this way from the start.

Whether a finished bottle can sit in any warmer is its own question, and we go through it in can you leave a bottle in a bottle warmer. For how long warmed milk can stand, follow the CDC and your pediatrician. Our general routine for any water-bath warmer is in how to use a bottle warmer.

Speed

In our use, the Easiwarm warmed a bottle within five minutes.

For comparison, the Philips Avent averaged about 3 to 4 minutes for a fridge-cold 5 oz bottle on our phone stopwatch. The times for the other warmers we own are in one table in how long a bottle warmer takes.

The adjustment we had to make with this warmer was about stopping it, not about how long it took.

Bottle fit and counter space

In our use it fits most brands of bottle, so you do not need to be a Tommee Tippee bottle household to use it, although if you are, we reviewed their glass bottle in our Tommee Tippee Natural Start glass bottle review.

It is also compact enough to sit neatly on a kitchen counter, which matters when the counter is already covered in drying bottles and pump parts. If your bottles are glass, very wide or unusually tall, check fit before anything else, because that is the one thing that rules a warmer out completely. We go through fit and the other buying checks in how to choose a baby bottle warmer.

Keeping it clean

Any warmer that heats water builds up limescale, and scale makes a warmer heat more slowly and less evenly. A warmer whose water keeps heating when you forget the dial will scale up faster still. A wipe after use and a regular descale keep it working properly, and the method we use on all our warmers is in how to clean a bottle warmer. Follow the manual for anything specific to this unit.

How it compares to our Avent and Momcozy

We own two other warmers in the same price bracket, so we can place the Easiwarm fairly. On price it is the cheapest of the three. On our ratings it comes last, with the Philips Avent at 5 and the Momcozy at 4.5.

The Avent is the one to beat on speed and simplicity, a single dial with nothing to misread, and it is the fastest warmer we have timed. The Momcozy trades a little speed for doing much more: it thaws frozen milk, sterilizes and keeps warm, and its auto shut-off ends the whole cycle. The Easiwarm does the core job for the least money and asks you to learn its one habit.

We put all three side by side, with a comparison table and a pick for each kind of household, in the best mid-range bottle warmer, and put the Easiwarm directly against the Avent in Tommee Tippee vs Philips Avent. If you want the full detail on the others, see our Philips Avent bottle warmer review and Momcozy bottle warmer review.

Who it’s for

Buy the Easiwarm if price is the deciding factor, if counter space is tight, or if your bottles are a mix of brands. It is also a sensible first warmer, since you won’t be carrying habits over from a different machine.

Skip it if you want a warmer you can walk away from without a second thought. In that case the Momcozy, whose auto shut-off ends the whole cycle, is the better fit. Skip it too if speed at 3 a.m. is the only thing you care about, because the Avent is the fastest warmer we own. And if you are still deciding whether you need a warmer at all, we answered that honestly in bottle warmer vs hot water.

The bottom line

The Tommee Tippee Easiwarm earns its 4 out of 5 by being small, affordable and good at warming a bottle. The one catch is real: the light going off doesn’t mean the heat is off, so the dial is your off switch every time. Learn that on day one and it is an easy warmer to live with and the cheapest one we would recommend.