Review: Ember Baby Bottle System Plus

I remember how excited I was to try Ember's smart mug. As a tea drinker whose tea is constantly going cold, an Ember felt like a luxurious solution to what truly is a champagne problem (or in my case, a hōjicha problem).

Now, Ember has made a baby bottle, which wants to solve my baby's milk problems. And while it works quickly to warm room temperature liquids, it begs the question: Do I, or my child, really need this? Especially for such a high price tag?

The Ember Baby System Plus comes with two bottles, a battery-powered warming puck where you place the bottles for heating, and a large insulated cover. Ember calls this cover the “thermal dome" and you slip it over the bottle of milk when you're on the go, to keep it cool until you need it. The Plus also comes with a couple of bottle nipples made by Ember, plus cover adapters to use nipples from Dr. Brown's and Philips Avent. The whole thing costs $400. Ember also sells a smaller set for $250, the Starter Baby Bundle, which only has one bottle and no thermal dome.

The bottles themselves are interesting because the body of the bottle has two parts. Rather than a single complete bottle, the top half is a thick plastic that almost looks like glass, and the gray bottom half has Ember's technology built into it for warming and sensing the temperature. It also has a magnet in it so it can easily attach itself to the warming puck. This combination makes this baby bottle heavier than your usual plastic bottle, but my one-year-old son didn't have any issues holding it up.

The bottle pairs with the Ember Baby app. The app knows when a bottle has been placed on the puck, and then you click a button on your phone to start warming. The app shows you a golden line that slowly forms a circle as the bottle warms, and will alert you when the bottle is ready. You can also create a little profile in the app to track how many ounces your baby is drinking and whether they're gaining weight.

If you're taking the bottle on the go, Ember's intention is that you stack the bottle—with breastmilk already inside—onto the warming puck, and then place the thermal cover on top of it to place into your bag. (If you're a formula user, Ember suggests that you simply add water when you want to make a bottle, heat it, and then add formula powder. That way, you don't need to store liquids in the Ember bottle before a feeding.) While all three items use magnets to connect, the magnets aren't particularly strong, so this didn't feel very stable to carry or throw into a bag. And together, these items are heavy. It felt almost as heavy as my filled 40-ounce Hydroflask.

While I cover baby and parenting products here at WIRED, bottle warmers were never on my list. All my research has come back to the same thing: you don't need them. Most devices aren't that much more effective than just placing your bottle into some hot water, and they take up room on your countertop.

Obviously, the Ember skips over part of that problem. This isn't another countertop device to stuff into my small kitchen, and instead it simplifies the heating into the bottle itself. (It's worth noting here, though, that most parents go through more than two bottles in the course of a day and buying more proprietary bottles is expensive.)

Also, the Ember isn't designed to be used with frozen breastmilk—you're supposed to defrost the milk first before putting it into the Ember to then heat, but that can be done in your fridge overnight before taking the milk out for the day ahead.

I distinctly remember my husband trying to balance a crying baby in one hand and a thermometer in another, checking the temperature of the slowly-heating bottle of milk in the cup of hot water. We also had a few debates about the best temperature. He thought 77 degrees was right, but I had to explain that that's the CDC's recommendation for countertop storage, not the recommended drinking temperature. In those early, hazy days, it would have been nice to have a device that knew the exact temperature and heated it for us on its own.

I was most intrigued for formula users, though. I was impressed by how quickly the Ember heated cold water; it took about two minutes to heat the water to 98 degrees. If you were on the go, you could throw your Ember bottle and warming puck into your bag and your tin of formula, and could fill it with water later in the day to heat and add formula powder to.

You are dependent on the battery life of the puck, though, which tends to come to life anytime a bottle is placed on it, or even the thermal cover. Ember says a puck holds enough charge for two feedings. I found that even if you don't use it for a feeding, it will run out the battery on its own in a couple days.

At the end of the day, you don't need a warmer. Most babies aren't that particular about the temperature that you need it heated so perfectly, and there's no flexibility in the heating controls if you find your baby loves, say, 85 degree milk. But if your baby loves warmed milk, or if you're stressed about having the perfect temperature and money isn't an object, the Ember Baby Bottle could relieve some of that stress for you—so long as you keep the warming puck charged.