Are there any trustworthy, less profit-driven baby product review sites?

Question

As a future parent of twins I was glad to run across this site. While looking through answered questions I ran across the, Is an expensive stroller worth it?, question.

Looking through some of the answers I realized that many of the brand names were completely new to me. And made me realize that the best brands may not necessarily have a huge presence on the web. That brought about my question, What are some of the better "parenting"/"baby product" sites on the web?

I know this is something I could just search for endlessly on my own and everyone with a commercial interest would surface. But I'm hoping for more trustworthy less profit driven outlets like the stack exchange. Something like a Consumer Reports for baby products that could introduce me to what's out there without an immediate profit motive would be well appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

To be honest, I don't think there is one. I've found that Amazon reviews, when there are enough for a particular product to weed out the usual instances of flakiness, irrelevance, and such, are the best bet, simply because they do provide enough viewpoints that there will usually be a couple of gems.

The problem is that in order to review products you need to try those products. Either the reviewer spends a ton of money he/she will never make back, or he/she caters to companies that are throwing around lots of review samples, avoiding smaller, lesser-known companies that can't afford to send their 12 favorite bloggers 2k in free product every year.

Meanwhile, a lot of people who enjoy doing reviews are what I call "stuff people" -- people who seem to get a sense of comfort or satisfaction from having a thing for every occasion, task, activity, and so on. Great reviews of simple, inexpensive multi-tasking tools are a lot harder to come by than reviews of overpriced, overly specialized, overly complicated tools.

Answer 2

In the UK (so may not be much use to you) we have Which?: http://www.which.co.uk, it requires a paid subscription to access, but they do have fairly comprehensive reviews of various baby and child products, and they claim to be completely independent of any manufacturers.

Answer 3

The Nightlight, while not directly affiliated with The Wirecutter, aims to be a similar kind of "we tested everything in this category, and if you want one of these, this is the one you want" kind of definitive resource for baby products.

What I've read there seems to indicate they've got the right idea, but the site is young and doesn't cover heaps of ground yet. And, like The Wirecutter, it tends to have a US-centric bias.

Answer 4

One book my wife liked a lot is Baby 411.

Companion website at https://windsorpeak.com/sites/baby411/

It covers a ton of new parent ground without being overtly preachy or commercial. It's safe to start with this one.

Also, she recommended http://www.babycheapskate.com as one of the better baby product recommendation blogs, though it is squarely in the commercial category.

Answer 5

Something like a Consumer Reports for baby products that could introduce me to what's out there without an immediate profit motive would be well appreciated.

How about... Consumer Reports? It does have a bunch of baby stuff, though perhaps not everything you want.

If you don't want to subscribe, you may be able to find a couple of years' back issues in your local library, and the index at the back of each issue indicates which issue has information on whatever product type you seek.

Answer 6

Welcome Randolph! This answer may not be useful to you but I'm posting it for the benefit of others:

For the German-language region, one very popular site is Parents.at - containing content on a very wide range of topics and featuring a forum and several other tools.