Best Baby Bath Thermometers – Buyer’s Guide

Becoming a parent is stressful, and keeping your new baby safe is your number one priority. Children need to spend time in bath water to get clean, but also to experience a sensory play that helps their brain and muscle development in early childhood. Young skin is far more sensitive to temperature than adults, however, and parents must be careful that babies, toddlers, and children have bath water that stays between 95-102 degrees Fahrenheit to be safe and healthy.

Getting the hang of bath time with a slippery, wiggly infant is a lot easier when you have a reliable baby bath thermometer that can take the guesswork out of getting the water temperature just right.

Top 5 Best Digital Bath Water Thermometers for Baby in 2017

Any of these products will help you keep bath time safe, but every family has different needs. Use this comparison of our top five picks to find the best digital baby bath thermometer for your little one.

Ozeri Turtlemeter – Best All-Around Thermometer

Kids love this cheerful, turtle-shaped toy as it floats right side up in the tub.

Parents love its instant water temperature reading that appears as both a digital number in Fahrenheit and an easy to understand LCD stoplight color display: red for too hot, blue for too cold, and green for just right.

The Turtlemeter updates every second, so you’ll know almost instantly if the water has dropped below 95 degrees and your little one is getting too chilly.

Simple To Use

The product comes with 3 AAA batteries included, and they can be changed when you need a fresh power source. As with any replaceable battery powered water toy, however, the battery housing unit can be fussy to open and close after inserting new batteries. It stays tightly sealed with tiny screws that require a very small screwdriver to open, and that tool is not included in theoriginal purchase.

If the casing isn’t properly sealed and secured, water can damage the inside and shorten the life of the product. This may not be a huge concern at this price point.

Great Features and Cool Design

The Turtlemeter only turns on when in contact with water, so batteries may last up to a year.

This baby bath thermometer stands out as a kid favorite because of its personable turtle face. Even though it’s technically a tool for mom and dad to check water temperature, what kid wouldn’t want to spend bath time trying to sink their little light up turtle friend? No matter how many times the Turtlemeter is submerged, its smiling face will pop back up to the surface, and you’ll still be able to see the color coded lights even under a thick layer of bubbles.

Philips Avent Blue Flower Bath & Room Thermometer – Simple Safety at a Glance

This thermometer is made by Philips Avent, a trusted name in bottle and baby feeding products. The thermometer delivers their expected quality, made of durable materials and tested safe even under toy standards. This means the Blue Flower Bath and Room Thermometer is safe for your child to play with, drop, throw and even mouth during bath time. Do you have a young baby or toddler who likes to explore everything in the bath? This might be the right product for you.

The waterproof outer casing helps the blue flower shaped thermometer float in the tub for fun and safety, keeping the temperature reader visible above the surface. Not only can you read the water temperature, but it will also tell you whether the room is the right temperature as well. After bath time, the product can travel to the bedroom, where you can use it to quickly check to see whether the air conditioning has made the room too cold or if the summer sun has gotten the room too warm for optimal baby sleep.

4moms, Spout Cover – Double Duty Safety Tool

Unlike the other products reviewed here, this baby bath thermometer does not float in the tub, Instead, it connects with a simple hook and loop strap directly onto the faucet where the water comes out, so you adjust the temperature as you add water to the tub. Its soft foam construction also serves as a spout cover, protecting little heads and faces from painful bumps onto the exposed metal faucet. Do you share a bathroom with your kids? The product design includes a diverter access point, so you can leave the spout cover thermometer in place and still have a shower every day without disturbing its placement.

Things to Consider

Like any spout cover, the effectiveness of this product might depend on the size and style of your faucet. It may be necessary to wiggle it around a little while you fill the tub to get the water to hit the sensor in the right spot. On the other hand, the clever attachment loop allows this kind of quick adjustment to take place without being too much of a hassle.

This thermometer reads the water as it exits the faucet and immediately displays it as a precise digital readout in Fahrenheit. The LCD screen will also change colors based on a range of acceptable temperature readings, with blue for cold, green for perfect and red for hot. A beeping sound will also begin if the “hot” range is sensed, which is useful particularly if you’re adding water after your child is already in the tub.

Overall

Ultimately, this thermometer looks like a tiny computer screen on your tub faucet. Is that going to be interesting to your kid? If you have a young child who will be more focused on the items floating around him in the water, this might be a great look for your room. However, older toddlers will likely take a great interest in this item and may spend more time poking around the faucet than you like.

Skip Hop Moby – Subtle Fun for a Tidy Tub

Skip Hop is known for a whole line of subtle and coordinating bath products, and this floating, whale-shaped thermometer would be a great addition to a bathroom set that already includes other products in this line. For example – cute whale-shaped non-slip baby bath mat.

It’s unisex blue materials give off a relaxed bath feel, and its modern, minimalist animal shape is whimsical, but not overly cartoonish.

It also appeals to grownups who aren’t ready for a bathroom overrun with garish creatures. If you need other bath options, this specifically matches the Moby line of toy storage and spout covers, so you can safety proof your whole bathroom with a coordinated design appearance.

Experience

As a thermometer, this product floats in the bathwater, taking instant readings. A digital display changes between red and green to indicate “too hot” and “just right”. Fahrenheit and Celsius models are both available, but you cannot switch between the two. If you’ve been storing it on a cold wall for some time it may take a few minutes for the thermometer to calibrate to the water and get an accurate reading. For this reason, let it float in the water for a few minutes with a “just right” reading before putting your child in the water. Once it’s calibrated, the product should give accurate readings for the rest of the bath time.

Safety

It’s a toy kid will play with while it floats in the bath, and they particularly like the tail handle for pushing and pulling through the water. It’s BPA free and safe for little hands and mouths to explore. The suction cup on the bottom can get stuck on the bottom of the tub if older toddlers intentionally sink the whale, which makes reading the temperature hard. Releasing the Moby thermometer back to the surface is easy, it just requires a little tug on the handle or a finger on the suction cup and can even become part of the fun for older preschoolers who will be fascinated with this process.

Battery life on the Moby thermometer lasting a little over six months on average, but the battery is easily replaceable.

Dreambaby – Energy Efficient Option

Keeping multiple sizes of batteries on hand and remembering to change out old batteries in children’s products can be a stressful part of parenting young children. It’s especially annoying to find yourself needing new batteries in the bathroom, of all places, in the middle of bath time when you can’t leave your child unattended. This product decreases that stress by having several energy efficient features. That means you can forget about changing the batteries in that thermometer for at least a little while longer.

Great Performance in a Cute Design

Similar to the Avent Blue Flower Bath and Room Thermometer, this product tests both bath water and room temperature, giving you a multipurpose tool from one purchase. The small, green alligator shape floats in water and is fully submergible and tested to meet toy safety standards. It’s a little smaller than other toy-shaped thermometers on the market and is perfect for little hands to incorporate into pretend play during bath time or on the changing table during the bedtime routine. It has a cute little face that is a little more exciting than the flower shape, but the alligator is pretty generic in terms of design.

Display Switch and Tempreature Readings

Unlike other bath thermometers, this product reads water temperature with a digital display that can be switched between Celsius and Fahrenheit with an easy to use switch on the bottom. It also has a two-tone color display showing red for “hot” and green for “cold”. Perfect water temperatures, as well as all room air temperatures, will display without any color on a grey screen. Does having an easy to read, intuitive color light system matter to you? It might be frustrating if you forget that green light actually means “too cold” and not “just right”. If you’re good at remembering that kind of detail or tend to pay the most attention to the actual numerical readout, that feature may not be a problem for you.

Choosing your Baby Bath Thermometer – A Few Useful Tips

With the right baby bath thermometer, bath time will quickly become one of your baby’s favorite times of day to relax and play in the water. Babies and toddlers have such sensitive skin, they can easily be burned by water adults thought was appropriate by using touch alone. Having an accurate baby bath thermometer is a quick and safe way to make sure bathwater is safe for even the youngest of bathers.

It all comes down to a few simple questions: how long do you need this thermometer to last? Do you need the thermometer to serve more than one purpose in your bathroom? What is the average temperature of bathwater your child needs to use?

It may sound silly, but it’s also useful to simply think about which one you think will look the best in your bathroom as a toy or to match your other bathroom supplies. If you enjoy the way it looks, you’re more likely to use it more often!

You might also want to think about how tired you are going to be. If you are a first-time parent, you’re probably not getting much sleep and you may need the product that’s easiest to use.

The most important thing is finding a baby bath thermometer you’ll actually use often and properly to make sure every bath is exactly the right temperature. Consider the features that will be most important for your needs, so you can keep baby safe and clean with less worry.