Suzy Snooze

Suzy Snooze is another Kickstarter marvel that quickly reached its goal, because it was offering something a little bit different. It’s part nightlight, part sleep trainer and all baby monitor. 

Having reviewed baby monitors for the past 18 months now (since the birth of my son), it’s amazing how similar they all are - and how occasionally dated their setup is. Whether it’s the monitor itself or apps that don’t do what you want them to, there’s precious few things in the market that truly scratch that tech itch. 

Design and setup

Suzy Snooze doesn’t quite do this, either, but it’s not trying to - it keeps things simple and that means that you will want to use it far more than many a complicated baby monitors out there. And it should get better with time, thanks to the intuitive app.

Suzy Snooze is also one of the best-looking children’s monitoring devices we’ve had in for review - a design that both kids and adults will love.

Size-wise, Suzy Snooze is on a par with an Amazon Echo - it has the same material-like trimmed base but on top of this is a big plastic rectangular ‘hat’. It is here where most of the functionality is housed. 

Press it down and the soothing nightlight begins, as does the music. BleepBleeps, the maker of Suzy Snooze, has tried its best to make sure that the product is a sleep aid, rather than something that will keep a child awake. 

Features and performance

In our tests, this definitely seemed to be the case. The orange glow - akin to sunset and sunrise - was never something that disturbed our little one, and combining it with the music (created by UK composer Erol Alkan and founder of super-hip noughties London club night Trash) meant that for the most part, they slept soundly. 

How long Suzy Snooze ‘sleeps’ for is completely up to you, and is controlled via the smartphone app. The actual Soothing part of the device, though, lasts for 15 minutes. Again, this can be modified in the app. If you want to start the Soothing functionality all over again, then you just press down the ‘hat’ or activate it through the app.

If you aren’t a fan of the music - it's certainly way above normal chimes but we still usually put something on using Spotify instead through an Echo set up in the room - then you can switch this off through the app. The makers are hoping to be able to add Wi-Fi speaker functionality to the device at some point. 

Volume control for the music that is played can be found through the app or there are physical buttons situated on the base of the device.

Once Soothing is over, then Suzy Snooze switches to Nightlight mode. When this happens the light gets a little darker and is designed to help with sleep. We sometimes find nightlights a little too powerful but this one was soft enough to offer a comforting glow, rather than something that would spoil sleeping. 

There is the option to brighten the light by turning the ‘hat’ clockwise and darkening it by going the other way. 

When Nightlight mode is on, this is when we also took advantage of the baby monitoring part of the app. It works well as a separate monitor, but it also allows you to track your baby’s sleeping habits. 

We didn’t find this functionality as compelling as we thought we would but it is a nice touch and another area where the app could grow. While audio baby monitoring is fine for many, we always like to pair audio with a visual monitor. So Suzy Snooze wasn't quite the one-size-fits-all approach for us, but it will be for the majority. 

What is a great touch, though, is the ability for Suzy Snooze to wake. The idea being, when the device 'wakes' it's time for your child to also get up. While this will take some training, the idea that it is a wake companion for a children is a sound one - it's something we couldn't take full advantage of in our review, because of the age of our child but we can certainly understand the benefits of this.

Final verdict

Suzy Snooze is a great-looking, innovative device that’ll grow in usefulness as your child grows. For the the first few months, you will use the night light and the sleep monitoring and when they hit toddler age, the sleep training will kick in. 

Its maker BleepBleeps has tried to come up with something that’s unique in the market and while there are a few small niggles, this is a fun and really simple to use device - calling it merely a baby monitor just doesn’t do it justice.

• These are the best baby monitors available right now.