If there’s one thing all parents should prepare for when bringing a newborn home, it’s a loss of sleep. To keep from losing your mind, consider investing in a soothing baby sound machine to lull your child to sleep by drowning out external noises. Here, we compare two fan favorites, the Marpac Dohm Classic and the Hatch Baby Rest, to see which brand and model come out on top.
Marpac Dohm Classic
Fan-Based White Noise
The Dohm Classic is one of the simplest noise machines we’ve ever come across. That isn’t to say that it’s bad, if fan noises help your child sleep better, then the Dohm’s real internal fan will outclass any fan recordings by a wide margin. However, that is all you get—no rain noises, jungle sounds, waves, static TV, and so on.
Two Volume Options
The Dohm Classic has two volume options where the louder alternative amplifies the sound of the spinning fan slightly to drown out any ambient noises in a small room. As your child grows sleepier by the second, the second, lower volume option will gently lull him to a good night’s sleep without a fuss.
Near-Infinite Pitch Selection
Not only is the loudness of the spinning fan customizable, but you can also choose how high or low of a pitch it produces. By simply twisting the cap, you can fine-tune your Dohm Classic to play fan noises at nearly any pitch to suit you or your child’s preference.
6-foot Cord
The length of the power cord allows you to more easily find a spot to place the Dohm Classic without having to rearrange the nursery or bassinet. However, without digital speakers, you may want to place the Dohm pretty close to your baby’s bassinet for it to drown out ambient noises.
Basic, Non-High-Tech White Noise Machine
You can probably already guess that the Dohm Classic isn’t the most high-tech white noise machine. Not by a wide, wide margin. With very few customizable features and absolutely no display options, it’s not something for the tech-savvy. The silver lining is several color options to choose from apart from standard white.
Hatch Baby Rest
Multi-Purpose
Now let’s talk about the more technologically advanced option: the Hatch Baby Rest. It is no mere white noise machine; it also serves as an alarm to gently coax your baby awake at a specific time of the day, like a nightlight to keep closet monsters from going on the offensive.
For Growing Children
The Rest is not something to toss away after your child has reached a specific age. All three of these functions are still extremely useful for toddlers who need to wake up at a specific time for breakfast, and a fear of the dark doesn’t just go away as soon as they’re out of diapers. Also, as they grow older, they may have a preferred white noise that helps them get to sleep—one that’s not an actual fan.
Customizable Sounds and Colors
The Rest doesn’t play a recording of fan sounds, but instead, it has a wide selection of nature sounds, TV static, and even washing machine noises. And that’s not all! With built-in LEDs, you can change the color of the nightlight to almost anything, and there are even playful patterns that you can display on the lamp.
18-hour Timer
With this white noise machine, you have the option to allow it to play its soothing sounds all night long or set a timer that automatically turns the music off. For parents of newborns, this is important since you don’t need to open any doors to turn the device off in the middle of the night which may end up awake the baby up from their peaceful slumber.
Hatch Baby Rest App
The Rest is an ultra-convenient white noise machine that is controlled from anywhere in the world (e.g. another room) via a smart device. Just download the Hatch Baby Rest app and you can change sounds, colors, and patterns, like configure the timer and alarm function with just a few taps on your phone’s screen.
Marpac vs. Hatch: Which Should I Get?
It’s pretty clear who the winner is in this head-to-head comparison of baby white noise machines. The Hatch Baby Rest is the better model with its multi-purpose functionality that remains useful as your child grows older.
Plus, with customizable features and the ability to do so from a distance, getting your baby to sleep with soothing noises of nature will become less of a challenge.
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