Tech for Babies Is Booming. Here’s What One Parent Found Helped the Most.

The Snoo. The Nanit. The Hatch Rest. Many lists of baby gear mandate certain items, but our columnist wondered if it would be better to chuck those lists out.

Last spring, when my wife and I were preparing to welcome our first child, we started a list of baby gear — a rite of passage for parents. The difference with our list, or so I thought, was that it would contain only the best stuff because it was vetted by me, a tech columnist with 20 years of experience testing products.

After our baby arrived in the summer, I learned I was wrong.

It turns out there is no best baby gear, because what worked for other parents often didn’t work for us. Even though I had picked a top-rated stroller, its wheels were inadequate for our neighborhood’s pothole-riddled streets. The electronic bottle warmer listed as a must-have by many Redditors was too slow at heating up milk for our vocal newborn. The Snoo, the $1,700 robotic bassinet with a cult following, did nothing to lull our little one to sleep.

Now past the sleepless nights of the newborn phase, my wife and I wound up with a well-rested, content child. What helped, in part, was pivoting to a different approach with baby gear, analyzing our particular problems as new parents and looking for ways to solve them.

My highs and lows with baby tech may not be every parent’s experience. But the lessons I learned from my misadventures, from internet-controlled night lights to nanny cams, should be universally applicable.

Here’s what to know.