I’m Dim Nikov, a dad. I started Dad’s Picks in 2024 as a side gig after my first baby, my son, was born, and I found out just how overwhelming it can be to pick out the right baby gear. Today, it’s a side gig that I run through my company, Impactful Growth LLC.
This page explains how I test and score the baby gear I review.
I Buy It and Use It for My Own Son
I use each one every day, for weeks:
- Momcozy KleanPal Pro: several times a day, every day, for bottles and pump parts with my first one in Spain. After we moved to the U.S., I bought a second one in October 2025, and I’ve used it ever since.
- Baby Brezza Bottle Washer Pro: six weeks of daily use before I wrote my review in December 2024, and nearly a year in all, until September 2025.
- Grownsy 8-in-1 Bottle Warmer: several times a day, every day, for my son’s first two months.
- Baby Brezza Smart Bottle Warmer: daily for my son’s first two and a half months.
For my bottle washer guide, I ran both washers several times a day, every day, for six weeks. Our son ate every two hours back then, and my wife’s pump parts needed cleaning too.
My wife ran both bottle washers with me while we cared for our newborn son.
I Test in a Real Home
We’ve lived with these products in two homes: an apartment in Spain and, since we moved to the U.S. in September 2025, our home in Los Angeles. Both have hard water, which matters for bottle washers.
Hard water leaves mineral spots on bottles and builds up scale on the heating plate fast. So in Spain, I filled our bottle washers with distilled water bought in bulk. In Los Angeles, I did the same with our bottle washer, the Momcozy KleanPal Pro, until my son turned 1. Since then, I’ve used tap water in it, and I descale it more often than I used to.
I Measure Noise
The last thing you want is an appliance that wakes your baby. So for my bottle washer reviews, I used a portable sound meter with a measuring range of 30–130 dB and an accuracy of ± 1.5 dB.
I took those readings in a quiet room, early in the morning, so background noise couldn’t skew the results. The Momcozy KleanPal Pro measured 50–53 dB while washing and 41–43 dB while drying and storing. The Baby Brezza Bottle Washer Pro measured 53–56 dB while washing.
I measured the Grownsy 8-in-1 Bottle Warmer with the same sound meter: 30–34 dB, at the very bottom of the meter’s 30–130 dB range. My Baby Brezza Smart Bottle Warmer review scores noise on what you hear, and the only sound it makes is a beep at the end of a warming cycle.
I Separate My Tests From the Brand’s Claims
When a fact comes from a product’s specs or manual instead of my own testing, I say so, with words like “according to the manufacturer.” For example, my bottle washer guide says both washers keep bottles sterile for up to 72 hours “according to their makers,” and my Baby Brezza Bottle Washer Pro review cites Baby Brezza’s manual on hard water.
I also check some of the specs myself: I weigh the water each tank holds on a kitchen scale, and I measure each appliance with a tape measure. Where my numbers differ from the manufacturer’s, my review says so.
How I Score Products
Every review ends with a product scorecard. I rate each aspect out of 5 stars, and the aspects depend on the product:
- Bottle washers (9 aspects): looks, ease of use, baby bottle washing, baby bottle sterilization, baby bottle drying, baby bottle storage, build quality, noise level, and cost of ownership.
- Baby Brezza Smart Bottle Warmer (6 aspects): looks, ease of use, baby bottle warming, build quality, noise level, and cost of ownership.
- Grownsy 8-in-1 Bottle Warmer (7 aspects): the same six, plus baby bottle sterilization, because the Grownsy also sterilizes.
I decide each star based on my experience using the product, combined with my test results for the aspects I could test, such as noise level.
The total score is the plain average of the aspect stars, rounded to one decimal place. For example, the Baby Brezza Bottle Washer Pro’s nine ratings add up to 38 stars, and 38 ÷ 9 = 4.2 out of 5.
Here’s how a star comes off. The Grownsy got 4 stars out of 5 for sterilization rather than a full 5 because it has no indicator showing how much water to add. The Baby Brezza Smart Bottle Warmer got 4 stars out of 5 for looks because of its control panel, whose buttons take a bit too much force to press.
My bottle washer guide judged its picks on three factors: whether it cleans bottles thoroughly, how many bottle parts it holds at once, and whether it’s easy to use.
Review Units From Brands
If a brand sends me a product for free, lends it to me, or gives me anything else of value, I’ll say so clearly in the review, just as I say so when I buy a product with my own money.
Corrections
When I get a fact wrong, I fix it and add a dated correction note at the end of the piece, like the one at the end of my Baby Brezza Bottle Washer Pro review.
You can read the rest of my standards in my Editorial Ethics statement.