Product Description

Consumer Reports Guide to Baby Products is the perfect personal baby shopping consultant. Over the years, this invaluable guide has helped thousands of new parents navigate the sea of complex and sophisticated baby merchandise, pointing them to the best products, and steering them away from the less-than-the-best. Consumer Reports allows buyers to streamline the selection pro-cess, avoid shopping pitfalls, and help keep the baby budget in balance. This newly revised edition includes: -Helpful tips on 'building' the baby's nursery from crib to diaper bag -Hundreds of items in the all-new Product Guide -Ratings of car seats, carriers, play yards, and travel systems -Recent safety recalls -The most commonly prescribed medications for babies -Shopping guides to websites, catalogs, and stores -Checklists and worksheets to help organize the shopping process.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #410365 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 310 pages

About the Author
Sandra Gordon is a writer and editor, who has written for Child, Parents, Family Circle, Fit Pregnancy, Woman's Day, and Redbook, among others. She is the author of The Aging Eye and The 30 Secrets of the World's Healthiest Cuisines. She is mom to two little girls, Rebecca, 3 1/2, and Amelia, 2. With almost four million subscribers to its magazine and over one million paid subscribers to its website, Consumr Reports is trusted for its expert and unbiased testing and reporting, and for the fact that it takes no advertising.

Customer Reviews

Almost worthless. A waste of money.
I will say that there is a fair amount of information provided if you are the type that likes to do all your own research while following general guidelines. With this book, you will actually have to go to the store, book in hand, and examine every product to see if it has the features you want. Consumer reports doesn't really recommend certain features over others- that is up to you. It just tells you what's out there. Overall, this book is surprisingly scant on actual ratings of products. Some categories only have one or two items rated. Many categories don't have anything at all rated or recommended, just information on what's available in the enormous baby market- which just left me more confused on what to get and why. There are so few things reviewed and some of the reports are pretty old- they actually have things rated that have been discountinued for a couple of years- and they say so! I just think it's pitiful to put out a "updated" book and knowingly give information on discontinued goods that none of us can buy. I have heard that they only review products that have been sent to them from a manufacturer so that it can be reviewed and published; I don't know for sure if this is true but maybe that's why there isn't much in it. I am a first-time mom and found this book no help at all- I learned more from salespeople at stores and shopping around online. Get "Baby Bargains"- the amount of detailed, updated information is remarkable and incredibly helpful (see my review). It tells you flat-out what you need and has brand recommendations and ratings for every item imaginable. Everything that is in the Consumer Reports book (except cars and cameras/camcorders) is well covered in the Baby Bargains book so don't worry about missing anything. The huge number of brands reviewed in Baby Bargains puts Consumer Reports to shame.

Disappointing . . .
I am a big fan of the Consumer Reports organization, so this book was really disappointing. The whole point of referring to CR is not only that they summarize product features in one place, but also that they TEST products and tell you:

~ Which had features that worked as advertised
~ Which had features that did not work as advertises
~ Which products don't hold up over time
~ Which brands/items have the best safety records

Most of the sections of this book featured products that were not tested and therefore not rated. The section on breast pumps, for example, is several pages long and the pros and cons of the different types are discussed, and some brand names are mentioned, but there is no mention of how they actually functioned in testing or over time.

Of the few product segments that were tested and rated, the items were limited - only about 8 cribs are listed, for example. I learned more by reading on-line reviews from people who had bought the products than I did from this book.

[...]

Not Great
I would not recommend this book because the information it provided is readily available on the internet. I was hoping to find more specific recommendations for specific products. Instead, the majority of the items are defined and safety features are suggested without the specific products listed that have all of those things.