When you become a parent your purchasing habits change, and I don’t mean just the types of things you buy. Of course, now you buy more baby products and many diapers than you did before (hopefully), and you buy alot more toys too. What I’m talking about is the way you purchase. It changes. Suddenly, even the basic items take on new meaning, and you start second guessing your normal purchases to determine whether they’ll be a good fit for the family, and in particular, the kids.
You think about things like:
Safety - do I really need that 18th century ninja sword I found on Ebay, and is it safe to hang on the wall above the baby’s crib?
Durability - I need the book with the 2 inch plastic pages, otherwise my daughter will eat it while I’m reading it to her.
Entertainment Value – Does this product have any adult entertainment value, because if I have to sit through another half hour listening to a purple talking dinosaur I’m gonna go postal?
After you have kids you can’t just make quick purchases anymore either. You have to get consensus from the wife, the grandparents, and maybe even the kid, depending on how old she is. Not to mention guys love doing research before buying anything. We need to read a dozen reviews and make sure we get a good deal before we even step foot in a store. Problem is, all the reviews online tell us the same old stuff – pros, cons, specifications, and maybe a few fancy pictures. What they don’t tell us is the stuff we really want to know now that everything we buy will either affect or be affected by the kids.
That’s why Daddy by Default has come up with a new rating system for new baby products that actually makes sense to dads. This system analyzes all the things that really matter when determining whether a purchase will make sense for you, and how it could potentially affect the kids. These are things the manufacturers will never put on their baby product review spec sheets, but they should.
To give you an example of our new rating system, we’ve put together a product comparison and review for two very popular consumer products owned or coveted by millions of dads across the country; the Apple Iphone 4 and the Android G2 phone.
Of course there are dozens of reviews out there on these products, and if you really want to know things like which one has the faster processor speed, or how much internal memory they have, or what megapixel the camera is, then I suggest you stop reading this review now because we don’t cover any of that. Here at Daddy by Default, we cover things that I want to know before buying. Things important to dads.
Stands up to Baby Drool / How it Looks Covered in Baby Puke
My wife owns the Iphone and I carry the G2, so I had an opportunity to test both products in the field and at home with the kids. If you read my article about the Household Pecking Order, you’ll know that the cell phone is a highly desired item for our baby girl. Once she sees the cell phone come out of our pockets she has to have it. When she gets a hold of it, the first thing she does is stick it in her mouth and drool all over it. After a good bout of drooling, the G2 stops to function correctly. The touch screen ceases to work, the graphics jump, and the phone locks up often. The Iphone takes a licking (literally) and keeps on ticking. The G2 does look good covered in baby puke though. The silver trim provides a nice shiny contrast after the baby spits up those carrots.
Suffocate-ability
One of the things I often think about before buying a toy now, especially one that will end up in the baby’s crib, is whether that item could cause suffocation. In this case, both items fared pretty well. Though she can fit them both in her mouth, they are too large for her to completely swallow, so not a huge suffocation risk.
Mood Inducing / Will Baby Try to Eat it? / Effect on Poop
We’ve already covered mood inducing and eating. She loves cell phones, probably because the screens light up. At least before she drools on it. The next item for consideration is effect on poop. In this case neither phone had a negligible effect since they can’t be eaten. I’ve entered N/A in that column. Other things like green beans, well, you can guess how that turns out.
Can it Be Washed / Cleaned?
Anything our girl touches, she finds a way to get it dirty, so anything we purchase needs to be washable.I’m not just talking finger smudges. She annihilates everything. She is a one woman wrecking machine. We’ve already discussed drool, puke, and yes, she has a habit of getting poop all over the place too. We all know submersing your phones in water voids the warranty, so neither phone held up well in this test.
Wear and Tear
Even after drool and puke the G2 comes back to life after a reset. It also held up better when dropped from a height of 5′ 7″. My wife is shorter, about 5′-3″, and when she dropped the Iphone the screen shattered. Therefore we give the G2 a slightly higher rating for overall wear and tear.
Overall Rating
In the end, we conclude, through no scientific process at all, that both products are good for kids, and we know they’re good for dads because of the email and calendar thing, and of course, all those cool apps.
Overall the Iphone scores 4 stars and the Android G2 scores 3, thus making the Iphone 4 the winner of the first side by side product comparison using the New Baby Product Review Rating System for Dads.
If you’d like us to review and compare a particular pair of items send us an email, tweet it to us, or post a comment below.
