I am looking to you all for your honest thoughts.
We have been looking at the Medela Waterless Warmers for our unit and for the most part, thought they were fine. We decided to be fiscally responsible and trial the Penguin warmer just to see how we liked it and do a cost comparison so we could determine what we could and couldn't afford seeing as both require purchases of liners (Medela's are 100 to case for approx $3.00 per liner and the Penguin comes 300 to a case and I think about $1.10 to $1.20 per liner).
We were leaning towards Medela because it's waterless even though we LOVED how well the Penguin worked and it was very quiet (Medela's had a loud hum to it). I just learned today while doing some research as I have to make up my mind that the high heat required by Medela's system (heater coil and fan) blows hot air (150 to 170 degrees) directly on top of the bottle has the potential for introducing harmful chemicals to the baby's feeding. If I am not mistaken I believe that 120°F is considered highly suspect for causing extractables. I also know that the top of the bottle is always hotter than the bottom when coming out of the Medela unit, which means there is no way that this unit can be the warming the bottles to the same temperature throughout. YIKES! I guess I never considered the implications of blowing hot air on top of plastic and the fact that the unit is pulling air, from our hospital, into the system and blowing airborne germs around the feeding.
My staff is 75/25 split on who likes what (most prefer the Penguin) but I want to know what you all are using and how many of these things are you ordering? What about the liners - how many do you order?