UPDATE #2 (05/05/2011):
Trying out the Phil & Teds Traveler (Travel Cot) at home
First Update:
This post has been updated! The original post was written about a year ago. We have now been using our Phil & Ted’s Traveler (Travel Cot) for more than a year and have updated this review to reflect our experiences. Keep reading to find out why we consider the Phil and Ted’s Traveler (Travel Cot) to be the best piece of baby/toddler travel equipment we own! (Thank you for shopping on Amazon by following one of the links in this review. Every item purchased helps to support www.ianandwendy.com!)
UPDATE:
We have now been using the Phil & Ted’s Traveler (Travel Cot) for more than a year. We truly feel that this is the single best piece of baby/toddler travel gear we’ve bought.
The Phil & Ted’s Traveler is incredibly lightweight. So much so that you can easily carry baby and their bed at the same time! Making that especially easy is the awesome carry bag it comes with. It has a shoulder strap that makes it super simple to carry. While heading out to spend the day with family, Wendy has often slung the Traveler over one shoulder and carried our daughter out to the car in the other. Super convenient!
The light weight also comes in handy when you’re trying to keep your luggage under the 50lb luggage limit. Sure, many of our trips we’re backpacking and not anywhere close to the limit. However, we often go back “home” to Canada to visit family. On those trips we take much nicer clothing and many more outfits. That all adds up to a lot more luggage. The compact size of the Phil & Ted’s Traveler and its light weight really help.
Because the Phil & Ted’s Traveler doesn’t use sheets, it’s super easy to clean. In the event of an “incident” you simply wipe it down with a disinfectant wipe and you’re done! This becomes an especially nice feature if you happen to be exhausted from a long flight, or it’s the middle of the night. Not only is it easy to clean, but since you don’t need to bring sheets, your luggage will be lighter, too. Not having to use sheets also means you won’t have to figure out where the heck to wash them while you’re traveling and you won’t need to bring (or buy) extras for emergencies.
Outside our first youth hostel as a family! All the baby's things, including the Phil & Ted's Travel Cot, are all in Wendy's backpack along with all of her stuff - not bad!
When we first chose the Phil & Ted’s Traveler we were concerned that the time to put it together/take it apart might drive us crazy – especially when we were exhausted after a long flight. Well, we’ve now done it many, many, many times and we find it very easy to do. We quickly got the time down to under 5 minutes and are now down to about 2-3 minutes (even with “help” from our daughter!)
The size is also very generous. Our daughter is very tall for her age and is no where close to outgrowing it at 18-months-old. Our friend’s 3-year-old has also taken a nap in it and fit just fine – even though she is also tall for her age. We expect our daughter to easily be able to sleep in a regular bed by the time she outgrows the Phil & Ted’s Traveler. The size also allows enough room for her to play for a while if we need her to be safe in one place for a bit.
Not only has our Travel Cot already been to four countries, but it is in daily use as our regular “play pen” at home. It’s so lightweight you can easily pick it up and move it between rooms/floors with one hand –while holding baby in the other! In fact, we have been so happy with our Phil & Ted’s Traveler that we plan on buying another one now that baby #2 will soon be here!
Original Post:
When we started shopping for baby equipment one of the first things we knew we’d need was a travel cot. Travel is a big part of our lives and we wanted to be able to continue that with our daughter. We looked at 2 travel cots – the Phil & Teds and the Baby Bjorn. The Phil & Teds requires assembly – something we weren’t too thrilled about facing at the end of a long day of traveling. The Baby Bjorn is SUPER easy to assemble – it basically just springs open and is ready to use. BUT – it’s a lot heavier at 11lbs. vs. the 6 lb Phil & Teds. So, we chose the Phil & Teds and hoped that the set-up wouldn’t drive us crazy.
The cot comes apart into pieces like a tent and fits into a bag that has a shoulder strap for carrying. It packed easily into our large suitcase and is also small enough to fit into our big travel backpacks. Before we left we practiced putting it together. It took us more than 20 minutes and required quite a bit of strength – we weren’t impressed and left it assembled for a while, dreading taking it back apart again. On this first trip with it we had to set it up and take it apart 4 times. Each time it was faster and easier. By the end of the trip Ian was down to under 5 minutes – making us very happy we chose the lighter weight over ease of use.
The mattress is a mostly self-inflating air mattress that actually fits into a pocket in the bottom of the cot. The baby actually lies on the nylon bottom of the cot and you can’t use a sheet. Although this would seem uncomfortable, our daughter slept well and seemed happy to be put down in it while awake, too. It also makes for VERY easy clean-up!
The cot has a side flap that can zipper open so you don’t have to lean over to pick up your child. We didn’t use it, but we can imagine it coming in handy with an older, heavier child – particularly since the cot is big enough to be used by children up to 3 years of age. You can also secure it to the ground with stakes and it comes with a zippered top flap with UV protection so that you could use the cot on the beach for example.
Overall, we are very happy with our Phil & Teds Traveller and are happy to have such a light, easy to use, safe bed for our daughter away from home!
Do you have a Phil & Ted’s Traveler? Do you use a different travel bed for your baby or toddler? Please share your experiences – we’d love to hear from you!
Hey I thought this is a good review. I am google-ling around for a travel cot for my baby and came upon this website. We brought him on a few trips before and used the cots provided by the hotel but they were in such a terrible state. I felt so bad having him to sleep in that cot (which I was not even sure if it was clean). I will check it in my local stores. We are going on a field trip soon.
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Wendy replied on November 11th, 2010 7:33 pm:
Thank you! We’re glad you found our review helpful. Good luck in your search, and please let us know where/if you find it. You never know who else could use the tip!
Wendy
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Thank You for the great review. I will be buying one for sure. We go camping every year and also will be staying in a couple of hotels so it seems this travel cot is the way to go. Cheers, Michelle
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Wendy replied on November 18th, 2010 10:22 pm:
Glad we could help! Happy Travels!
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Thank you for your excellent and honest review! My husband and I travel extensively to third world locations for extended periods for work, and bring our 6 month old daughter with us whenever possible. Have any thoughts on travel high chairs? We have been using a “My Little Seat” but would really find a tray for self-feeding useful. Phil and Ted make a “Lobster” and a “MeToo” have you used or seen either?
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Wendy replied on November 18th, 2010 10:21 pm:
You’re welcome! We’re so glad you found our review helpful! We know how difficult it can be to figure out which baby equipment is truly worth the investment. We actually have the “My Little Seat” and really should have reviewed it. You comment/questions inspired us to! You can find our complete answer in our new post Travel High Chairs and Why We Don’t Use One.
Good luck with your travels! We’d love to hear any tips you have or discover along the way!
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We are also extremely happy with our Phil&Ted Travel Cribs. We have twins and so we very much wanted something compact and lightweight. We’ve been using these cribs for a lot a travel during the past year and they are the best! There is definitely a learning period for the assembly of them, but we quickly became experts and can put them together in minutes. (Plus, we had more practice, putting together two at a time!) I thought that sleeping directly on the nylon might be uncomfortable, but neither of our kids seem to mind it. In fact, they sleep as if they’re in their cribs at home, so I guess they’re comfortable. I like the fact that the sleeping surface lies directly on the floor and is not up on legs — there’s no sagging and it can support a lot more weight. And these cribs still look new even after all this use!
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Hi there – thanks for your review it was very helpful. I am also deciding between the Phil & Ted and the Baby Bjorn travel cots. My biggest concern with the Phil & Ted is the “plastic” matress and as we are travelling to Thailand I am concerned this will cause our son to sweat too much. The Bjorn has a cooton matress and obviously will not cause him to sweat as much. Did you have problem with your daughter sweating whilst sleeping in the cot?
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Thank you for the review. I am not using this bed for travel as much as for my child care home. I have been looking for something that is easy to move to another room when the children want to play and one needs to sleep. I do have a question though? Have you ever washed the travel bed. I can see it easily comes apart so have you ever put it in your washing machine?
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Thank you so much for your review. I have been searching the web for months now trying to figure out a travel crib solution for my son. We travel a lot in the summer and have a one week family vacation planned to be at the beach for a week.
I definitely want something with sides as I want to keep my son contained. I am concerned about being in a big house with several flights of stairs. I want to be able to put my son to bed and not worry that he will get up and roam around the house. I’ve been reviewing both Phil & Ted’s and the Baby Bjorn travel cribs. I’ve been leaning towards the Phil and Ted’s as it is longer in length than the Baby Bjorn. My son just turned two and is 36 inches long.
Do you feel that the Phil & Ted’s travel crib is pretty sturdy? My concern is that when my son stands up in the crib and leans against the sides, will the crib tip over? I understand that the mattress is right on the floor so that should help prevent tip over but do you feel the sides are sturdy enough so that they won’t collapse if he leans against it? I’d appreciate any feedback you might have. Thank you.
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Having had this wonderful travel bed for two years and used it for both daycare and travel, a couple of comments: Yes, my son at 1.5 years did learn to tip it over when he wanted to get out in the morning. He’s average height and weight. My solution was to rearrange furniture and park it between a bookcase and couch.
The best solution to not having corners to tuck a cotton bedsheet under is either sew snaps or Velcro to four corners of both the sheet and the bottom of the bed. Did not try this method but I did use diaper pins pinned onto the waterproof cotton pad from underneath (from inside the zipper compartment) so my son did not have access to the diaper pins. Not very elegant but it worked. A few accidents that he had were absorbed by the pad. So I never needed to wash any part of the bed. Washing it in the washing machine is probably not a good idea…
I recommend a summer trip to Sweden/Finland/Norway. All very safe and child-friendly countries.
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Thanks for the great review! We travel around a lot too and plan to get this travel cot. PS the white text on the black background is killer to look at 🙂
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Emily replied on September 17th, 2011 4:11 pm:
it hurts my eyes 🙂
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Hi there,e
I am worried about the traveler as a suffocation hazard for an infant. It does not seem like the side fabric is breathable. Do you have a sense of this? Also, the fabric on the bottom seems relatively loose – again another suffocation hazard. What do you think?
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Ian replied on June 27th, 2012 2:06 pm:
We were never concerned about suffocation hazards. The material on the bottom is taut, and the air mattress is in a zippered section underneath the cot, so there’s no possibility for a baby to get trapped under the mattress. Even the walls are firm, so we were not concerned about suffocation there either.
Thanks for your comment and please let us know if you have any other questions!
Ian
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Hi-i’m a little late to the party, but just putting my 2 cents in, as i own one of these. It is quite fiddly to put together (think of it as a tent), but you get better as the time goes by. I chose it because it was for overseas travel, and it’s the lightest and smallest one out there. I wouldn’t use this if i needed to take it up and down every day or so, but we use it for weeks at a time. Love the netting on the top-keeps mozzies out at night so i don’t need to worry (we have travelled to africa and asia with this, and he hasn’t been bitten at night).
I found a fab little lady online who custom makes sheets for it-and they are amazing, so my little one isn’t sleeping on the plastic.
I have washed the net bits, and they have been fine in the machine, but the rest you can just wipe down.
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