Lotus Bassinet Review

Guava is a family run business oriented towards making parents' lives more comfortable and efficient. The company believes that “life should be spent together.” Their designers create gear with safety and ease of use in mind. The Guava company believes that products need to be safe enough for their kids before they offer for others. Guava puts their gear through third-party testing when it is possible and use high-quality materials whenever possible.

Performance Comparison

Ease of Use

The Lotus bassinet earned an average score for ease of use.

These are functions and features that impact your daily use of the bassinet.

Accessibility

The overall larger size makes this one hard to use right by your bed. The depth of the bassinet is shallow compared to the competition and lower than most making it hard to reach from your bed even if you manage to situate closer to you. This option works best as a free-standing bassinet.

Portability/Mobility

With a weight of 13.9 lbs, the Lotus is relatively light. It measures 25.5"H x 47.9"L x 32.1"W when open, which makes it somewhat wide for interior doorways, but the legs can bend in, or you can tilt the frame to walk it through the door. It doesn't have wheels, but it is still light enough to move from room to room if you need too. It is, however, great for travel. It folds easily and fits inside a travel bag with backpack style straps.

Additional Features

This bassinet is a travel crib at heart and comes with a carry bag so you can take the Lotus on the road with you.

Ease of Setup

It took us 10 minutes and 47 seconds to turn the Lotus from a travel crib to a bassinet. If you purchased this product as a travel crib (which you likely have), you must remove the fabric of the crib from the frame and attach the more shallow bassinet attachment to the top rails.

Cleaning

The fabric on the Lotus is removable and machine-washable but must hang to dry. You can clean the frame by wiping it with a wet towel, using a mild soap if needed.

Breathability

The Lotus earned an exceptional score for breathability.

This product has mesh sidewalls, four nylon straps on each side, and a fabric roll over the top. The part that baby will come in contact with is very breathable, and we don't feel the straps pose a risk given their smaller width.

Sleep Surface

The Lotus earned a relatively low score for its sleeping surface.

The Lotus bassinet mattress is one inch thick (the maximum allowed) and highly compressible. It shifts in the frame despite a Velcro connection, and the mesh on the sides of the mattress gives when we press on it.

Quality

The Lotus scored slightly above average for quality. We feel that the quality of this bassinet is good for the price; only one other product we reviewed came out with a higher score at a lower price.

Both the mesh and the fabric on the crib seem very solid and durable. We didn't notice any loose stitching or possible issues with the material. The stitching attaching the handles to the travel bag did begin to stretch from the weight of the crib after minimal use, and this could potentially become a problem down the road. The frame does have a slight wobble if bumped, but it holds steady when you press on the top rails.

Eco-health

The Lotus earned one of the highest scores in the group for eco-health. However, this is a metric where the bassinets all struggled, and we were not very confident in the ability of any of them to offer truly eco-healthy options.

This product is GREENGUARD GOLD certified in the world of chemical emissions standards. It is guaranteed to be free of harmful substances such as lead, PVC, Phthalates, Formaldehyde, and Heavy Metals, which is a level of responsibility not shared by all of the competition. The Lotus meets all the flame retardant standards without using additional chemicals, which helped its eco-health score. However, the vague language of their email response of not “adding” chemicals made us wonder if the materials come to them already treated as they did not say “chemical-free”. Guava offers more transparency on their product content and production than most of the competition, which is something we like to see when it comes to any baby gear, but feel is more important with products that will be so close to baby so frequently.

This bassinet earned points for the GreenGuard certification and the lack of added chemicals. Still, we don't appreciate the use of polyurethane and vague language potentially intended to mislead parents or “greenwash” the product. They do state the mattress is “low VOC,” but given the lack of standard definitions of this phrase, we are still left wondering what this means and feel a natural mattress would be better.

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