Tommee Tippee First Sips Review

Hands On Gear Review

The Tommee Tippee First sips cup is a transition sippy cup made from BPA-free plastic and silicone. It offers a two handle grip, soft “easiflow” spout that is easy on baby's gums, and an interchangeable body that can be used with bottles or the sippy. It comes with a removable cover and is microwave, sterilizer, and dishwasher safe. The cups do not come in very many varieties or colors, and there are no trademarked characters to be found. It is widely available in both stores and online.

Performance Comparison

Likes

This cup did not leak; no really, not a drop. Which gave it a high score for leakage in both the sideways, and upside down tests. As if that wasn't cool enough, unlike some of the competition, this great leakage score also came with a spout that was easy to drink from. The ease of sucking on this cup was much higher than many of the other cups we tested that also performed well in the leak metrics.

This spout is easy to drink from, with regular flow rate, and little exertion needed to elicit fluid from the spout. Babies will be able to transition to drinking from a bottle with ease given this cup's easy to use spout. Baby should never grow frustrated trying to use this cup. In addition, we feel the American Dental Association might prefer the easier to use valve cups given their desire for less sucking action for oral hygiene concerns.

We liked the handle design, and grip factor on this cup. The body design is similar to the Tommee Tippee bottle design, and the nipple from the bottle can be used on this cup. This might aid babies in learning one skill at a time, handles before spout drinking. This cup scored a 9 of 10 in all the ease of use tests; including being lightweight, easy to hold, and easy to suck.

This cup is easy to disassemble, and clean. It only scored slightly above average in this metric, but it was better than many of the other cups we tested, so we still felt pretty good about the low effort it requires. There were not many parts, and the parts didn't really require any special tools.

While it claims to be dishwasher safe, we do recommend hand washing for this and all the plastic cups we reviewed, to cut down on the potential for the plastic to degrade when exposed to heat sources like the dishwasher, hot car, or microwave.

Dislikes

This cup did not score well in eco-health. All parts of this cup are made of plastic, so it was largely a disappointment in this arena. It was a little disappointing to find a cup we really kind of liked for its ease of use and leak factor, but have the whole thing, including the spout, be made of plastic.

While the manufacturer does specify that it is BPA-free plastic, they do not specify what kind of plastic it is, or what chemicals were used to make it. This is fairly common in the industry so it isn't a surprise.

The only other category this cup lost points in was ease of cleaning. Sure we said we kind of liked it in the “like” section, but that was only compared to the other cups in our tests. Overall, it still felt a little awkward, and took longer than we felt a cup should take to reassemble or to clean. Not a deal breaker by any stretch, but it is still noteworthy that this cup scored just 6 of 10 in this metric.

Conclusion

This cup earned a 80 of 100 overall. This was a pretty impressive score for a plastic cup, and only one other cup scored higher than this one no matter what they were made of; the Pura Kiki Stainless Sippy which scored a 83.

It wasn't a bad cup really, and if you are already using Tommee Tippee bottles, it might be an economical transition cup to choose. With a lightweight, easy to grip body, and a super easy flow drinking spout, it is hard not to like this cup. Plastic was the only real downside we felt this cup had. However, we recognize that there is a place for plastic, and that on the whole it is a more economical choice than the more eco-healthy glass and stainless steel options.

Gerber Graduates Sip & Smile, our Best Value winner scored an impressive 79 of 100. Not too far behind the Tommee, but still enough to make it noteworthy. This cup was easy to use, easy to clean, and widely available with an economic price that was about half the price of the Tommee Tippee depending on the day, special offers, and seller.