Hatch Rest+ Review: The Sound Machine That Survived Toddlerhood
- Rechargeable battery actually lasts the advertised month-plus between charges on moderate use
- Color night light is dim enough for 3am diaper changes without fully waking anyone up
- App lets a second caregiver adjust settings remotely without walking into the room
- App occasionally loses Bluetooth connection and needs a manual reconnect, a few times a month
- No physical buttons for the most common actions — if your phone is dead, so is easy control
We bought the Hatch Rest+ about a year ago after our first sound machine — a cheap plug-in model — died within four months of nightly use. This review is what a full year of actual toddler-room use looks like, not a first-week impression.
Why this one, specifically
Most sound machine reviews are written after a week of testing, before you'd know if the battery claims hold up or if the app becomes annoying to use at 2am. We wanted something that could survive over a year of nightly use before saying anything about it.
A year of actual nighttime use
The battery life claim has held up surprisingly well — we recharge it roughly once every four to five weeks with it running most of the night, every night. That's the single biggest upgrade over our first plug-in machine, which needed to stay tethered to an outlet permanently.
The night light has been the quietly useful feature. It's dim enough on the lowest amber setting that a middle-of-the-night diaper change doesn't fully wake anyone up, which matters more after month three than it sounds like it would on a spec sheet.
Where it's been annoying
The app's Bluetooth connection drops a handful of times a month, usually requiring a manual reconnect from across the room. It's a minor task, but it's happened enough times over a year that we'd call it a real, if small, flaw rather than a one-off glitch.
The bigger limitation: almost everything routes through the app. If your phone is dead or the app is acting up, there's no simple physical dial to just turn the thing on at a reasonable volume — you're stuck troubleshooting software at exactly the moment you don't want to.
Our verdict
A full year in, this is still the sound machine running in our house every night, and the battery life claim turned out to be accurate rather than marketing. The app dependency is a real annoyance, not a dealbreaker — just know what you're trading the convenience for.