Best Wearable Breast Pumps 2024 | The Strategist

Nov 05, 2024

The Strategist’s carefully chosen and rigorously vetted flagship shopping guides. Learn about our methodology here, and find all our Best in Class guides here.

The Strategist’s carefully chosen and rigorously vetted flagship shopping guides. Learn about our methodology here, and find all our Best in Class guides here.

When I first started testing breast pumps in 2018, a new class of breast pumps had just joined the market. The classic horn-shaped breast pumps (the best known of which are the Spectras, which we’ve reviewed before, and the Medela Symphony, which you often find at hospitals, though there are many others) were joined by a slew of new competitors, known as wearables. Some were great, some were not! But now, six years later, several of those pumps are on their second — or third — iteration. All of which is to say, if you’re choosing a wearable now, the options are better for you than they were for me.

Wearable pumps are definitely convenient and often quieter than their traditional counterparts. Unlike a traditional pump, a wearable breast pump collects milk into a boob-shaped bra insert rather than a bottle, with the goal of making breast pumping more discreet (you can keep your shirt on and you don’t need a dedicated pumping bra) and more manageable (you can accomplish more on your never-ending parent to-do list if you’re not forced to be plugged into the wall, or walking around with milk bottles dangling precariously from your chest).

One caveat before we begin: When I tested these pumps, I was a third-time pumping parent who was exclusively pumping for my 6-month-old. I have a naturally high supply of milk and responded pretty well to any pump I tried. Lots of breastfeeding people report a lower milk output and/or feeling like their breasts aren’t fully emptied when they use a wearable pump, so you might want to consider your wearable as a backup/secondary pump for when you really need the convenience, like at work, or when you need to pump while making dinner. Because it probably won’t be your only pump (my primary pump was a Spectra S2), owning a wearable is a bit of a luxury, but for someone like me, who was running after two other children most of the day, it was worth it.

Worth noting: Under the Affordable Care Act, your insurance is required to cover a breast pump for you, but the wearables are rarely offered as one of the free models. You can usually get a discount on them through your insurance, and you can almost always use health-spending-account or flex-spending-account money, if you have it, on pumps, parts, and accessories. And one other housekeeping note: As we noted in our piece on the best electric breast pumps, you may see the terms “hospital-grade” and “hospital strength” mentioned by pump manufacturers. Hospital-grade pumps, which may also be known as “closed system” pumps, have mechanisms in place to keep the milk from getting into the tubing or otherwise coming into contact with the pump itself. This means that the motor can be used by multiple people. Some wearable-pump systems may not meet this criteria, so as a general rule of thumb it’s wise not to share them. Pumps labeled “hospital strength” don’t mean much: as Karrie Locher, a mom of four, postpartum and neonatal nurse, certified lactation counselor, and the founder of Karing for Postpartum, told us, “This term is not regulated by the FDA for a certain strength criteria,” so don’t put too much stock in it.

While wearables aren’t generally as strong as traditional pumps, I looked for ones with at least seven suction levels to help you get the most milk out of each session. You don’t need to pump at the max suction level, but it’s nice to know how strong it can go. I also included pumps that had both stimulation mode (to help stimulate letdown) and expression mode, for the best range of options when pumping.

Wearables tend to hold less milk than flange-based pumps, but I looked for ones that held at least four ounces per side.

It’s arguably even more important that a wearable breast shield is properly sized than a flange, because you can’t really see your nipple once pumping begins to ensure it’s correct. I looked for at least two breast-shield sizes to ensure best fit.

A wearable pump isn’t much good if you end up needing it plugged in constantly. I looked for at least five pumping sessions’ worth of battery life.

While not a deal-breaker, it is nice if you can take the cups from a wearable and use them with other pumps, like your primary pump.

Suction strength: 9 levels/ Capacity: 5 or 7 ounces / Breast-shield sizes: 24 mm and 21 mm included, 27 mm available separately, as well as silicon sizing inserts for 19 mm / Battery life: 3 to 5 pumping sessions / Compatible with other pumps: no

There are two Willow mobile pumps I’ll be discussing in this story (Willow was a pioneer in the wearable-pumps space). Their original, spill-proof pump, now called the Willow 360 (though you may have seen it referred to the Willow 2.0 or 3.0), may be its best-known product, but I believe the Go to be the far superior pump. The suction is comfortable and simple, and in my testing, my milk output was very consistent with my output on my aforementioned Spectra S2. (And actually, unlike the S2, it doesn’t have any vibration, which I prefer.) The motor isn’t the quietest of all the ones I tested, but it is quiet enough that I can do most activities without getting distracted by the sound of the pump. It’s truly wireless, so I felt very comfortable moving around and washing bottles, brushing my teeth, or making dinner with it on (though it’s not spillproof, so you really cannot bend over). The connected app just got an upgrade that lets you adjust the suction and see your total pumping time as well as battery status. And while it’s not inexpensive, it isn’t as expensive as some of the others on this list — most notably, its sister pump, the Willow 360, which is $150 more.

I want to reiterate that this was my favorite of the pumps, and there are still some pretty major downsides — wearables are just not perfect. The Go has six parts per side, and cleaning them took a long time. (It took about double the time it takes me to wash my S2 parts.) There’s no seal on the spout to pour the milk out, and because of my high supply, I sometimes filled the containers to the max. When that happened, the milk just … erupted onto my shirt/bra. The setup was not the easiest — I watched a lot of in-app videos — and the setup was also prone to errors. If the diaphragm was even a little out of place, the milk could leak out of the bottom or onto the diaphragm itself, and I didn’t know if my session was screwed up until I took off the pump. Sometimes it even vomited a little milk back out when I set it on the counter. The app is the only way to see how long you’ve been pumping, so you need your phone nearby always. The charge also sometimes didn’t last a whole day. Even with these betrayals, it was still my favorite.

Suction strength: 9 levels / Capacity: 5 ounces per side / Breast-shield sizes: 24-mm flanges included, inserts for 17-, 19-, 21-, and 27-mm flanges available separately / Battery life: up to 8 pumping sessions / Compatible with other pumps: no

Suction strength: 5 levels plus 5 modes for 10 options / Capacity: 7 ounces per side / Breast-shield sizes: 28 mm. and 25-mm. inserts included , but inserts for 17-, 19-, and 21-mm. sizes, as well as 31-mm shields available separately / Battery life: 8 to 10 pumping sessions / Compatible with other pumps: no

I’m grouping these together because they’re extremely similar in design, and they’re also usually very similar in price — both excellent pumps on a budget that oscillate back and forth between which one is less expensive, and I’d say go for whichever one is less that day. The design consists of a cup with a small, squarish motor attached to the top of it. Next to the Willow Go, these pumps were my favorites, with the Momcozy S12 Pro getting a slight edge over the Imani i2 for slightly more comfortable suction and displaying your pumping time on the motor. (The Momcozy was my favorite runner-up wearable in my overall breast-pump story too.) Both pumps were pretty comfortable as far as wearables go (no vibration). The i2 has a few more modes so you can customize it a bit more, but ultimately they felt pretty similar. They set up the exact same way, with a silicon flange that inserts into a cap with a duckbill valve, backflow protector, and cup front (the i2’s holds two more ounces than the S12 Pro), then the motor sits on top. I felt very secure moving around and cooking, washing bottles, and prepping my older kids’ lunches in both models. They both use standard USB-C chargers to charge, and they are both about $140, which is a very reasonable price for a wearable, especially one(s) I liked this much.

Be warned: Transferring milk from the pump to the bottle felt a little precarious with both pumps, since you have to pop the motor off first, then pray the flange doesn’t separate from the cup when you do. Also if you can’t pour your milk right away, leaving the pump flat on the front with the motor right there just looks dangerous, even though it’s not. I found them middle-of-the-pack in terms of cleaning difficulty, but my husband reported that he preferred cleaning the i2 because the red silicon parts were easier to find when using the washbasin method that the CDC recommends. The design is clever, but they are not subtle. I think pretty much all the wearables make it clear you’ve got something going on under even a gigantic sweatshirt, but these are some of the more obvious ones. Still, if you’re going to get a wearable as a “sometimes” pump and you’re on a budget, one of these would be my choice for sure.

Suction strength: 7 levels / Capacity: 4 oz per side / Breast-shield sizes: 21 mm and 24 mm included, 27 mm available separately / Battery life: up to 5 pumping sessions / Compatible with other pumps: no

If you need to be pumping and the conditions aren’t ideal — say, you work in health care or are a teacher — the Willow 360 is the only truly spillproof pump. I felt I could do almost anything while wearing it, including lie down, bend over to pick up my baby, or empty the dishwasher. There are two ways to pump with the 360: directly into Willow’s proprietary pump bags or into their reusable milk containers. If you’re pumping into the bags, there are only two parts to clean per side, which is the fewest parts of any pump I tried. (They’re top-rack dishwasher safe, too.) While I’ll get into the downsides of the bags in a minute, the upside of the bags is if you’re pumping somewhere inconvenient, like on an airplane or at work, there’s no risky transfer to deal with — when you take off the pump, the milk is ready for storage. The Willow 360 is also the smartest pump of all the wearables I tried — everything is stored in an app, including how much you pump in each session, so you can see your daily output totals. You can also increase or decrease the suction strength and check how long your pumping session has been on the app and on an accompanying Apple Watch app, which is really handy if you’re pumping at the kind of job where you don’t get much in the way of a pump break.

On to the drawbacks, of which there are many. To be blunt, the Willow 360 kinda hurts. In order to be spillproof, the technology uses these little claw things to latch on to your body, and the suction can be pretty uncomfortable. There’s a definite pinching sensation. I’ve used the various Willows with all three of my kids, and your tolerance to the sensation might depend on whether you also nurse — it didn’t bother me too much with my first and second babies, but with my EP baby, I never got “broken in” by the baby’s latch and I couldn’t take it. You also can’t skip the “stimulation mode” that primes the breast for pumping; you have to wait until the pump uses its tech to determine that you are done with stimulation and ready to move on to expression. And you have to “unlatch,” as you would with a baby, when you’re done. Learning to put the pump on correctly can be a challenge (I watched the app tutorials many times), and when you finish pumping, you have to do a tricky maneuver called the “flip to finish,” which sucks all remaining milk in the bag/container. However, it usually left at least some behind. So if you’re out and about, be prepared to have to part with a couple of splashes’ worth of milk. The charger is unique to the 360, so if you’re traveling with the pump, make sure you have the charger with you because you can’t easily get another.

Suction strength: 7 levels / Capacity: 5 ounces per side / Breast-shield sizes: 24 mm and 28 mm included, but inserts for as little as 12 mm are available for free if selected at the time of pump purchase / Battery life: 5 to 6 sessions / Compatible with other pumps: no

The Elvie is the original wearable, and it got a ton of coverage when it first launched after a model wore it on the runway during London Fashion Week, and all the articles claimed that it was totally silent. I can confirm that it is probably the quietest one I tested. I also appreciated that it comes with two chargers (the micro-USB kind) and extra parts for when you don’t have time to clean everything thoroughly between sessions. The shape is also the most compact and clean, and it laid the flattest against my body of the bunch. The quietness coupled with the design made it the least noticeable option I tried — the Elvie has a slim profile and a natural shape, so it’s not terribly obvious under clothes. The suction is also gentle, so I found it to be a comfortable pump.

In my research I’ve found that the Elvie is popular among moms who have sensitivity from a difficult latch, so it’s sort of a good thing and a bad thing that the suction isn’t that strong, and it isn’t super-speedy at collecting milk. As for other cons, because the motor of the pump is the top half of the design, you need to be able to peek all the way into your bra to see if the bottle is full, which isn’t that discreet. (The connected app doesn’t tell you how much volume you’ve pumped.) The container is dishwasher-safe, but it is an annoying shape to clean and some of the really tiny parts are even hard to hand wash. There are also just a lot of parts.

[Editor’s note: I tested the original Elvie. An updated version has four new suction modes, which I wasn’t able to try.]

Suction strength: 9 levels / Capacity: 5 ounces per side / Breast-shield sizes: 21 mm and 24 mm included, 27 mm available separately / Battery life: up to 8 pumps / Compatible with other pumps: yes

Medela is one of the titans of the breast-pump world. Unlike, say, the Elvie Stride, the design of the cups doesn’t disappoint: Medela cleverly combined the backflow protector and the duckbill into a single silicon piece, so these cups only have three very easy to clean parts per side. They’re also probably the lightest of any I tried. I tested this pump in late 2022, and at the time, the tubing was permanently attached to the collection cups, meaning you couldn’t swap the tubing and hook the cups up to a different motor. That is no longer true — you can buy the cups separately now and use them with any Medela pump — and I would probably have liked the cups even more if I could have tried them with another motor. The battery life is about two hours of pumping time, which gets most people through a full 24 hours of pumping without charging. Setup is super-simple and intuitive. It comes with a USB-C charger, which you probably have a bunch of. It’s easy to pour the milk out and transfer to your storage of choice. Shape-wise, it was one of the more natural-looking options I tested.

Unfortunately, I didn’t love the motor on the FreeStyle. There’s a lot of vibration, which works well for some people but wasn’t my favorite sensation. I felt a weird buzz in my nipples that would actually continue after the pump session was over. I also found it loud and awkward to carry — it has a wrist strap, so you have to wear it like a bracelet if you want to move around. The tubing is also pretty short compared to some other models, which can restrict movement. But these critiques are mainly about the motor; the cups themselves are very good.

Suction strength: 10 levels/ Capacity: 8 ounces per side / Breast-shield sizes: 24 mm and 28 mm included / Battery life: up to 6 pumping sessions / Compatible with other pumps: yes

Spectra’s wearable entry is a bit of a hack-your-own situation: The 9 Plus motor is a portable motor, and the Cara cups hook up to any Spectra pumps, so combine them and you get a wearable. (The Spectra S1/S2 is our best-in-class breast pump overall, so it’s very handy to have some mix-and-match options that work with it.) The suction from the 9 Plus is strong for such a tiny motor, so I found my output to be very similar to my Spectra S2, which is my main pump. As an oversupplier, I appreciated the high capacity of the Cara cups. The battery life on the pump is also very good.

For the pump itself, I had similar complaints about the motor on the 9 Plus as the FreeStyle — lots of vibration, which I just don’t love, and I also thought it was loud. When I tried the Cara cups with my S2 I liked them a lot better, but they are finicky to set up: Everything has to be in the exact right place or the suction doesn’t activate, and it’s easy for something not to be locked all the way in. It uses a proprietary charger, so you have to always know where that is.

Suction strength: 10 levels / Capacity: 5 ounces per side / Breast-shield sizes: 24 mm and 28 mm included, but inserts for as little as 12 mm are available / Battery life: 8 to 10 pumping sessions / Compatible with other pumps: yes

Elvie launched a second pump in 2021, which uses cups that connect to a motor via tubing rather than the truly wireless original version. I found the suction on the Stride much more comfortable than either the similarly designed Medela or Spectra hands-free entries (no vibration), and I thought it was much quieter, too. It’s also stronger than the original Elvie — it is hospital-grade, while the other is not, so it can be used by multiple people. It uses a USB-C charger, which, again, you probably have many of. The best part about it is the ultralong battery life — it’s about 2.5 hours, one of the longest of any I tried and a huge boon for people who are out and about all day.

The drawback is cleaning it. The design of these cups is somewhat complicated. Each cup has six parts, including a ring seal that separates from the outer part of the cup for some reason, and duckbill valves that are so small you almost can’t fit a straw cleaner inside them. The tubing hooks into the cups via a wheel you screw into the front of the cup, and the wheel has four oval-shaped indents. The parts and their weird shapes are hard to clean. I found my output slightly lower than normal with this pump, and the unusual shape makes it really hard to eyeball how much is in there.

[Editor’s note: A new version of the Elvie Stride, which uses silicon breast shields and has fewer parts to wash and reassemble per side, was released in October of 2024, which I wasn’t able to try.]

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