Tommee Tippee NoTouch vs Braun No Touch + Touch: The £30 Braun Does More, the £50 Tommee Remembers More

COMPARISON · SAFE & SOUND

It is 2am, your baby feels warm against your shoulder, and they have finally gone back to sleep. This is exactly the moment a no-touch forehead thermometer is built for: a quick reading from a couple of centimetres away, no fiddling with an armpit, no waking a baby who has just settled. Both thermometers in this comparison promise that, and both come from brands most UK parents already trust in the nursery.

On paper the choice looks simple. The Tommee Tippee NoTouch costs around £50, the Braun No Touch + Touch (model BNT400) around £30, so surely the dearer one does more? It doesn't. The Braun is the one with two measuring modes, a silent mode, a backlit screen, a positioning guide and fever colours that change with your child's age. What the Tommee Tippee offers instead is simplicity: one button, a 1-second reading, a red light and alarm from 37.6°C, and a memory that holds the last 20 readings rather than the Braun's 9.

We went through the official specs for both, checked live UK prices across our retailer partners, and read through a large pile of parent feedback from reviews and the questions families send us. The pattern was clear: parents rarely regret either one, but they regret buying the wrong one for how they actually use it. Here is how to tell which camp you are in.

Lil' Bubba's verdicts

• Best Overall: Braun No Touch + Touch (BNT400) · 8.5/10 - two modes, silent night checks and age-based fever colours for £20 less
• Best for Simple Fever Tracking: Tommee Tippee NoTouch · 7.5/10 - one button, a big red alert and a 20-reading memory for logging a fever over a day or two

Quick comparison

	Tommee Tippee NoTouch	Braun No Touch + Touch BNT400
Typical UK price	~£50	~£30
Measuring modes	No-touch only	No-touch and touch (forehead contact)
Distance	1-3cm from the centre of the forehead	Up to 2.5cm, guided by a positioning system
Reading time	About 1 second	About 2 seconds
Memory	Last 20 readings	Last 9 readings
Fever indicator	Red light and alarm from 37.6°C	Green, yellow or red display, adjusted to age
Night use	Colour light and LCD	Backlit display, switchable silent mode
Extras	°C/°F switch, storage pouch, batteries included	Food and bath mode, °C/°F, batteries included
Our rating

How we picked the 2

We started with the no-touch thermometers parents add to their Nests most often, then kept only models from established brands that are in stock with our UK retailer partners right now. The Tommee Tippee NoTouch is one of the most added thermometers on BubsNest that we had never compared before, and the Braun BNT400 is the model parents most often mention alongside it when they are weighing up a forehead thermometer. We compared official specs, current prices and recurring themes in parent feedback, giving more weight to complaints that came up repeatedly than to one-off bad experiences.

What to look for in a no-touch thermometer

Consistency matters more than headline accuracy. Every infrared forehead thermometer can be thrown by a sweaty forehead, a baby who has just come in from the cold, a hat or a fringe. The parents who are happiest with theirs take two or three readings in a row and look at the pattern rather than trusting a single number.

Know when a forehead reading is not enough. UK health guidance recommends a digital thermometer under the armpit for babies and young children, and advises calling your GP or 111 if a baby under 3 months has a temperature of 38°C or higher. A no-touch model is a brilliant screening tool for night checks, but many parents keep a simple under-arm digital stick alongside it to confirm a worrying reading.

Night features. A backlit screen and a silent mode are the two things that decide whether you can check a sleeping baby without waking them. Beeps travel further than you think in a quiet nursery.

Memory. If your baby has a fever that runs for a couple of days, being able to scroll back through readings (rather than scribbling them on your phone at 3am) is genuinely useful when you speak to a GP or pharmacist.

How the fever is shown. Some thermometers use a single threshold; others adjust the colour guidance to the age of the person being measured. Age-based guidance is handier if the whole family will use it.

1. Tommee Tippee NoTouch Infrared Forehead Thermometer / 10 · Best for simple fever tracking

The Tommee Tippee NoTouch is designed around one idea: you should be able to use it half asleep. Hold it 1-3cm from the centre of your baby's forehead, press the start button, and the reading appears on the LCD in about a second. If it is 37.6°C or higher, the light turns red and an alarm sounds; otherwise you get a green light. There are no age settings and no modes to choose between.

Its standout feature is the memory. It stores the last 20 readings, more than double the Braun, which is handy when a temperature is up and down over a long weekend. It is suitable from birth, switches between °C and °F (and remembers your choice), and comes with a protective pouch and batteries in the box. The catch is the price: at around £50 you pay more for fewer features.

What parents love

• Genuinely one-button. One parent told us: 'My partner used it the first night without reading anything. Point, press, done.'
• The red light is impossible to miss. The green or red signal means you do not need to remember what counts as a fever when you are exhausted.
• 20-reading memory. A parent shared: 'Being able to scroll back through the day's readings made the call with the GP so much easier.'
• Fast. About a second per reading, so a wriggly baby barely notices.

What to know before you buy

• Readings can wander. We hear repeatedly from parents that consecutive readings can differ, so take two or three and look at the trend.
• No touch mode and no listed silent mode. The fever alarm is part of the design, which some parents find too loud for a sleeping baby.
• Pricier than it looks. At around £50 it costs more than the Braun while offering fewer features.

Best for

• Parents who want the simplest possible night check
• Logging a fever over a day or two without a notebook
• Grandparents and carers who will not read a manual
• Families who only ever need to measure the baby

2. Braun No Touch + Touch Thermometer BNT400 / 10 · Best overall

The Braun BNT400 does two jobs in one body. In no-touch mode you hold it up to 2.5cm from the forehead, and a positioning system with a guidance light tells you when you are at the right distance, which takes much of the guesswork out of infrared readings. In touch mode you place it on the forehead between the eyebrows, which some parents find more reassuring for a confirming second reading. The result appears in about 2 seconds.

Braun's Age Precision feature lets you set the age of the person you are measuring, and the display then lights green, yellow or red to match. Add a backlit screen, a switchable silent mode for night checks, a food and bath mode for checking milk or bath water from a few centimetres away, and a stated accuracy of ±0.2°C between 35°C and 42°C, and it is hard to argue with at around £30. The one area where it gives ground is memory: 9 readings rather than 20.

What parents love

• Silent mode and backlit screen. One parent put it best: 'I can check her in the dark without a single beep. That alone was worth it.'
• The positioning guide. It tells you when you are at the right distance, so readings are less dependent on a steady hand at 3am.
• Two modes in one. Parents like being able to switch to forehead contact for a second opinion when the no-touch number looks high.
• Grows with the family. A parent shared: 'The colours change with the age setting, so we use it on our four-year-old and ourselves too.'

What to know before you buy

• Only 9 readings in memory. During a long fever you may need to note readings down yourself.
• More settings to learn. Age setting, modes and silent mode take a few minutes with the manual before the first night you need it.
• Still an infrared reading. Like any forehead thermometer, it shows an estimate, so confirm a worrying result with an under-arm digital reading.

Best for

• Checking a sleeping baby in a dark room without waking them
• Families who want one thermometer for baby, siblings and adults
• Parents who like a contact reading as a second opinion
• Anyone on a tighter budget who still wants the full feature set

What about an ear thermometer?

Some parents ask whether they should skip forehead thermometers altogether and buy an ear model such as the Braun ThermoScan range. Ear thermometers are generally recommended from around 6 months, need a fresh lens filter or a clean tip, and do mean touching your baby, which can wake a light sleeper. If you are leaning that way, our Braun ThermoScan 3 vs Tommee Tippee In-Ear comparison walks through the trade-offs. For a newborn, many families pair a no-touch model for night checks with a simple under-arm digital stick for confirmation.

How to choose

Choose the Braun No Touch + Touch if night checks are the main job. The silent mode, backlit screen and positioning guide are exactly what you want at 2am, the touch mode gives you a second opinion, and the age-based colours mean the whole family can use it. It is also the cheaper of the two, so for most parents it is the easy pick.

Choose the Tommee Tippee NoTouch if you want something anyone in the house can use without instructions, and you value a longer memory for tracking a fever over a couple of days. Its single red-or-green signal is the clearest of the two, as long as you are comfortable with an audible alarm and the higher price.

Whichever you choose, take a few readings rather than one, and confirm anything worrying with an under-arm reading and a call to your GP or 111.

Add it to your Nest

Adding a thermometer to your baby list is one of those sensible gifts friends and family are happy to buy. Save your pick to your free BubsNest registry and share it with the people who keep asking what you need.