The Incontrol BeDry, Night, & Elitecare Compared

[Little Sherri]

Having spent some time in the Incontrol BeDry and BeDry Night, I was looking forward to trying out the BeDry Elitecare, which looked to perhaps be the Goldilocks of the three BeDry offerings.

The BeDry is a plastic-backed, 7500 ml, tape on white diaper with a wetness indicator line, that comes in at $2.50 CAD per diaper, which is pretty good in a land where low-end store shelf medical diapers can cost $1.75 each. I quite like the BeDry - it's a comfy, honest diaper that holds a more than you'd expect for what I would call a medium-duty product that is slim enough to wear anywhere. 

The BeDry Night is at the other end of the spectrum, promising an absurd 12,000 ml of capacity - which at least tells you what they were aiming for, as far as expectations, if not actual payload. They're also white, but with hook/loop tabs and a mesh landing zone. They cost $3.91 CAD per diaper, and are still compact enough to wear under clothes for the first half of their capacity, anyway. 

The BeDry Elitecare promises 10,000 ml of capacity, but, at $3.33 CAD each, costs 17.5% less than the Night version, while offering 20% less theoretical capacity... but, how useful are those last 2000 ml's of capacity, anyway? At that point in the program, you have to sit on a towel or wear plastic pants. I was hoping that the Elitecare might end up being a wear-anywhere super diaper, not quite as bulky as its overnight-rated counterpart, but nearly as capacious. 

Alas, it would seem that you get what you pay for, and capacity = bulk. The original, non-Night, non-Elitecare BeDry costs 33% less than an Elitecare... and holds 32% less. They cost 36% less than the Nights, and they hold...37.5% less. All of that said, I think I like the standard BeDry the most. The hook/loop fasteners on the other two work very well, but both of them showed a tendency for the inner top-sheet to pull away from the cover at the front waistband as they started to bulk up - it was like there wasn't sufficient material to keep up with the expansion going on inside them. And, probably because they encourage reckless behaviour with their capacity claims, and encourage fluidic log-jamming with their high doses of SAP, I found that both of them generated back-of-the-thigh wet spots on my pants, while still being pretty dry higher up the back, whereas the tape on BeDry lasted pretty much exactly as long as I expected it to, and was uniformly wet across 70% or so of its interior. This prompted me to to think to myself, "Wow, this diaper hasn't leaked yet!", rather than "Damn it, this diaper has leaked...", which is what I experienced in the other two. 

Which is why I'm wearing plastic pants right now, as I try to wring the last couple of hours out of this BeDry Elitecare, without leaving spots on my furniture. It is holding quite a lot, don't get me wrong, and it is comfortable, but I feel like I got a way with a bit more in the Night, if I want to go push the extremes of marinading in the same diaper, and that the BeDry tape-on version feels like the most useful of the three, and the best value, because you don't feel as bad tossing a $2.50 diaper that you got 75% out of, if you're not in a position to flirt with leaks. Whereas tossing a half-used $3.33 or $3.91 diaper bothers me. 

[Little Sherri]

After further testing, I now feel kind of bad for maligning the BeDry Elitecare... as noted previously, the first one I wore leaked prematurely at the back of the thighs, and the inner liner also pulled away from the clover, although that didn't really cause any problems, it's just notable. Well, I wore another one for a good part of yesterday... and it performed great, ended up damp almost all the way up the back, weighed as much as a dead raccoon, and it didn't leak. I almost felt bad taking it off, but it was too swollen to wear out of the house at that point. 

The analogy that came to mind in considering the quite-variable performances I have experienced with both the Rearz Select, and now, their Incontrol BeDry Elitecare, is this... which is worse, an unreliable lawn tractor, or an unreliable helicopter? 

When you're driving a lawn tractor, you know you're driving a lawn tractor, and you don't go very far from home. When you're driving a helicopter, you assume you're driving a long-range performance machine, so you don't take it to go get milk, you take it to other cities. A helicopter failure can be a great deal more inconvenient, or even fatal, versus a lawn tractor failure, which is more of a nuisance. A failure in a Select is a failure on a lawn tractor. A failure in an Elitecare is potentially a helicopter accident. 

I have to test more Elitecare's and see if that first result was an anomaly. 

[rusty pins]

I wore my first BeDry night diaper to bed last night and after 8-1/2 hours I am still in it.  I rarely sleep diapered and when I have in the past it's been in a Betterdry or Beyond XP5000.  They won't last the night without leaking around the 5 to 6 hour mark, therefore I wanted to try a night diaper with a much higher rating.  At 12,000ml capacity, this diaper did make it all the way through the night with heavy wetting.  I'm still in it, wetting, and no leaks yet.  The things I do not like about it are the hook and loop tapes on a plastic backed diaper even though there is a landing strip on the front.  For me they do not stay taped on without coming loose.  I need my diapers taped on snugly and had to use diaper pins to pin it on through the tapes.  A bit of a minor issue, but I wish instead they had regular double tapes like most diapers, one that you can retape with the second tape if you need to snug it up a bit.  My other problem is I am close to the maximum size for large.  Other diapers I wear Large but these have shorter side panels and I barely was able to overlap the sides enough to tape it on.  If you are close to the maximum waist size, go up a size.  They do swell up a lot and get very bulky, as is expected with a diaper that has such a large capacity.  I doubt they would be discreet for wearing in public if half way to capacity, and I couldn't even get my jeans on over them due to the bulk.

[Little Sherri]

5 hours ago, rusty pins said:

Other diapers I wear Large but these have shorter side panels and I barely was able to overlap the sides enough to tape it on. 

Definitely true for me as well. Rearz reduced the sizing on their Large models a couple of years ago - I used to wear mediums in some and large in others, now I'm in XL. My size has changed, too, but not that much - I haven't changed the size of my clothing. Definitely, with Rearz, pay attention to the sizing guide, and shoot for the middle of the range, not the outside edge, otherwise your diaper tapes will be on the outside edge.