Review: Spectra S9 Plus

When I entered the restroom at the ski lodge, a sulky snowboarder teenager was already occupying its one bench. She sprawled across it, texting furiously, and looked up when I stood in front of her. "Excuse me," I said. "I need to sit here."

"Why?" she said, confused. To all appearances, I was just another snowboarder, carrying a zip pouch the size of a sandwich bag.

"I need to pump breast milk and I don’t want to put all my stuff on this trash can," I said. "We can share, if you want."

She scooted over and tried to keep texting. But as I attached the bottle to the Spectra S9 Plus breast pump and turned it on, it became clear that our quarters were uncomfortably close.

Fifty decibels is quiet—it’s about as loud as electrical transformers humming high overhead—but it’s not that quiet when you’re sitting elbow-to-elbow. She got up in a huff and left, but I was already scrolling through Twitter on my phone. Sorry, teenager, you can’t embarrass me. I’m a mom.

Not every nursing parent needs to pump milk for the same reasons. While many working mothers benefit from using a hospital-grade double pump to produce as much milk as possible, many others might not need that kind of power.

If you need a pump for brief day trips or evenings away from your infant, you might have considered purchasing a smaller, more affordable, and more portable manual pump pump. But if you’d rather not sweat over a manual pump handle, like Daniel Day-Lewis in the beginning of There Will Be Blood, you might want to consider a small rechargeable pump like the Motif Duo, or the Spectra 9 Plus.

I was excited to try the 9 Plus because of how much I like the Spectra S1. The S1 is affordable, attractive, efficient, and it has a closed system, which means that a small rubber membrane blocks the possible flow of milk back up the tubing and into the pump mechanism, where it could threaten the milk’s sterility.

The 9 Plus, Spectra’s latest, rechargeable, portable pump, incorporates Spectra’s advantages into a much smaller and more convenient package. The 9 Plus is much, much smaller than the S1. I measured it at 3 x 5 x 1.8 inches (the S1, for comparison, measures roughly 7.5 x 7.5 by 8.5 inches). I weighed it at 9 ounces, or a little over a half-pound.

It doesn’t have a useful belt clip like the Freemie Liberty. But it is small enough to fit into a bathrobe pocket, or in an unobtrusive zip pouch.

The pump takes a little under two hours to charge the 9-volt battery. Each charge lasts a little less than the S1’s—two to three hours, as compared to the S1’s four hours (the S1 and S2 also boast a more powerful 12-volt battery). However, I did find that the battery adequate for two to three days of pumping twice a day, for 15 to 20 minute pumping sessions apiece.

It also uses Spectra’s flanges and backflow protectors. The 9 Plus came with one set of flanges, which luckily are in my size of 24-millimeters. However, if they weren’t, I would have had to order another set. Spectra offers them in 20-, 28-, and 32-mm sizes.

The 9 Plus has a simple layout. A blue backlit screen displays the timer, massage or expression mode, and the vacuum level. The massage mode ranges from levels 1 to 5, and expression mode ranges from levels 1 to 10, with the highest level of vacuum at a comparable level of 280 mmHg. It also shuts off automatically after 30 minutes.

The pump’s face has just four buttons: One to turn the pump on, one to switch from massage to expression mode, and two to turn the vacuum level up and down. Unfortunately, there is no way to control the frequency and the vacuum level independently of each other.

I prefer Spectra’s equipment setup to the Motif Medical Duo for a few reasons. First, the breast shield and flange are one molded piece, rather than two. The fewer parts there are, the fewer there are to lose and assemble. With the Motif, the detachable breast shield occasionally pops off while pumping with a hands-free bra.

And as I mentioned, the pump is not quite as quiet as its advertised 45 decibels, but I find 50 decibels to still be pretty hushed. It was small enough to stick in the pocket of my cardigan and read while I pumped, and entertaining to watch both my spouse and our babysitter walk past and repeatedly wonder aloud, “What is that sound…?”

I also found the maximum 280 mmHg suction to be adequate, if not quite as powerful as the maximum vacuum strength on the S1.

In online user reviews, the 9 Plus tends to suffer from comparison to the S1. It's true that the 9 Plus isn't a hospital-grade pump, and I would recommend consulting a lactation consultant or other breast pump professional if you are thinking of making the 9 Plus (or the Motif Duo, for that matter) your primary pump. For its size, the 9 Plus is a strong pump, but not being able to control the cycle length does make the pump time slower, and the vacuum strength is less than the S1's.

It takes 20 minutes for either of these portable pumps to extract the same amount of milk that the S1 can extract in ten minutes. If you've gotten used to the S1's miraculous pumping times, then that will be frustrating and over time, can lead to lower milk supply as you extract less milk. If my goal for pumping was to produce as much milk as possible for my infant, then I might pick another pump.

However, if your goal is, like mine, to relieve pressure and maintain milk supply as easily as possible under inconvenient circumstances, then the 9 Plus is a very good choice. While the Freemie Liberty is still the quietest, most portable, and most discreet pump, I like how attractive and easy to use the 9 Plus is. At the very least, it will take up a lot less room the next time you decide to annoy a teenager by pumping on a bathroom bench beside her.