Crinklz remains the standout ABDL printed diaper
In January 2018 and April 2020, ADISC member FruitKitty extensively tested various adult printed diaper brands. A number of factors were reviewed, including saline and water absorbency tests as well as pricing and value. For two testing trials in a row, Crinklz adult diapers performed better than the competition in terms of absorbency and value for money.
Summary Data for Advanced Diaper Reviews (April 2020)
Methodology:
Nearly all ABDL diapers and several medical diapers from premium brands commonly available in the United States in size medium in January 2020 for no more than ~$3.50/diaper were purchased at various points over the previous 2 years to create and further build a panel for testing under the newer, "advanced" ADISC testing protocol. Diapers which are no longer available have been excluded. In rare cases where major changes to a given diaper are known, they have been retested, but one caveat is that if unreported run-to-run changes have been made, the particular test may not perfectly reflect the current product. Diapers that differ in print but are otherwise the same diaper are treated as the same diaper for the purposes of generating capacity test data.
Price per diaper was determined based on the lowest price inclusive of shipping I could find on a given diaper at the end of February 2020. For most diapers, this means price was based on buying 1 case. In rare cases where several diapers were only available in single packs (FAB SENSE City Print, AwwSoCute), this means prices was based on buying 1 pack; this situation has become rarer with time as such products have typically either failed or have scaled up to sale at the case size. For DC products (DC Idyl 2017, DC Amor 2018), this meant price was based on buying one quad-case. For comparisons which involve price, diapers which were grouped as one diaper for capacity because they differed only in print were further subdivided when products with different prints have different price points – for some but not all diapers with multiple prints, solid color versions typically are sold at lower price points than those with prints.
Results:
Capacity Testing Results for H2O Test and Saline Test (Error Bars are SD)
Since the original publishing in 2018, the top tier Thrust Vector Crinklz/BetterDry has been joined by ABU PeekABU and ABU DinoRawrz. Many of the new products released in the past 2 years have filled out the middle between the previous 2nd tier of products; Tykables Overnights/Little Rawrz/Puppers/Unicorns which is an improvement from previous versions of the Overnight leads this tier 1.5.
Correlation Between H2O and Saline Test Results
In general, new products of the past few years have consistently improved capacity over what was common 5 years ago, and have increasingly shifted towards hook-and-loop tapes. Where there is some divergence between the H2O and the (more realistic) saline test is that thinner, higher-SAP diapers and new hook-and-loop diapers tend to outperform in the H2O test. SAP absorbs pure H2O better than saline and this test more dramatically expands a diaper, so this test can be viewed as a sort of stress test for other physical elements of a diaper’s design. Hook-and-loop tapes notably tend to grip far better and do not slip during these tests, so I anecdotally speculate that mechanistically their out-performance results from being able to maintain a tighter leg seal as the diaper expands.
It is typical among high-capacity adhesive tape diapers to underperform on the H2O test relative to how they perform on the more important saline test. Nonetheless, the overall success seen consistently by several brands over most previous products by this wave of hook-and-loop diapers suggests that this is a helpful feature in both tests.
Correlations Between Dry Mass Test Results
The dry mass of diapers correlates with capacity overall in both tests but there is a large spread. You cannot generally guess how a diaper will perform based on how heavy/bulky it seems; many other factors confound the issue of predicting performance.
Price per "Half-Flood" (Error Bars are SD)
Medical diapers are generally good deals relative to capacity spread across a wide range of capacities. Crinklz remains the standout ABDL printed diaper, but has seen price increases since it became widely available in the US in late 2017 and the gap has been narrowing. The best deals in ABDL diapers include Crinklz, ABU BareBum, ABU DinoRawrz, and Tykables/GetNappied PlayDayz – not necessarily the highest pure capacity products, but instead a variety of different capacities which are disproportionately effective for other reasons.
Broadly speaking, most diapers fall into a narrower capacity range than the difference in across the field in pricing. Nearly every diaper available for ~$2/diaper or less is in the top half.
As of this writing in April 2020, the correlation between price and capacity is weak and not statistically significant by typical standards. Diapers are priced on more than factors than just capacity; some lower capacity products are very efficient and some higher price products have been disappointing due to design flaws. Most ABDL manufacturers do not sell their products in consistent proportion to capacity, and in several cases unprinted versions of the same diaper are available at a lower price.
In general, you can expect to pay extra for complex prints. Larger cases sizes tend to result in more efficient prices relative to capacity. Current higher-end new flagship products have generally scored well on this measure because the most recent round of improvements to capacity and tapes has been effective.