Appearance, Size, and Features

Performance and Fit

Price and Final Thoughts

The Bambino Bellissimo is the previous flagship product from Bambino for the 5 years prior to the release of the Magnifico. Originally released in 2011 as a thicker, higher capacity product with a different print than Bambino's other diapers, it also previously differed slightly in fit from Bambino's original products. Over several revisions, the diaper first began to more closely match the fit of other Bambino products, and then around the 2016 release of the Magnifico ABDLs began to widely report that Bellissimo appeared to have gotten thinner. Indeed, Bellissimo as of its most recent revision took on the same dimensions of Classico/Bianco/Teddy, but is roughly 40 g heavier.I am reviewing the medium size Bambino Bellissimo as purchased in January 2018. The medium size is listed as fitting waists of 32"-40", the large size is listed as fitting 38"-50", and the extra-large size is listed as fitting 47"-57".Bambino products are sold in white semi-translucent packaging with a simple label on the side. The Bellissimo label is single-color and includes several of the characters of the print next descriptive text. The prints are visible through the white plastic packaging.The Bambino Bellissimo has a printed front landing zone printed with a repeating pattern of cute images on a blue background, and is otherwise solid white. The pattern is easily the most colorful of those on Bambino products, and the only which gives a solid color print across the landing zone instead of a mostly-white pattern. At the time of release in 2011, this was novel for ABDL diapers.The print features several bunnies and bears with letters on their shirts and a variety of what seem to be semi-random cute objects including a moon with a face, windmills, cherries, rocks, flowers, hearts, and grass. The print is generically cute and babyish, but the somewhat random and incoherent nature of some of the objects in the print strike me as somewhat inauthentic.The outer plastic has a thick, oily feel to it.To test their dry thickness, I stacked three diapers on top of each other, placed a heavy book on top of them, and measured their height. Together, the 3 diapers had a height of approximately 9.6 cm (3.8 in). Thus, the dry thickness of a single folded diaper is 3.2 cm (1.3 in).The Bambino Bellissimo uses a double-tape design with tapes that measure 4.0 cm (1.6 in) wide each. Bambino advertises their tapes as being refastenable; in the past, I haven't had good luck getting them to refasten. They have gotten a lot better over the various revisions at actually sticking well throughout use of the diaper. I only occasionally now get much sliding and only rare does a tape pop.The inside of the diaper is all white, and the padding is arranged in an hourglass shape that is wider in the back than the front. The padding is soft to the touch but is very noticeably harder and denser than that of the Bambino Classico. The diaper has standing leak guards and an elastic waistband in the front and back.With the diaper outstretched, it measures 74.5 cm (29.3 in) in length, 64.5 cm (25.4 in) in width at the wings, 31.5 cm (12.4 in) in width at the center, and 22.5 cm (8.9 in) in width between the leak guards.To test the capacity of this diaper quantitatively, I performed two tests.First, I weighed a diaper and put it on. I then repeatedly dosed water into the front of it in 100 mL increments using a metered laboratory bottletop dispenser, followed by sitting down in a chair for 30 seconds each time to give the diaper a chance to absorb the liquid, then checking for leaks. When a leak occurred, I weighed the diaper again, and recorded the change in weight.Over 3 replicates of this H2O capacity test, the Bambino Bellissimo averaged 2127 mL with a standard deviation of 225 mL.During one trial of this test, I recorded qualitative information about the diaper as I added water to it. After 600 mL of water, the diaper felt constantly wet in the front. At 1200 mL, it felt like I was sitting at the edge of a puddle. At 1700 mL, it felt like I was sitting in a puddle and the front was swollen and heavy enough to noticeably sag when I stood. At 1900 mL, it felt like I was sitting in a pond and I could feel liquid moving beneath me. At 2000 mL, I could feel liquid moving near the leg cuffs. At 2100 mL, the diaper felt like a single swollen unit that made it impossible to close my legs while standing. At 2200 mL, I was now sitting on a swelled area and the diaper leaked.After one trial, I folded the diaper back up to compare its thickness to a dry diaper. It had expanded to roughly 9.1 cm (3.6 in), about 2.8x its original size. The tapes held throughout this test.I then performed a second test in which I made normal saline (0.9% NaCl in H2O), weighed a diaper and put it on, then used a metered laboratory bottletop dispenser to dose 160 mL saline every 5 minutes until it leaked, sitting down between increments. I weighed the diaper afterwards and divided the resulting change in grams by 1.0046 to account for the density of saline to determine the change in milliliters. 160 mL is approximately equivalent to half of an average adult urine void, and this increment is loosely representative of a "half-flood".Over 3 replicates of this saline capacity test, the Bambino Bellissimo averaged 1028 mL with a standard deviation of 95 mL. Rounded to numbers of integer "half-flood" doses, the diaper averaged 6.3 "half-floods" with a standard deviation of 0.6 "half-floods".The average dry mass of this diaper, based on 6 replicates across both tests, was 204.0 g with a standard deviation of 5.1 g.I weighed and put on a fresh diaper and wore it while going about ordinary activities. The diaper lasted a total of 6 hours before beginning to leak. During my test, I had about a half dozen small wettings and one flood before I noticed a small leak. I measured a change in mass of 840 g or about 5.3 "half-floods", which was on the low end of my testing range.With a 36" waist, I am in the middle of the listed size range for the medium Bambino Bellissimo. I normally wear size medium in other diaper brands and this diaper fits as expected.I bought a pack of these diapers for the purposes of a review from https://bambinodiapers.com/ . They are available in 2-diaper sample packs for $9.45, 16-diaper two-packs for $44.29, and 48-diaper cases for $98.28, including shipping.At the case size, this works out to $2.05/diaper and based on my test results this diaper holds 3.1 "half-floods" per dollar. This price is middling relative to the competition and when combined with above average capacity yields an above average efficiency in price for capacity.The Bambino Bellissimo is the original "higher capacity" ABDL diaper, which went toe-to-toe with the very best medical diapers without markedly exceeding them. For a lot of years though, it struggled with tapes that couldn't keep up, and eventually it was flat-out beaten by growing competition. The current version, however, puts up solid test results, doesn't have major tape issues, and as the competition has trended more expensive, this diaper has barely changed in price for years.Putting it all together, the Bellissimo is a solid buy for an ABDL diaper today. There's nothing particularly special about it anymore, and certainly it's not a contender for the best overall ABDL diaper, but it has eased into a role as just being a good diaper at a good price relative to the field.