We received the Evenflo Easy Comfort High Chair as a gift from my husband's parents in March of 2001. Our daughter was then seven months old and she had been eating solid foods for about a month and a half. She was just becoming interested in feeding herself, so it was time to get a high chair.

My in-laws want the best of everything for their only local grandchild, so they chose this high chair among the many others at Babies R Us because they thought it looked the most comfortable and practical even though it was among the most expensive.

This is my first baby and my first high chair, so please keep in mind that I have no substantial comparisons.

I thought the chair looked complicated and kind of orthopedic at first. I was happy they didn't pick out something overtly lively as it would be sitting in plain sight in my house and I would have to look at it all the time for a few years. The design of the pad they chose is a neutral tan and navy gingham which has yet to stain, pill or fade after nine months of enduring various foods and washings. It's machine washable and it dries in no time on the clothesline or in the dryer (tumble dry low for about ten minutes).

A reason why I thought the chair looked sort of orthopedic were the poles with the holes for making height adjustments. The thing adjusts to eight heights, a feature which I have thus far found to be useless (we've kept it at the lowest level since we got it), but I can see the potential for use in the near future. When my daughter was younger and first being spoon-fed, the adjustable height feature could have been useful to move the child up and down based on the height of the food-administrator, but we generally left her at the lowest height. in the future when we use the chair as a booster (remove the trays and push our daughter up to eat at the table)it will be nice to adjust her to different levels as she grows or if we happen on a different table. Now, she is 14 months old and feeding herself somewhat successfully, so she stays at the same height and makes her mess on the big tray. It is somewhat difficult to adjust the chair. It takes two hands on the buttons and one foot on the rail between the casters, otherwise it lifts off the floor before it allows itself to be adjusted.

Initially the chair comes in a few parts but it is very easy to assemble. It is just a matter of attatching the smaller 'snack tray' with a few screws; no sweat.

After we got that on, we tried our daughter in her new chair, and at seven months old and about 18 pounds she looked tiny. I could just see the top of her head over the big tray, but with the big tray off and just the snack tray on, she looked all right and seemed comfy. So for the first few months while she was Little Miss Spoon Fed, just the snack tray was fine, and the large tray hung securely and compactly on the rear legs when we were not using it.

The back of the seat is adjustable to four heights. This is a great feature, one would think, for smaller babies, and the chair does advertise being safe from 0 to 3 years, but I really wouldn't put a child younger than 6 months in it. The harness is bulky (aren't they all, but this one seems to bulky for a very small child) and the seat is really too big, I think. For slightly older babies, it's still a nice feature. There have been times when our daughter refuses a nap and is very teethingly cranky, and at these times she'll have some cookies and milk to calm her down, and she's been known to fall asleep in her high chair. She has also been known to fall asleep in the wooden high chairs at restaurants, but I digress. . . . At these times it's nice to be able to easily recline her chair all the way so she can continue napping instead of risking a wakeful trip to her own bed, or having her slumped over with her head at a weird angle.

This high chair folds up. It is a big high chair, so this is a convenient feature. It measures nearly 24" wide with the tray, 32" deep(from front caster to back caster) and 32" tall at the lowest setting, and the chair probably weighs more than thirty pounds. The wide base makes for a sturdy chair (when the casters are locked, and all four do easily lock). It takes two hands and some maneuvering to fold it up. This is not a job that can be done with an infant in your arms. I can't imagine a kitchen pantry that has enough space to store the chair out of sight, but we keep ours somewhat neatly next to our refrigerator.

I don't know if it's the size or the overall design of this high chair that make it seem too reclined for my daughter in its highest position. She is now a good sized 14 month old at like 23 pounds and 34", and when I give her oatmeal or whatever to practice her spoon and fork usage she can't sit close enough to the tray if I don't put a big pillow behind her back. I don't bother with the pillow if she's just having Cheerios or some other finger food. Now, when we go out to eat, she has the worst posture in the restaurant high chairs, and I think it's because she's used to her luxe empress style dining at home. I'd rather she wasn't used to it; bad posture is, well, bad.

When it comes down to the nitty gritty, despite the washable pad, this high chair is really hard to clean. My daughter's personal favorite things to do while eating are grinding the softer things up and hiding them under her rear, then wiping her hands in her hair and then every conceivable crevice within her reach. Then she pulverizes dry foods like cookies and crackers until they are a fine powder. At the end of a meal she sweeps everything off her eating surface with swift, smearing brushing motions, because she likes to keep things clean. After all this action, cleaning anything is sort of challenging, but on this high chair it sometimes seems nearly impossible.

Under the washable pad is a non-washable vinyl pad that does get messy too. By non-washable, I mean it is not submersible in water. It can merely be wiped. I prefer plunging things into my washing machine any day over squirting and wiping anti-bacterial kitchen cleaner. This vinyl pad has a fabric (probably polyester) binding around its edge, and ours is forever encrusted with mashed banana which is not going to wipe away. The tray is a little large to fit in the sink, it really fits over the sink, and then it's a precarious job keeping the water from soaking my shirt during the rinsing process, but I don't really mind washing it. We don't have a dishwasher, but if we did we could not wash the tray in it, so it's sink or bust for that mess. The real bears to clean are all the little rounded creases and crevices, especially the one on the footrest. It's all made very well so no tiny fingers can get caught or tiny arms scraped by hardware and whatnot, but holy mackerel I will never get some of the crumbs out of the little cracks like the one where the footrest meets the chair. I've tried everything from Dustbuster crevice tool to bamboo skewer to toothbrush and there are just places my good intentions will never reach, and I only hope any household pests have the same problems. If I ever buy another high chair, and I don't really plan to, but if I do I will get one where the foot rest is the same piece as the rest of the chair.

As much trouble as we've had with this chair, I'm recommending it, because it is pretty well made and it will last us until my daughter is ready to sit in a good old fashioned ladder-back with the rest of us. I might feel differently if it wasn't a gift, but if you see one at a yard sale and you have a big toddler who eats, it may be worth your while to pick it up

*** UPDATE ***
It's now nearly Valentine's Day, 2002 and our daughter is 17 months old and ready to eat at the table with mom and dad. She has mastered the dish and the utensil (until she gets bored and they become hat and comb with mashed potato styling gel), and thus we attempted to remove the "detatchable" snack tray -- the only obstacle between baby and table. It does not come off. We looked in the instructions and they tell all about how to put it on, however not how to remove it. We attempted to retrace our steps in the installation process, and then we resorted to careful prying, and eventually stomping, frowning and whining. The thing, once on, does not come off. It's a good thing we bought a portable booster for the grandparent's houses.

Recommended: Yes