Good from Far, Far from Good ;-)
Written: May 20 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Large tray, supportive seat for wee ones, handy recline
Cons: One-hand sliding tray ISN’T, painful toe-stubs on wheels
The Bottom Line: Look at the Fisher-Price Healthy Start instead: same price, better features and design
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| neuhofer's Full Review: Graco Neat Seat High Chair 3656 |
We received the Graco Neat Seat as a gift from my husband’s colleagues in June 2001. We were catalog shopping through Sears, so did not have an opportunity for much comparison shopping. It’s a good high chair, but could benefit from several improvements. I would not buy the same highchair again, as I believe there are better chairs at a similar price point.
I find it difficult to clearly separate “what I like” versus “what I don’t like” because a number of the chairs features fall into both categories.
Assembly
I cannot really comment on this. We received the chair already assembled. From what I can see of it’s construction, it looks to me like assembly would be easy without too much need for the manual if you have any sort of technical aptitude.
2 Seat Covers Included
My model has a fabric seat cover that wraps around the plastic frame of the chair, as well as a vinyl underpad that sits within it. The manual does say that you can use the chair without the fabric seat cover. I have done this only a couple of short times while waiting for the fabric cover to air dry after washing. I think with regular unprotected use, the vinyl cover would easily tear.
Vinyl Versus Fabric Covers
I thought the vinyl covers looked very plasticy and cheap, but I would not buy a fabric cover again. It ALWAYS looks dirty! And being such a huge and well-elevated chair, this dirty cover gets prime real estate in your kitchen! My cover is a gingham of taupe, dusty rose, navy, and green. The print does not help much to disguise food smears and it inevitably is “decorated” within one or two uses after washing.
Cleaning and Installation of the Fabric Cover
The fabric seat cover attaches to the chair with a wrap-over portion that is elasticized and fits over the back of the chair and around the sides. The side portions have sewn-on plastic clips that are supposed to attach to plastic nubs on the chair. These clips never stay on the nubs, but the elastic is sufficient to hold the cover in place. At the bottom, tiny elastic loops pull through slits in the chair’s leg-wells and hook onto the backside of the chair. The system works well and it’s very easy to get the cover off for machine washing.
Speaking of machine washing: cold water, hang to dry. Wash it separately and do NOT be tempted to include other items with similar fabrics. I did it ONCE and it aged the cover dramatically as it picked up pilley-lint from the other item) On the down-side, the fabric cover has side-panels that fold up and rest along the inside of the chair (between your child’s thigh’s and the plastic of the chair’s seat side-walls). These are useless, floppy things. They tend to get touched with foody-fingers. They are not anchored to the chair anywhere, so get folded improperly in lifting child in and out of seat. I find it better to just fold them underneath and pretend they aren’t there.
Safety Belt
The high chair has a three-point harness that’s great for wrigglers. It is easy to detach the shoulder straps and throw them in the washer in a laundry bag (they are made of nylon webbing). However, the crotch buckle is permanently mounted on the chair, making it much harder to occasionally scrub off the short piece of webbing there.
Cleaning of the Plastic Chair
Definitely a couple areas for improvement: The chair itself is made out of a “matte-finish” plastic rather than the shiny stuff used on the tray. It is much harder to wipe clean, especially for removal of grimed-on dirt like finger marks. BTW, the huge scooped legs are made out of this same plastic, so ditto for cleaning off the dripped ice cream. Once you remove the fabric cover, the vinyl underpad is easy to slip off the underside notches that affix it to the top and bottom of the chair’s seat. You lift it off to discover: Voila! Week’s worth of dried crumbs of food! Yay! The crumbs wiggle their way under the seat covers a lot. Worse than that, the seat’s bottom is not smooth. It has holes molded into it that are part of the assembly through which the reclining bar threads. Great, deep crevices for all the food particles to have a party in! I have found that the easiest/only (Yup!) way to clean this all is to heave the whole chair onto the counter over the kitchen sink, and use the spray hose to blast all this muck right out of those bar-guides.
Tray Size, Shape, Cleanability
The tray is a nice large kidney shape, with a good (1/2 inch?) lip all around to contain accidents (or juices intentionally poured from cup to plate!) It has a cup hole on the front right (from the child’s view) corner and a curved section on the front left corner. I don’t know that the cup hole is necessary and find it is just one more thing to wash into the corners of. Having said that, the tray is molded with gentle curves rather than sharp corners, so it’s not too hard to wipe it out nicely. My daughter did LOVE to place her cup in the holder, but be warned that it does NOT accommodate a two-handled training cup and this can be EXTREMELY VEXING to your otherwise good-natured little cherub! The tray is a glossy plastic that is easy to wipe. However, it is so large that it is rather unwieldy to prop in your kitchen sink for a good hose-down. I have found that the tray does discolor in contact with tomato-based foods, but only slightly. Time and repeated washings that come from everyday use, along with the almond color of the plastic, keep it looking nice – I don’t want to leave you with the impression that it stains badly, as do some plastics.
Tray Adjustment: Only One-handed for my Mechanical Merlin!
The Neat Seat is supposed to feature a tray that is easy to adjust with one-hand, by pressing the large button in the center front of the tray and sliding to the desired notch. My husband is the ONLY person I have found who can do this reliably. It has been the source of many a lively Saturday night discussion at our house (who says are social lives aren’t just as exciting as pre-kids?) Having years of experience at mechanic work, my husband has that instant “brain-hand recognition and correction system” for cajoling stubborn moving parts. I do not. The button presses in deeply and reliably releases the catches on each side of the tray. However, the tolerances on $70 plastic high chairs aren’t exactly like rocket-ship construction. The tray catches and wobbles from side to side as you try to slide it. I have pretty much abandoned trying to use this feature and instead stick to the two conventional handles on the bottom of the tray’s sides.
Stability
A great point for this chair. My daughter started climbing in and out herself, from various approach positions at apx 14 months. We have never found even a hint of instability from any angle. The huge footprint of the chair, coupled with its feet that flare toward each corner keep your kiddie climbing, rather than crying.
Height Adjustments (5, If I remember correctly)
This chair is easily adjusted on it’s steel frame to accommodate children of different heights and various tables. The seat back has a series of c-shaped hooks molded into the plastic on each rear corner. You simply give the chair a quick, firm tug up to pull it out of the guides, move it to the new position, and push-snap it onto the new pair of hooks. This is, of course, easier to do if you do not also have the weight of the child in the chair to contend with!
3-position Recline is Lovely!
Unlike some other owners, we used this feature a lot. When our daughter first started on Pablum, we liked to semi-recline her since she wasn’t a pro at sitting without support – particularly when she had something else as exciting as food to concentrate on at the same time! My sister-in-law had a much-more-beautiful wooden high chair and commented more than once how well the chair supported our baby compared to the bare unshaped seat of the wooden highchair.
Even more than that, we have used the recline feature when (inevitably and semi-regularly) the day’s excitement has been too much, and suddenly that little head is slumped over right into the plate of spaghetti. Then, simply tip the chair back, push the wheeled-rig down the hall to the bedroom, and return to the table for a peaceful dinner with spouse.
The recline mechanism is easy to operate: standing behind the chair, you lift up on a bar underneath the seat. While it’s out of lock, tip the seat to desired location, and push the bar back into lock. It’s definitely a two-handed operation. You may also need to wiggle the chair gently while disengaging the locking bar (just like sometimes turning the steering wheel of a car while turning the key in the ignition, when the steering lock binds).
One draw-back of the chair’s design is that the tray mounts onto the chair, so if you are using either of the two reclining positions, the tray is tilted up at an non-functional angle. I know that at least some Peg-Perego models avoid this problem, but I also know they cost two or three times as much!
Wheels
Each corner foot of the chair has double-castor plastic wheels. They are semi-convenient. They do make it easier to slide/roll the chair around than conventional feet (especially with child in chair) but they are cheaply constructed. Often, at least one set will not orient with the others and slides sideways rather than rolling. My house has wood and vinyl flooring. I think they might work better on carpet (low pile and thin underlay only). The locks on the wheels are a pain in the %*&$! They are always getting stepped on and accidentally turned on and there’s one on each wheel, so you have four corners to inspect and piddle around with when the chair isn’t moving well. I think plastic sliders like those “magic-glide” covers to moving appliances or placing under the feet of dining room chairs would be far superior. Also, the wheels are too close to the outside corners of the chairs frame. I can’t tell you how many times we have very painfully stubbed/snagged our toes on these plastic castors and the hard little locking levers! Owwww. . . just remembering it!
Rear Towel Bar
The steel frame loops behind the seat to form a bar that is extremely useful for hanging towels and bibs on. It’s also helpful to grab in hoisting the chair over the kitchen sink for cleaning as I described above. (If you were to grab the plastic seat instead, you would likely lift it off the frame in the manner used to adjust the chair height).
Size
This is NOT a good chair for small homes. It’s HUGE! The flared feet may prevent you from properly pulling the chair (sans tray) up to a table, depending what style of legs the table has. My table has legs that flare from the center to the corners and the two are always banging into each other. There never seems to be a good spot to park the chair, it’s always filling our kitchen. It does not fold at all for closet storage. My husband thinks it’s really ugly. Partly it’s all that plastic, but a lot of it is the size – especially of the flared feet.
T-style Safety Seat Inconvenient
The chair features a molded plastic t-bar between the child’s legs to prevent him or her from escaping by submarining under the tray. Unfortunately, this “T” is constructed with the horizontal bar of it’s top being permanently connected to the chair. This creates “leg holes” that you much fit your child through. Better (in my opinion) are chairs where the top bar of the “T” is formed by the tray itself. That way, when tray is removed, you just drop your child straight into the seat, and the plastic post pokes up in between the legs until it is covered with the tray.
All in all, this is not a BAD chair. But I would not recommend it to a friend. I have not investigated high chairs much, but did see the Fisher Price Healthy Start in a store once and thought it looked a lot better. After seeing it at my cousin’s house, I was in love. I would buy one myself and sell this Graco in a garage sale if my husband wouldn't think that was just COMPETELY riduculous. I recommended it to a friend and she is very happy with it. It’s the same price as my Graco, but with a good-quality and easy-cleaning vinyl cover, dishwasher-fit tray, easy “T” seat post, and otherwise seems to be a better-built, smarter product.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
neuhofer
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Location: Manitoba, CANADA
Reviews written: 17
Trusted by: 1 member
About Me:
"Inside I'm a redhead!" . . .nothing more needs to be said ;-)
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