Not as nice as its name suggests
Written: Apr 18 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Nice look, t-bar restraint
Cons: Hard to adjust, impossible to clean, bulky
The Bottom Line: Don't count much on reclining and adjustable features of this chair, neither on keeping it "neat"
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| kit-tay's Full Review: Graco Neat Seat Reclining Adjustable |
My son was happily breastfeeding for the first 6 months of his life. Then, we were "supposed" to start feeding him cereal, so we did. I knew that high chair, theoretically, was a necessity, I just didn't know what an important decision it was.
I saw Graco NeatSeat Adjustable High Chair in store on sale (50% off!), and walked in circles around it for a while. It seemed like it had the features I expected to be handy, like, the recline, one-hand tray adjustment, many height adjustments, easy to wipe vinyl cover, and it claimed to be foldable. And it had a nice pattern, yellow and blue check.
Over the weekend, my boyfriend has put it together. I can't say much about the ease of that operation, I am never allowed to participate :) It didn't take him long, though.
The first couple times we used it I was pretty happy. My baby sat well in the chair, the t-bar restraint held him safely in place, and the little spills of baby cereal wiped right off.
Then, I tried to adjust the height of the chair... I struggled with it, probably, around 15 minutes before taking out the manual and double-checking whether I was doing it right. In the three months that we had this chair, I had to struggle with it every time when adjusting height. I cannot accurately describe the adjustment process, as it involved lifting the seat a bit to get a support bar out of a slot, then pushing it a bit, then adjusting to a necessary height, then easing it back into slot... Something like that, and it always required at least a bit of a struggle.
Reclining it was a bit easier, but another disappointment awaited: when you recline the seat, the tray lifts, so you cannot use the tray with the recline feature.
Now, for the one-hand adjustable/removable tray. Supposedly, you can pull a lever on the bottom of the tray and it releases the hold, so you can adjust or remove the tray. It has never worked for me that way. I had to pull the lever, and ease the tray out with another hand, otherwise it was stuck in place. The lever on my chair didn't release the hooks that hold the tray on the sides all the way, and you had to pull really hard, or help with the other hand.
I guess, I have never figured out how to fold the chair. The only folding I succeeded at was pulling the front and back legs together, but the chair didn't take any less space "folded" in that way, and couldn't stand on its own. It took up half of my tiny kitchen, and eventually had to be moved to the living room.
Meanwhile, my son grew and started eating all kinds of foods, like pureed veggies, cereals, and cheerios. He also found out that it was lots of fun to play with food, splattering it all over himself and the chair. Now, I had to clean the whole chair. At a first glance, it was pretty easy to wipe. At a closer look, my son was able to get food on the permanently attached harness, into all the crevices on the seat's cover, and in between the cover and armrests. The last one was the worst part: I had to remove the cover EVERY time to clean under it. It was so much hassle to clean, that my patience soon ran out.
Finally, I realized that, falling for the sale price, I got a bulky, impractical, and extremely hard to keep clean piece of junk. After just about 3 months of use, I was fed up and ready to trade it for something better. Now I knew much better what was it exactly I was looking for and how important it was.
Luckily, I was able to sell it for about the same amount that I bought it for, and get a Peg Perego, which I love. Looking at my son now, and at what he does with/in his high chair, I suspect we would have had many other problems with Graco NeatSeat, had we kept it any longer.I
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
kit-tay
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Location: TX, USA
Reviews written: 11
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
Very fond of my almost 2-year-old son. Recent graduate, still a student at heart.
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