 |
 |
 |
||||||||||||
|
Handysitt
|
Jane Move |
|||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
About this test
If your child has reached weaning age and you’re partial to a few holidays,
meals out and weekends away, a highchair booster seat can be one helpful
little purchase. Compact, simple and easy to use, booster seats make eating
together as a family easier and more enjoyable as your tot can sit safely
at the table without you having to perch them on your knee and juggle
food!
Un-surprisingly they come in all shapes and sizes and our panel have
spent the last couple of months putting six differing designs through
their paces. Products range from fold down ‘clip onto a chair’ seats (‘easy
and great for home use if space is an issue’) to fabric harnesses (‘extremely
compact – perfect for the plane’) and soft, zip-down boosters (‘good to
keep at the grandparents’).
The panel agreed that size and design were two of the most important
things to consider and advise to ‘think about where you’ll be using it
most and pick a style accordingly’. They also found that ‘comfort is an
essential ingredient for lots of happy mealtimes – especially if you want
your child to stay in it for more than ten minutes’.
We tested for
- Ease of Use
- Fold mechanism
- Practicality
- Style
- Quality
- Value for money
Points to consider
Design : There are a multitude of travel highchairs on the market
and deciding which design to go for can be painfully time-consuming! If
it’s merely for a few weekends at the grandparents, the Jo
Jo Maman Bebe cushioned booster seat is ideal as it ‘packs up small,
yet provides a really comfy base for baby’. For home use, the Mothercare
Deluxe folding booster seat is ‘sturdy and well-built, meaning it
will last the distance for daily use’
According to our panel, keen travellers should ‘stick to the lightweight
models’ and opt for a flat-pack fabric design like the Totseat
. This ‘washable, squashable’ highchair came up trumps on all criteria
with our panel citing it as a ‘do-no wrong chair harness that’s amazingly
versatile and easy to use’.
Size and child’s age : Check the size of the chair in relation
to your child’s weight/age – some will last until they are big enough
to sit in a standard seat whereas others are simply good go-betweens that
you can resort to now and again when eating at home isn’t on the cards.
A good all-rounder for all age groups was the Handysitt
‘a practical, take-anywhere seat that looks like part of the
chair it’s fitted too – it’s perfect for tots from 12 months but also
for the age 2-3 market’.
For recently weaned babies, our panel liked the Prince
Lionheart bebePOD Plus (‘a sturdier alternative to the Bumbo that
accommodates your baby from just 3 months’) and the Jane
Move (‘a light, compact chair that’s surprisingly solid, perfect for
wriggly babies’). However, if cash is an issue, our panel recommend ‘sticking
to a baby seat until your child is able to sit unaided as you’ll end up
having to buy two separate boosters in the long-run’.
Material :Let’s face it, this seat is going to get bombarded with
all manner of spills, stains and crumbs so as mundane as it sounds, it
is a factor worth considering. The wipe clean seats like the bebePOD
Plus , Mothercare Deluxe and Jane
Move are ‘far easier to keep nice as they offer simple, fuss-free
cleaning on the go’.
Fabric seats like the Totseat are more
time-consuming to keep clean as they need to be fully washed (though our
panel did state that they ‘came up as good as new after a few spins in
the washing machine’).
Ease of Use/ Practicality :
Surprisingly, our panel didn’t have any gripes with the seats on test,
citing all of them as ‘easy to construct, attach to chairs and collapse
again’. It is worth taking note of the dimensions however, especially
if you have an unusually designed chair that you plan to use it on or
its primary use is for holidays and eating out. Most booster seats will
fit to standard chairs but others may be a tad trickier so find out how
versatile they are first.
Awards – which products won
The Handysitt won the Best Buy award with
our panel citing it as ‘the sturdiest, most practical seat tested’. Best
Value was awarded to the Totseat for its
‘easy to use, versatile and stylish design at a really reasonable price’.
See how the other booster seats faired in the full
test results
Where to next?
- Full test results
- Read the reviews:
Handysitt
Jane
Move
Jo
Jo Maman Bebe Cushioned Booster seat
Mothercare
Deluxe Folding Booster seat
Prince
Lionheart Bebepod Plus
Totseat
- Add
a review and you could win a prize - About
our Product Tests - Visit the
babyworld shop
Loading ...
