Summer Infant Bentwood Booster Review

Nora is nearing 4. Vivienne is nearing 1. We’ve served them both gosh knows how many meals by now, and we’ve had a handful of high chairs and booster seats in order to do so.

We started Nora in a pretty traditional high chair. A standalone chair with its own legs, takes up a lot of space. But we had a good spot for it in the condo, and then when we first moved to our new house, we didn’t have any furniture in the eat-in kitchen area—uh, for like a YEAR—so Nora’s high chair lived in that space. And when we ate dinner as a family, we would move her high chair into the dining room, where we also had the room for it. So “space-saving” wasn’t really a priority. But once we did get a kitchen table, we started eating the majority of our meals there, and we had to make a change. By then, Nora was about two years old, so we transitioned to using a cheap, plastic booster that attached to the kitchen chair and allowed her to eat off of the table. It worked fine, right up until this past winter, when we decided she was getting a bit big for it, and didn’t really need to be strapped in anymore. We upgraded to a “big kid” booster.

In the meantime, Vivienne was starting solids, so we lugged out the big high chair again. But because space is tight in the eat-in area of our kitchen, it wasn’t ideal. And we had JUST gotten rid of the plastic chair for a bit, so we weren’t thrilled about going back to that so soon.

Luckily, Summer Infant has developed a booster that is both functional AND more visually appealing. It’s the Bentwood Booster Seat in a dark stain.

We’ve been using this for a few weeks now, and we like it a lot. It looks nice, tucks in under the table when we push in the chair, and Vivienne seems to be comfortable in it, too. Here are my observations, organized by pros and cons.

Pros:
– Its appearance. I like the dark wood stain, the lime green pad, and overall just the “neutral” design of this. It’s much more pleasing to the eye than the plastic primary colored booster seats we’ve seen and had before.

– Low profile, truly space saving. We leave it attached to one of our kitchen chairs pretty much at all times, and it tucks underneath the table easily when the chair is pushed in.

– Tray is lightweight and easy to clean.

– Seat back reclines a bit so if you have a younger baby, he or she will be supported adequately and not slumping over in a chair that is too upright.

– Easy to attach, detach, and adjust sizing for any chair.

Cons:
– Although the fabric seat pad is cute and makes the seat more comfortable, it’s a little bit impractical for a baby seat since… well, it gets dirty. If Vivienne drops pieces of food down beside her, it lands on the seat pad. Realistically, we can’t wash the thing every day, so it just remains dirty sometimes—which takes away from its appearance. I wish it was made out of a material that is wipeable for easy clean-up.

– One thing that’s different than our former (cheap, plastic) booster seat is that this one is not height-adjustable. So Vivienne is a little short when she’s sitting in it at the table. That’s not a problem for now, since she’s using the tray anyway, but once we want her to eat at the table with us—we’ll have to see if she’s tall enough to do so in this seat.

– The tray can be a little difficult to slide on if you don’t get it in the grooves right off the bat. This is kind of nitpicky, since it’s not really cumbersome, but I’ve had it happen a few times where it has taken a few tries to get the tray on correctly.

Overall, we really like this booster and look forward to seeing how it works for Vivienne over time. It’s definitely a win for now!

Disclaimer: Summer Infant contacted me and offered me a complimentary Bentwood Booster in exchange for my review. The opinions expressed above are entirely my own.