Baby Trend Sit Right 2.0 high chair review

Our verdict, if you don’t read another word: the Baby Trend Sit Right 2.0 is our 5 out of 5 and the plastic high chair we’d recommend first. It was the first one we bought, about a year and a half ago, and for all of that time it was the one at the kitchen table for nearly every meal. We recently bought a Stokke Tripp Trapp, which has taken over. The Baby Trend is not the lightest, the best-built or the easiest to put together. It did the everyday job best of everything we had, and with a high chair that is the job that counts.

One note on scope. We cover this chair as gear. When a baby is ready to sit and eat is a question for the AAP and your pediatrician, and how to fit the harness and use the chair safely is a question for the manual that ships with it and the CPSC, rather than a blog.

What the Sit Right 2.0 is

5 / 5our rating

A full-size, free-standing high chair that lives in one room. It’s rated to 40 lb, has 3 recline positions and 6 height positions, and the tray is removable, dishwasher-safe, has 3 positions of its own and releases with one hand. It has a 3-point harness.

Assembled, it measures 22“ × 31.75“ × 42.13“ and weighs 14.95 lb. It folds and stands up on its own when folded, at 22“ × 14.63“ × 46.88“.

The “3-in-1” in the name refers to three ways of using it. With the seat reclined it’s an infant seat. Upright with the tray on, it’s a normal high chair. With the tray off and the seat dropped to its lowest height, it becomes a toddler chair that pulls up to a table. That last mode matters more than the other two, and we come back to it below.

A year and a half as our everyday chair

The easiest way to describe this chair is that for a year and a half it was the one that got used. We own six high chairs now, for different reasons, and until we recently bought a Stokke Tripp Trapp this one did about 95% of the feeding. Breakfast, lunch, the messy dinner, the snack that becomes a second dinner. It was the default.

That isn’t because it wins every category. We scored our three longest-owned chairs across six categories, and the Baby Trend came out top for one thing only: everyday ease of use, where it got a 5. It got a 3.5 for moving it around, a 4 for cleaning, a 4 for quality and a 4.5 for footprint. The Graco beat it on build quality. The UMGOOGOO beat it on being easy to move.

What it has is no friction in the daily routine. The height lines up with our table. The tray goes on and off with one hand. The seat is comfortable enough that our daughter sits in it without a fuss. None of that shows up as a headline feature, and all of it is why this is our 5 and the others are not. Our rating is a judgment about living with the chair, not the average of that scoring table.

We’ve had a child of about 30 lb in it, out of the 40 lb it’s rated for, and it hasn’t put a foot wrong. We can’t tell you how it behaves at the very top of its range, because we haven’t been there yet.

The height and recline settings

Six height positions sounds like more than anyone needs, and maybe it is, but the range is what lets the chair meet a dining table, a kitchen counter or a low coffee table. If your table is an odd height, or you eat in more than one place in the house, that range is the difference between a chair that pulls up properly and one that leaves the tray a few inches off.

The three recline positions are for the younger end. A baby who sits back a little can use the chair sooner. When that is appropriate is not our call. The manual and your pediatrician set it, and we set out what the AAP says in when can a baby use a high chair.

The toddler mode is the reason it lasts

Most “3-in-1” and “4-in-1” claims are a way of selling one chair as several. On the Baby Trend, the third mode is a real one. Take the tray off, drop the seat to its lowest setting, and it becomes a chair a toddler can sit in at the family table.

That’s what stops it becoming landfill at 18 months. If you want a chair that keeps going into adulthood, we cover the Stokke Tripp Trapp and two cheaper alternatives in the best convertible high chair. A high chair with no life after the tray stage has a short career. This one has a second job lined up for when the first one ends.

Cleaning: better than the listing says

Here is the odd part. The fabric seat pad comes off and washes, and the tray comes off and goes in the dishwasher. The listing tells you about the tray. It doesn’t mention the seat pad at all, which is a strange thing to leave out about a chair that will be rained on by yoghurt every day for two years.

We gave it a 4 for cleaning, the same as our other two longest-owned chairs. The Graco’s lift-off clear tray insert is the nicer design for the part you clean after every meal. The Baby Trend’s advantage is that the pad comes off fully, which a lot of fabric-seat chairs don’t manage.

In fairness, we try not to let ours get bad in the first place, so we haven’t put the pad through the machine enough times to tell you how the fabric holds up over dozens of washes. If you want the full cleaning routine, it’s in how to clean a baby high chair.

Assembly and folding

The first assembly is the weakest part of owning this chair. It took some doing, and it’s the most fiddly of the chairs we own to put together. We scored it 3.5 for set-up the first time.

After that, it’s a different story. Opening and closing it day to day is easy, which is why the daily set-up score is 4.5. You do the hard part once.

The fold needs a clear description, because “folding high chair” means different things to different people. The Sit Right 2.0 folds narrower, not shorter. Folded, it’s actually taller than it is standing up. It stands by itself, so you can lean it against a wall or tuck it beside a cupboard, but it won’t slide into a gap beside the fridge. If you need a chair that disappears, our best high chairs for small spaces covers the ones we own that fold flat.

It’s moderately portable. You can move it to another room if you need to. It’s still a chair that belongs in one room, and at 14.95 lb with no wheels it’s not one you’ll want to carry around the house every day.

The harness is a 3-point

This is the thing to know before you buy. The Baby Trend has a 3-point harness, not a 5-point. A lot of parents specifically look for a 5-point, and if you’re one of them, this isn’t your chair. Of the six high chairs we own, only the Stokke Tripp Trapp and the Ingenuity Sun Valley have one.

We’re not going to tell you which harness your child needs. That’s for the manual and a standards body, not a blog.

How it compares with our other chairs

Against the Graco, the Baby Trend is the better main chair and the Graco is the better second one. The Graco is lighter at 10.5 lb, quicker to assemble and has the nicer tray for cleaning, but it doesn’t recline or offer the same height range. We go through the whole decision in Baby Trend vs Graco.

Against the UMGOOGOO, the UMGOOGOO is better built and easier to move thanks to its wheels, but we bought it for a rocking mode our daughter doesn’t like, so it gets used far less. The Baby Trend has fewer tricks and more use.

Against the Primo PopUp, it’s a different kind of chair. The Primo folds to about 4 inches thick and arrives assembled, which makes it the one to buy for a place with no room to keep a chair. It’s made for 6 to 36 months, so it has no toddler stage to carry it further.

Against the Stokke Tripp Trapp, which has recently taken over as our everyday chair, the Tripp Trapp is solid beech, rated to 300 lb, with a 5-point harness and newborn options, and it keeps going into adulthood. The Baby Trend is the plastic option with recline and six height positions. If you’re weighing the two materials, see wooden vs plastic high chairs. All six are compared in our best high chair roundup.

Who should buy it

Buy the Baby Trend Sit Right 2.0 if you want one high chair that lives in the kitchen and does the job every day for the first couple of years, with a toddler mode for afterwards. It suits most families who eat at home at a normal table.

Skip it if a 5-point harness is a must, if the chair has to fold flat and disappear between meals, or if you’ll be moving it from room to room every day. For the first of those, look at the Ingenuity. For the second, the Primo. For the third, the UMGOOGOO’s wheels make the difference.

If you’re still deciding what features matter to you, our high chair buying guide works through them one at a time.

The bottom line

The Baby Trend Sit Right 2.0 is our 5 out of 5 because for a year and a half it was the chair we actually used. It reclines, it adjusts to six heights, the tray and the seat pad both come off to clean, and its toddler mode gives it a life after the high chair years. You’ll pay for that once, with a fiddly first assembly, and you’ll need to be fine with a 3-point harness and a fold that’s narrow rather than flat. For most families, that’s a fair trade for the chair that gets used every day.