Graco high chair review
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Our verdict, if you don’t read another word: the Graco High Chair earns a 4.5 out of 5 as a compact high chair, and it is the one we would add second, after a full-size chair. It is small, it went together quickly, and its tray makes the daily clean-up the least annoying of the three chairs we own, which is the thing you actually do every day. Two claims on the listing need tempering before you buy, and both are below.
One note on scope. We cover this as gear. Anything about when a baby is ready to sit and eat is a question for the AAP and your pediatrician, and how to fit the harness is a question for the manual that ships with the chair rather than a blog, including this one. What we can tell you is what it is like to own.
What the Graco is, and what it claims
Graco sells this as a chair that grows through four stages: high chair, toddler feeding seat, youth stool, and big kid chair, with the top mode rated to 60 lb. The other headline claims are a compact fold with a lightweight design for storage and moving around the kitchen, a wipeable seat with a crevice-free design, and a dishwasher-safe, BPA-free tray insert.
We can speak to the high chair stage, the cleaning and the size. We have not used the youth stool or the big kid chair modes, so we are not going to tell you how they hold up. Graco does not publish an empty weight or a harness type on the listing we bought from, and we have not put the chair on a scale, so we are not quoting either.
Cleaning is the reason to buy it
This is where the chair earns its rating, and it is worth being specific, because “easy to clean” is on every high chair listing ever written and means almost nothing.
We scored it 4 out of 5 for cleaning, the same as our other two chairs, so this is not a chair that cleans in some different league. What it has is the better design for the part you repeat every day. The tray has a clear top insert that lifts straight off, so the piece that food actually sits on goes to the sink or the dishwasher by itself, instead of you carrying an entire tray assembly across the kitchen. The seat is a genuinely crevice-free design, so there is no seam running along the base collecting yesterday’s porridge, which is the single most tedious part of owning a high chair. And the fabric cover and the harness straps come off for washing without a fight.
That last one matters more than it sounds. Straps are where the mess ends up on every high chair, and a chair that makes you unpick them from a frame is a chair whose straps you eventually stop cleaning properly. Ours come off easily, so they get washed.
If you want the full routine rather than the chair-specific version, we set it out in how to clean a baby high chair.
The tray
The tray is deep enough for a full meal and a pile of snacks without anything sliding off the edge, and it is sized so that a toddler’s whole spread fits rather than the plate crowding everything else out. It snaps onto the seat rather than needing to be lined up and wrestled into place, which is a small thing until you are doing it one-handed with a hungry baby on your hip.
Graco states the insert is dishwasher-safe and BPA-free. The dishwasher part is worth checking on any chair you buy, because a tray that has to be hand-scrubbed is two years of scraping dried food out of a plastic groove.
The fold is the one thing the listing oversells
Graco calls it a compact fold with a lightweight design for easy storage. It does fold. It does not fold flat, and it will not slide into the gap beside a fridge, which is exactly what most people picture when they read those words.
We want to be fair about this, because the chair is not being dishonest so much as imprecise. What the Graco genuinely is, is small. It takes up very little room standing up, and that is the real space saving. If your kitchen problem is that a full-size chair dominates the room, this solves it. If your kitchen problem is that you need the chair to disappear into a narrow gap between uses, this does not solve it, and you should keep looking. The chairs we own that fold flat are ranked against this one in the best high chairs for small spaces.
So buy it because it is compact, not because it folds away. Those sound like the same sentence and they are not.
Will it really last to a big kid chair
The four stages are the other claim worth being honest about. Graco rates this through high chair, toddler feeding seat, youth stool and big kid chair, up to 60 lb, and presents that as the reason to buy: one chair, many years.
We have used one of those four stages. What we can tell you is our own honest position, which is that we are on the fence about keeping it long term, and can see ourselves buying a different chair once our daughter is properly a toddler. That is not a fault we have found, and it is not us telling you the later modes are bad, because we have not used them. It is us saying we are not counting on them, and we would not pay a premium for stages three and four on the assumption they will get used.
This is the same trap we hit with a convertible chair we already own, covered in our high chair roundup: a mode you buy for is not a mode you necessarily use. Buy this for the high chair stage. If the later ones work out, treat that as a bonus.
What we like
- The easiest of our three chairs to clean, with a lift-off clear tray insert
- Crevice-free wipeable seat, and fabric plus straps that come off for washing
- Genuinely small standing up, which is the real space saving rather than the fold
- Quick to assemble, neutral in colour, and better built than the price suggests
What we don't
- It technically folds, but not flat, and will not slide into the gap beside a fridge
- We are not convinced we will keep it through to the big kid stage Graco sells it on
- No published empty weight or harness type on the listing we bought from
- Only one of its four stages is something we can speak to from use
Who it’s for
Buy the Graco if your kitchen cannot spare the floor space a full-size chair takes, if you travel or visit family often enough to want a chair that comes along, or if cleaning is the part of high chair ownership you most want to be painless. On that last point its tray is the best design of the three we own.
Skip it if you want your only chair to recline and adjust in height, which is what carries a full-size chair from the first purée through to the toddler at the table. Skip it too if you are buying specifically for the fold, because the fold is the weakest part of the pitch.
If you have not settled on a type yet, our high chair buying guide works through the features that matter, and when can a baby use a high chair covers where this sits in the timeline.
The bottom line
The Graco High Chair earns its 4.5 by being small, quick to set up and genuinely easy to clean, which covers the parts of high chair ownership you deal with every single day. It gives up the half point on two claims rather than on any failure: the fold is not the fold you are picturing, and the four-stage lifespan is a promise we are not yet counting on. Buy it as the compact second chair, keep a full-size one for everyday meals, and it is an easy chair to live with.
Where it sits against the other two we own is in our best high chair roundup.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Graco High Chair a good high chair?
In our use, yes, and we rate it 4.5 out of 5. It is small, it is quick to assemble, and the tray design makes the daily clean-up the least annoying of the three chairs we own, even though all three score the same on cleaning overall. The half point it gives up is about the fold, which is less compact than the listing implies, and about whether it will really last into the big kid years the way Graco says.
Does the Graco High Chair fold flat?
It folds, but not flat, and this is the one place the listing oversells it. A compact fold suggests something that slides into the gap beside a fridge, and this does not do that. What it genuinely is, is small. The chair takes up little room standing up, which is the real space saving. Buy it because it is compact, not because it folds away.
How long does the Graco High Chair last?
Graco rates it through four stages, high chair, toddler feeding seat, youth stool and big kid chair, up to 60 lb. That is the claim. Our honest position is that we are on the fence about keeping it that long, and can see ourselves buying something else once our daughter is properly a toddler. The high chair stage is the part we can speak to, and it does that stage well.
Is the Graco High Chair easy to clean?
It is easy to clean, and scores the same as our other two chairs overall, but the tray is the nicest design of the three. The tray insert is dishwasher-safe and BPA-free, and the top section lifts off so only the dirty part goes to the sink. The seat is a wipeable, crevice-free design, so there are no seams collecting food. The fabric and the straps come off for washing without a fight, which is where most high chairs make you give up.
How many stages does the Graco High Chair have?
Four, per Graco: high chair, toddler feeding seat, youth stool, and big kid chair, with the top mode rated to 60 lb. Whether you get value from four stages depends on whether you actually use them. We have used one so far, and treat the rest as a possibility rather than a reason to buy.
Graco High Chair or Baby Trend Sit Right 2.0?
The Baby Trend is our everyday chair and our 5 out of 5, because it reclines, adjusts in height and does the full-size job properly. The Graco is the one we would add second, for travel, visits and small kitchens, and it beats the Baby Trend clearly on cleaning and on assembly. If you are buying one chair, buy the full-size one first.