CR tests high chairs for three key attributes: safety, ease of cleaning, and ease of use. Our safety tests are based on the same standards used by the federal government and include evaluations of the restraint system and the chair’s stability, as well as static load assessments to make sure the chair can hold more than its stated weight capacity without sagging or collapsing.
For ease of use, our testers evaluate how easy it is to adjust the harness, fold and unfold the chair, remove and replace the seat cover, adjust the seat back (if it reclines), and remove and replace the food tray or tray cover. For ease of cleaning, we evaluate how easy or difficult the chair is to clean by looking at all its parts, including the materials it’s made of, the design of the food tray, the frame of the chair, whether it has a machine-washable seat pad (or no seat pad at all), and how the seat pad is configured in the chair.