Toddler booster seats are a great help when it comes to feeding your baby. After all, eliminating the need for a high chair in your kitchen will save you loads of space, and all parents know how difficult it can be to clean. A booster seat is also a lot more travel-friendly while still offering the safety and practicality you need when it comes to sitting your child down to dinner.
The best toddler booster seat for eating, in our opinion, is practical, portable, easy to use, and easy to clean. Today, we’ve tried and tested five of the best options in hopes that you find something suitable for your needs. If you’re finding it difficult to make a decision, have a quick read through our buying guide to get some tips on what to look out for.
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Best Toddler Booster Seat for Eating
Comparison Chart
Summer Infant Pop and Sit Portable Booster
Summer Infant Pop and Sit Booster Chair (Sweetlife Edition)
Bumbo B11119 Multi-Purpose Seat
Prince Lionheart Squish Booster Seat
Hiccapop Omniboost Travel Booster Seat
Best Toddler Booster Seat for Eating Reviews
1. Summer Infant Pop and Sit Portable Booster
Summer Infant prides itself on providing safe and innovative products that offer moms complete peace of mind. This Pop and Sit Portable Booster Seat is packed with reliable and helpful features, ensuring it a coveted place in our list of best toddler booster seats for eating.
Product Highlights
This booster seat, while not the most aesthetically pleasing, has so much to offer parents, we don’t know where to start! If it doesn’t meet your standards for home decor, let’s start by saying you’ll probably want to buy one anyway to keep in the car! It’s basically like a little camping chair for your baby.
Its lightweight, folding design makes it perfect for traveling and allows you to eat at restaurants or at your friend’s house, regardless of whether he provides high chairs or not. The seat comes with a detachable tray, too, which is dishwasher-safe. When folded down, both the seat and tray fit nicely into a carrying case. The carrying case even has an extra storage pocket for wet wipes.
For such a portable and nifty booster seat, we wondered if Summer Infant had skipped over some of the other important features. Fortunately, it didn’t. This booster seat has them all, especially when it comes to safety, including one adjustable three-point safety harness to keep your toddler safely strapped in and straps to attach the booster seat to a traditional dining chair to prevent it from slipping around.
The seat is suitable for babies from six months old up to age four toddlers weighing a maximum of 37 pounds. The seat is durable enough to last that long, too, so we think you’ll get a great deal of use out of it, even as a second booster seat for travel.
The Good
We love the fact that this chair is so portable. It folds away just like a camping chair, and with the free carrying case you get, it will come in handy for keeping in the car for vacations, picnics, and days out.
The Bad
As we said before, it’s not the nicest-looking booster seat on the market. It’s a classic folding chair designed in the color green, so you may not want it as a permanent fixture in your home.
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2. Summer Infant Pop and Sit Booster Chair (Sweetlife Edition)
Another fantastic entry from Summer Infant is the Sweetlife Edition Booster Chair. This chair keeps the great foldaway design the other one has, but the seat cover is made with a different material, increasing its versatility.
Product Highlights
The Sweetlife Edition seat features a much prettier fabric that is available in blue and gray or pink and gray. The material slides off and can be thrown in the washing machine when needed. This is a great feature because if you’re using a product like this day in and day out, you’d want to be able to wash it quickly and easily.
This chair can fulfill your needs for an activity floor seat and a booster seat for eating all in one. It folds away quickly and easily for storage, or you can pack it up into its carrying case to take with you on a family day out. We checked, and yes, this carrying case also has a handy storage pocket for wet wipes, toys, or snacks.
The tray is also removable, so you can throw it the dishwasher when it needs more than just a wipe down. This seat also has all the same safety features as the other one, including the adjustable safety harness and straps to secure the booster to a regular seat. Your child, aged six months to four years, will enjoy sitting at the dining table with the whole family with the help of this chair.
The Good
We love the versatility of this chair. It allows your child to sit on the floor and play in this seat and then take his meals at the dinner table. The machine-washable cover is also great, as this softer fabric featured on the Sweetlife Edition seats would be harder to keep clean otherwise.
The Bad
The design of this chair isn’t as sturdy as many others with solid bottoms. If the ground is uneven, your infant could potentially throw themselves over quite easily.
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3. Bumbo B11119 Multi-Purpose Seat
Bumbo specializes in a small range of toddler and infant products, with this booster seat being among the most popular item. Our third entry is a multi-purpose chair, which you can get a lot of use out of all throughout your home.
Product Highlights
Whether you’re using this seat as a floor seat, in place of a high chair, or as a booster, you’ll love the way it looks in your home. This is especially true since you have nine gorgeous colors to choose from. This chair is really well built, too, with solid construction that will prove to be very durable. Your toddler will certainly grow out of this seat faster than others, though, as it’s only recommended for six to 36-month-old toddlers.
The seat features an adjustable height, so you can set it to suit smaller babies (as long as they can support the weight of their head) or larger toddlers. It also features a removable foam pad that can be stowed away inside the seat as your baby develops. The removable tray also has a stowaway place on the back of the chair, and it’s great being able to keep the tray.
Again, we love how easy this seat is to clean as you just wipe down the smooth coating. It also has a three-point safety harness to keep your child strapped in safely so that he can’t go on a climbing mission when your back is turned.
The base of the seat features non-slip pads, and as soon as your baby starts sitting up more, you’ll find loads of use for it—on the floor, inside or outside, on your couch, on your bed, or a dining room chair. The design is sturdy, and we’re sure it won’t slip around, but while on a taller chair, we’d still be more comfortable having straps, just in case.
The Good
We love the extra support this chair gives your baby around their backs and sides. This will help them transition to a booster seat quicker than with other seats. We also love how solid this chair is. When using it in the garden, on uneven ground, you don’t have to worry about it tipping over when your child leans to one side.
The Bad
The chair is more suitable for younger toddlers, and they will outgrow their Bumbo by around three years. Many other booster seats, on the other hand, are good for up to four years old. We also feel uneasy about the fact that it doesn’t secure to the dining chair.
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4. Prince Lionheart Squish Booster Seat
A family-owned company since 1973, Prince Lionheart only produces products that matter. Their expert product designers want them to be unique in the fact that they’re safer, better, and always present more quality than the price you pay. This Squish Booster Seat doesn’t disappoint, as it is the most affordable option on our list.
Product Highlights
This booster seat is incredibly lightweight, which means it’s really portable. Will it be more prone to slipping, though? Not the way Prince Lionheart has designed it! It has non-slip pads on the bottom of the seat for when it’s on the floor, and it’s got dual safety straps to secure it to a dining chair.
The padded seat section is actually suspended on springs, giving the seat its squishy name and the tagline “more cush on the tush”. It includes a three-point harness to keep your wrigglers in their seats, and it’s also really easy to wipe clean after messy mealtimes.
It is recommended for 18-month-olds and upwards (to around five years). This range is slightly older, so this isn’t the booster seat for you if you’re looking to transition your child earlier, for any reason. However, if your child is happy in their high chair until 18 months, this seat looks like a really comfortable and affordable option.
Unfortunately, this booster seat doesn’t have its own tray, which we realize is a must for some people. Nevertheless, we still think it deserves a place on our list. It’s just more suitable for older toddlers who don’t need (or want) a “baby” tray.
The Good
We especially love the comfort and the price of this seat. It’s pretty unique when it comes to the design, so it’s nice that you don’t have to pay through the nose for it!
The Bad
It’s a shame that they don’t make a booster seat like this for younger toddlers. After all, some parents prefer to transition their child to a booster seat earlier than 18 months to help save space in the kitchen and for better convenience.
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5. Hiccapop Omniboost Travel Booster Seat
Surprisingly, Hiccapop started out of Stanford University with a desire to innovate children’s products. It aims to bring thoughtful and useful products to modern parents. This seat is another folding booster seat to rival those from Summer Infant.
Product Highlights
This seat folds up just like a camping chair and stows away in a shoulder carry bag to make it ideal for taking on days out. The seat cover is available in three colors, which are machine-washable. It even has a handy pocket for storing wipes, or forks, and spoons.
The chair features an extra-wide base to make it more steady on uneven surfaces such as sand and grass. It also has detachable, wide feet to add to the stability of the chair further. It has been weight-tested to hold 250 pounds of weight comfortably. This means that your child can use this seat until they can’t fit in it anymore!
The tray on this booster seat is a swivel tray, which can be removed with just one hand, making it perfect for busy parents. The harness can also be operated with one hand. With a lifetime guarantee on this product, what is there not to like?
The Good
We love the lifetime guarantee that comes with every purchase of this booster seat. This just shows the high level of confidence that the manufacturer has in the design and build of this product.
The Bad
If we had to nitpick, then we would say that there might be some parents who will have preferred a wipe-clean chair. In this way, you don’t always have to throw the covers in the wash to clean up properly.
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Buyer’s Guide
Are you wondering how to make sure you buy the best toddler booster seat? Check out our buying tips as we draw attention to some of the features you should be looking for and some of the decisions you should make before jumping in and making that purchase.
1. Design
Complicated designs will require more complicated cleaning. Watch out for crevices that food can fall down in, and avoid them like the plague. If you have a dishwasher at home, then, ideally, any removable parts are either dishwasher-safe or smooth and allow for quick wipe-downs.
2. Portability
Also consider if you’ll need to take the booster seat with you anywhere, such as during day trips or to Grandma’s for the weekend. If you can keep a spare traveling seat in the car, then that’s great. However, if this is your only one, then you may want to consider a booster seat that is more portable.
3. Weight Limit
Before buying a booster seat for your toddler, you should probably think about how heavy they are now, and then compared that to the weight capacity of the seat you have in mind. Toddlers grow incredibly fast, so make sure you’re giving yourself a little bit of growing room. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself having to replace the seat straight away!!
4. Safety Harness
Many booster seats will include a safety harness to help prevent accidents from happening (in the case of overzealous climbers and wanna-be acrobats). A strap of some sort to keep your child in place is important, especially if the booster seat is to be placed on top of a taller chair.
5. Safety Straps
Also, booster seats may feature straps that secure the chair into its place for when it’s sat on top of an existing chair. The straps will loop around the back of the chair and around the seat to keep it in place so that it won't slide off the chair onto the floor.
Remember to check the width of your dining table seats, too. You need to make sure that the straps will be long enough to reach all the way around the seat and back before you make your purchase.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. When should you stop using a high chair?
Your toddler may have something to say about this, as one day, they deem themselves to be too old for the “baby” chair. Many children transition around 18 months to two years old, but they can be ready earlier.
As long as your baby is able to sit up for longer periods without falling over, then they are probably ready. Just make sure that the booster seat provides a safe seat for your baby, wherein they can be strapped in.
2. What age is a Bumbo seat for?
A Bumbo seat offers a lot more support than many other booster seats on the market. This means that your baby is able to start sitting in a Bumbo from around three to five months. More importantly, they should be able to support the weight of their own head.
3. Are hook on high chairs safe?
There are several safety features that you should look out for in considering a hook-on high chair. For starters there should be a lock or clamp that secures the chair in place. This lock or clamp should also be baby-proof, which means that your baby should not be able to operate it themselves.
Secondly, make sure that you always follow the manufacturer's instructions regarding table width. Don’t hook the chair on to a table that is too thin, as your baby could kick the table and cause the chair to fall off its perch backward.
Also avoid glass-top and pedestal tables, as well as countertops because there is a danger that your child could push away from the counter and wiggle the chair free.
4. What age can child use booster seat in table?
Most children are ready to use a booster seat somewhere between nine and 12 months. However, different children develop at different rates, and age ranges should only ever be used as guidelines. What you should consider is whether your child is ready to use a booster seat or not.
You’ll know when your child is ready when he is already able to sit up on his own, unaided, for extended periods. Once he can do this, he no longer needs the full support of the high chair and can transition to a booster seat, which features less support, and often, a lower seatback.
5. Which is better high chair or booster?
A high chair is a tall seat that can safely sit your baby up so that he can eat by the dinner table with you, even when he is unable to support his own weight sitting up yet. Most babies start in high chairs and end up in booster seats. As soon as your baby is able to sit up unaided, then a booster seat presents an alternative option.
Booster seats are often seen as the better option in the fact that they take up less space and are more portable. High chairs are only better because they can stand alone and, often, the only option for smaller babies.
Ultimately, which is the better one will depend on the age of your child, as well as the layout and logistics of your seating area and spaces. These factors, as well as how happy your child is in the high chair, should all come into consideration when deciding which one is better for you.
Conclusion
Our overall winner as the best toddler booster seat for eating is the Hiccapop Omniboost Travel Booster Seat. What can we say? Our list of pros for this seat just went on and on. We also found it extremely difficult to fault this product in any way!
Normally, this only ever happens with more premium-priced options, but this booster seat is also averagely priced. Indeed, it’s just the best!