I’ve been meaning to get started on my baby equipment reviews for months and months, now – I have about seventeen-thousand double pushchairs to test, loads of car seats and various cots, chairs and gadgets. All of which are stacked in the hallway of my house or stowed in the loft or (because we’re fast running out of space to accommodate my ambitious gadget-testing project!) packed into the shed. I really need to get on with it, not least because I started drafting the first review about a year ago. Look at how young Angelica is in these photos!

But we’re starting with a good one, in terms of testing “thoroughness”: we use the Baby Bjorn High Chair multiple times a day and there’s not much we haven’t done with it. We’ve travelled with it, throwing it in the boot when we’ve been visiting friends (it folds up surprisingly flat!), we’ve had babies and toddlers of varying heights and weights sat in it and we’ve had dogs, children and one hefty house cat throwing themselves at the high chair legs.

I can tell you that it’s pretty sturdy. It also looks incredibly good. So beautifully designed, with a curvy moulded seat and slim legs that have something of the modernist about them. Perhaps, though, the biggest selling point for me is the compact size. Behold:

Next to a “normal” sized high chair, the Baby Bjorn almost looks like a miniature! It’s unobtrusive and easy to stow away in the corner of the room, so perfect for people who are short on space but also people who simply don’t like to have a house full of primary-coloured baby stuff. (Each to their own. By the way, there’s nothing at all wrong with the Cosatto chair above, I inherited it from my sister, it’s just here as a comparison!)

Despite the Baby Bjorn High Chair being about 30% smaller than most of the traditional chairs I’ve looked at, it absolutely ticks every box when it comes to practicality and functionality. It’s harness free; the clever table  holds the baby or toddler in place with no need for fiddly straps or buckles. When the table-top drops down, there’s space for the child to get in, when it’s locked back into place, the child can’t escape.

The table-top has a lift-off tray which clips on very easily and quickly and can be cleaned in the dishwasher. We clip and unclip the white tray numerous times a day and it’s very robust- I’d have thought it would have cracked somewhere by now, or that one of the clips would have gone, but it’s as perfect as the day it arrived. After each meal, when there’s food all over the place, we simply lift the entire tray off and stick it in the sink. We have tested it in the dishwasher, but it’s quite large and takes up a load of room so we just rinse it off in the sink, dry it and clip it back on.

The only potentially fiddly thing is the mechanism for dropping the table up and down to let the child in and out – if you look at the photo above you can see a pink round handle (I find it hard to write the word knob, it’s an immaturity thing) and you have to squeeze this (the knob, lol) and turn it to the side at the same time as letting the table drop forwards. I worked this out within about five seconds, but most visitors seem to struggle with it for a bit, until you’ve had enough of watching them suffer and show them how to do it. Hohoho.

So: compact, brilliantly designed, easy to clean (no fabric or wooden parts, you could hose it down in the garden if you needed to!), lightweight (I often chuck it into position with one hand if I have the newborn over my shoulder) and deceptively accommodating – it’s good for children up to about three years of age. The table slides in and out to various locking positions, depending on the child’s size and although the footrest doesn’t adjust, as it’s part of the moulded seat, it seems to be suitable for different heights. Angelica has the longest legs in the world and seems very comfy, still.

You can find the Baby Bjorn high chair on their website for £199 or the white version is on Amazon for £155 here*. The white is actually very funky and unisex, though the pink is so sweet! I would absolutely buy another for Ted when he is “of age”, though I have a whole load to test still so I can’t imagine I’ll get around to it. Gets my wholehearted recommendation, though – I can’t think of anything I don’t like. It’s pricier than some, but impeccably designed and easy on the eye.

*© 2017 The Uphill®: all opinions are my own and any sponsored or paid posts will always be clearly marked as an “AD” in the title. I accept press samples and receive product and services to review as part of my job. Outward links to retailers are affiliate links.