When I was a brand new mom, I wondered when my kid would ever do anything other than eat, sleep, burp, repeat. That soon changed. After 6 months babies have preferences, high energy, and want to be entertained constantly. One of the best investments we ever made was in a walker. But Walkers are surprisingly controversial. So are they a good buy? And which walker is the absolute best?
It can be complicated to answer that question, and the answer could be different for everyone. So if you’re looking into buying a walker, check out my detailed description of each walker and how well they preform in various categories.
The Conroversy
Safety Concerns
If you were unaware of the controversy surrounding walkers, let me filll you in. First of all, some people think that walkers are unsafe. They pose a risk to babies because babies could fall down stairs, into pools, or into heaters. (their words, not mine. See my review that talks more about it here).
My argument against this is that you as the parent need to be on top of baby proofing your home. If your home is not baby proofed for a walker, then baby proof it before you let your baby use the walker. It’s that simple. And never have your baby unsupervised by a pool, but I feel like that should be a no brainer.
Do They Teach Your Baby To Walk?
Another controversy is that some people are outraged because walkers don’t really teach your baby to walk. They just don’t. Babies will learn to walk on their own without this device.
But the thing is, it’s just fun. Babies will love to use the walker and it won’t do them any harm. They will get to enjoy a sense of independence and they will be able to see the world in a different way. Even if they don’t walk earlier and become walking prodigies, they will still learn through experience.
Collapsable
One thing that I really care about when it comes to any larger baby gear is that it is collapsible. Most babies use their walkers from about 6 months to 12 months give or take, and that is a pretty substantial amount of time. However, after those 6 months are up, you’ll need to store this device (if you don’t plan on selling it) and it is so convenient to have a walker that you can collapse down.
Joovy Spoon Walker
The Joovy Spoon Walker can be collapsed down into a very thin square that you can easily stow under a bed or in an attic. It is also perfect for on the go travels.
Baby Joy Walker
The Baby Joy Walker can be collapsed as well.
Baby Trend Walker
Baby Trend Walker can be collapsed down.
Safety 1st Walker
The Safety 1st Walker is designed a little differently than the other walkers. Instead of a criss cross side leg that folds down, it has a sturdy plastic leg that you can pop out of the base and fold down. It can collapse just as easily as the other walkers, but it might take slightly more effort to put it back together. It wouldn’t take longer than a minute or two for either design, however.
Nuopeng 3 in 1 Walker
The Nuopeng 3 in 1 walker can be manipulated in three different ways. Its legs are very easy to fold in different directions and it can be folded almost completely flat as well. It is just as easy to store and take with you as any of the other walkers.
The main difference with this walker is that it can be used as so many other kinds of toys. You might want to keep it up in one of the three positions full time, since your baby will likely play with it many times throughout the day. However, if you are wondering if you can fold it down to store or take in your trunk, you can do that easily.
Toys
It’s not always enough to just have a place to hold you baby. Sometimes you have to sweeten the deal for your kid and have exciting toys that they can play with to encourage them to use the device for as long as possible.
When your baby reaches the 6 month mark, your life becomes a stations game. You find different areas that will interest your baby and switch between them until your baby’s next nap. If you can encourage your baby to love the walker, then that will keep them occupied for longer spurts of time. The way to encourage your baby is through exciting toys or snacks.
So here is a list of how the walkers do with toys.
Joovy Spoon Walker
The Joovy Spoon Walker is the odd man out on this list. This is the only walker that does not come with toys.
Though that might seem like a big bummer to you, it actually isn’t a terrible thing! I do write a bit about how it shouldn’t be a total buzzkill on my review of it, here.
What the Joovy Spoon Walker does not have in entertainment, it has in other neat features that I will explain later. For now, I will only mention that this walker has the biggest tray that any of the walkers have. And this is a great replacement because your child will get bored of the same toys all the time. If you were to sit in a seat with the same set of three things to look at every day, you would probably get a bit bored as well. Because the walker has such a large tray, you can use whatever toys you want to entertain your child throughout the day. You can also use it as a high chair for snack time without worrying about getting nasty chewed up food all over the toys.
The Joovy Spoon Walker may not have the most exciting variety available, but it is the most sensible design.
Baby Joy Walker
I honestly prefer the Baby Joy Walker’s toybar to most of the ones on this list, not because it is the most exciting. It actually is pretty simplistic in design. What I really love about it is that it is so easy to remove and replace.
This walker uses a clip on toy bar and you can take it off easily when you don’t want to use it. Your baby will likely love to use it a lot of the time, but you have the freedom to take it off and clean it or just take it off for snack and meal times so you don’t have to clean it often. It’s so convenient to have clip it on, and convenience is the name of the parenting game.
Baby Trend Walker
The Baby Trend Walker has a simple toy bar similar to the Baby Joy Walker’s bar. However, this one is a bit more complicated to get on and off. It is annoying to have to reach under and twist a gear to get the plastic thing off the tray. In all honesty, even though you can remove it, it is such a pain that people probably won’t even if they want to.
It’s nice to have the option to keep your toys clean or just give your baby a break from the stimulation, and the option is there, it just isn’t a convenient option.
Safety 1st Walker
The Safety 1st Walker has a pretty great toy bar. It has a bit more variety with the toys and they just seem more interesting to a baby. It has songs and lights that come on based on your baby’s actions, and that is a win in my book. My husband doesn’t love the constant baby songs, but I love the surprise and happiness that babies get when they hear a song they love and realize that they were the ones to make it start playing.
The one thing I must mention is that there have been a few complaints about the figure 8 toy that is on the toy bar. Some babies will get their hands stuck in the toy and it can cause some minor bruising. Not all babies have a problem with this, but if your baby does, then you can take this toy off without removing the entire toy bar. It would be great, of course, if this weren’t an issue at all and all the toys were safe, but at least there is an option to remove the problematic toy without ruining the whole toybar.
The toy bar can be completely removed as well, very easily.
Nuopeng 3 in 1 Walker
The Nuopeng 3 in 1 Walker definitely wins in the toy department. The entire walker is a walking toy. This walker can be used as an activity table or a drawing board, so it will be interesting to children even beyond the time where they do not need it for walking anymore.
This walker has several toys and sounds and lights that will captivate your baby. There is a steering wheel that produces sound, airplanes that slide, buttons that light up and make noises, and plast book pages they can turn. Your baby will learn lots of skills and have fun in the process with this walker. In fact, my four year old loves these toys and will even push it along, even though he doesn’t need any aid walking.
Ease of Cleaning
If there is anything most parents care about, it is how easy a baby product is to clean.
Joovy Spoon Walker
The Joovy Spoon Walker is probably the easiest walker to clean on this list. It is easy to take the seat out and you can machine wash it.
In fact, you can watch how easy it is to remove in the video below:
The tray has an inner tray that is dishwasher safe, so you don’t even have to wash it by hand. The whole walker was just designed in the most simple, streamlined way. There aren’t even any toys that you have to worry about sanitizing. It is a minimalist design, but one that is well thought out.
Baby Joy Walker
The Baby Joy Walker is also fairly easy to clean. You can remove the seat and wash it. It also has that removable toy bar, so you can keep it clean if you segregate snack times and play times.
Baby Trend Walker
The Baby Trend Walker is the least cleaning friendly. The tray is easy enough to clean, but the toy bar is a pain to detach, as I mentioned earlier.
But what really gets me down is that the seat cannot be machine washed. You can only spot wipe it. This might not be a huge deal if you were talking a seat cover for an adult person, but for babies who have frequent blow outs, this is not an exciting option to a parent. You can definitely clean it, but perhaps not as thoroughly as you might like.
Safety 1st Walker
The Safety 1st Walker is also easy to clean. You can remove the seat and machine wash it. The tray is the smallest one on the list, so it should be fairly easy to clean.
One thing I like about this walker is that the toy bar takes up the entire tray, so you literally can only have snack time OR play time. There will be no mixing of the two activities, which makes everything stay pretty clean.
Nuopeng 3 in 1 Walker
This is an all plastic walker. It doesn’t have a tray or a seat, and is just as easy to clean as any other baby toy.
Tray Size
When it comes to trays, does size matter? It matters to me! I definitely care about the size of the tray depending on what I want to use the baby product for. Is the walker meant for merely entertainment? Or is this going to be a regular seat where my baby takes his or her snacks and meals? Well, these are things you might want to think about when you are buying a walker.
Joovy Spoon Walker
The Joovy Spoon Walker has the largest tray size. And the really great design detail about the tray is that although it is very large, it is not as large as the base. So if your child were to wrap their fingers around the edge, they would not pinch them against the wall if they were to bump up against the wall. That is just a very clever design to me.
This is a walker that I would use for regular casual meals like breakfast and lunch. Have your baby take his or her food on the go while you try and get some things done around the house. Or let your baby work out some early morning wiggles while you give yourself a bit of a soft start. It’s a perfect walker for eating.
It is also so big that you can put almost any toy on the tray. This way you can keep your child entertained.
Baby Joy Walker
The Baby Joy Walker has a middle of the road tray. It isn’t huge like the Joovy Spoon, but it is big enough for your baby to get some good use out of it.
Baby Trend Walker
The Baby Trend Walker tray is slightly smaller than the Baby Joy one, and if you remember it has the difficult to remove toys. So that can cut into the area of your tray as well.
Safety 1st Walker
The Safety 1st Walker has the smallest of the trays and it is completely monopolized by the toy bar when the toy bar is fastened to it. I mentioned this before, saying that I really like the design because you make less of a mess. But when you remove the toy bar you are left with a very, very small tray that is really only good for small snacks.
Nuopeng 3 in 1 Walker
The Nuopeng 3 in 1 does not have a tray because it is a different kind of walk behind walker.
Overall Design
This category is pretty wide and serves as a bit of a catch all for all the design elements that I find important or detrimental. Though the walkers are mostly similar, there are some pretty key differences that are important to note.
Joovy Spoon Walker
The Joovy Spoon Walker has some of the highest reviews that I have seen for a walker, which is suprising because it is so simple in the design. I can only guess that it stands out for some of these reasons:
Tray
The oversized tray is really a useful feature when you want to use the walker as not just entertainment, but also as a high chair. It can hold a whole meal, it can hold any baby toy, and its gap between the wall and the tray to keep fingers from being pinched is a very thoughtful design.
Bumpers
The bumpers on the base of the walker to push toys out of the way is a neat little feature as well. Most walkers do have some sort of base that can push toys out of the way, but this one is a bit more substantial.
Durability
The Joovy Spoon Walker is also a well sought after baby product because it is a good quality product. It is durable with plastic that is hard but not brittle.
Baby Joy Walker
The Baby Joy walker is a basic middle of the pack walker. It has all the basics that you could ever need. This walker might not have anything amazing to offer, but it has all the aspects you would look for in a walker. It is a quality product and won’t break easily.
Baby Trend Walker
The Baby Trend Walker is one of the more disappointing walkers on the list. You cannot machine wash the seat, which is a huge no-no for me.
It is also packaged terribly. Many customers have complained that it comes to their home with pieces of the base broken. The customer service is good and you can get it replaced easily, but it seems that they could save themselves a lot of money by just putting a bit of styrofoam in the box.
Safety 1st Walker
I like the Safety 1st Walker for a few reasons, but the overall design is not a huge reason for me to love it. It deoesn’t collapse as easily as the others do, though it does look a bit more sturdy than most walkers.
Nuopeng 3 in 1 Walker
The Nuopeng 3 in 1 Walker deserves to be in a category all to itself. This baby product is so much more than a walker, as the name implies. It really is a very entertaining and educational toy that your baby will love for years likely.
Though your baby cannot sit in it or use it to walk until about 9 months, it can play with the buttons as early as you want to help your baby use it. I love that it serves more than one purpose and that your baby will want to approach it.
I appreciate that it is an independent walker where your baby can pull him or herself up to it and walk on their own without you having to put them in or take them out. It can be frustrating to figure out what your baby wants and the more self sufficient they can be, the better.
Safety Features
As I mentioned earlier, there has been a bit of controversy as far as the safety of walkers. I discussed this at length in my reviews of the Baby Joy Walker and the Nuopeng 3 in 1.
So are walkers safe? Walkers are as safe as you make them. Yes, your baby can get into more trouble than they would if they couldn’t walk at the height and speed that a walker allows them to walk at, but if you baby proof your home to match a walker rather than a crawler, then they should be fine. Use baby gates, move heavy items from down low to up high, and always keep an eye on your baby while they are in the walker. If you do all these things, then your baby will stay safe.
Even if you don’t, many walkers have come up with some neat little safety features and we’ll talke about those now.
Joovy Spoon Walker
The Joovy Spoon walker has that neat anti finger pinching tray that I discussed earlier. I love that the company purposefully made the tray not so big that it would be an issue.
Baby Joy Walker
Again the Baby Joy rides in the middle of the pack. There are no dangers that the Baby Joy contributes, but it doesn’t have any super special safety features either. It’s what you need in a walker, without a ton of bells and whistles.
Baby Trend Walker
The Baby Trend Walker has little bumpers on the bottom of the base that are supposed to help it stay upright if one of the wheels goes over a step. This is a really awesome idea, though I still think that a baby gate is better!
Safety 1st Walker
The Safety 1st Walker also has a brake system as well that should keep your baby from falling off the edge of a stair.
Nuopeng 3 in 1 Walker
This walker is designed differently from the others, but it still has safety in mind. This one has a speed control that you can manipulate based on your child’s skill level. This is a really great feature, especially if you know your baby is really not sturdy on their feet yet. This helps your baby avoid a lot of face plants.
Conclusion
All of these walkers are good in their own way and they all have something to offer. There are many people that appreciate one feature over another, but it is impossible to know what people appreciate the most. So, I’m rounding them all up and saying the absolute best thing about each one. Each one wins in one category, and here they are!
Joovy Spoon Walker
Most minimalist design
Baby Joy Walker
Down to the basics (has everything you need, and nothing you don’t)
Baby Trend Walker
Most affordable option
Safety 1st Walker
Best Toy Bar
Nuopeng 3 in 1 Walker
Something for all ages
So if you are looking for something simple but good quality, then the Joovy Spoon walker is for you. If you are looking for nothing fancy and you just want a walker with the basics, go with the Baby Joy Walker. The most affordable option is the Baby Trend Walker, though it comes at a price where you have to work a little harder to keep it clean. The Safety 1st walker has the most exciting toy bar for you kid with the lights and music. And the Nuopeng 3 in 1 will be something your child will love for much, much longer than the typical 5 to 6 months that a baby uses a walker.
Whatever you value the most will point you in the right direction!