Best Baby Swing – Graco Duetsoothe Swing Plus Rocker
If you search on Amazon for a baby swing, you will find more than 41,000 results. There are so many to see! How do you even start to find the best baby swing? My go-to criterion is always finding something with dual purpose. If I can buy something that accomplishes more than one goal, then I think I’m really getting my money’s worth. Sometimes that works… sometimes it doesn’t, but that’s how I started looking for the best baby swing.
Best Baby Swing
After searching through dozens of baby swings, I discovered the Graco Duetsoothe Swing Plus Rocker. It wasn’t the most expensive option, but it had everything I wanted. In fact, Amazon has it listed for $120 — its lowest price in a year! I love that you get a full-featured baby swing AND the removable rocker seat. The versatility means I can take my baby anywhere in the house without much effort.
The seat is a nice, large size so it fit both my son and my daughter up to 8 months. I always appreciate longevity! With the help of the newborn insert, included with our best baby swing recommendation, the seat comfortably fits any newborn. It gives plenty of padding and comfort for your baby and removing the insert allows for their growth over time. Our kids used it until 8 months. The seat also has an adjustable angle for the backrest. We recommend leaving it reclined when your baby is younger. Once they can hold their head up well, the back of the seat raises up so they can see what’s happening around them. A parent can adjust this angle with one hand — it’s not complicated or difficult to change.
Another convenient feature of our best baby swing that I used frequently was the ability to switch the direction of the swing seat. It can swing from side to side or front to back. I found that it was nice to change it up if my baby got tired of the same motion. I also used this feature to turn them away from doorways or windows depending on the lighting and time of day. Even if I needed to move the whole unit, the main frame is lightweight and can quickly break down into smaller pieces. It’s really easy to move or store away when you don’t need it.
Our best baby swing recommendation also comes with some great sounds and functions. Six swing speeds allow for any baby’s comfort. The speeds actually adjust to accommodate the growth of your baby. You don’t have to keep cranking up the speed; the swing does that for you. It also includes a series of nature sounds and white noises, as well as soothing lullaby songs. It has a volume control that allows you to set the sounds or music to your desired level. The speaker points toward the baby, so it doesn’t take much for them to hear the sounds.
Our pick for the best baby swing gets its power from batteries or the included power cable. I never used batteries because we always kept the swing near an outlet, but it’s certainly a nice feature to have. The seat itself requires two D batteries if you want to use the vibration function. It has two settings: low and high vibration. I typically used the low vibration with my babies. At first, the vibration may seem noisy, especially if you don’t have a baby in the seat. Once the baby is in there and you’ve used it a few times, you won’t hear it at all. In fact, I often forgot to turn it off because I couldn’t hear it. Watch out for that!
As for the safety of our recommendation: the seat has a 5-point harness. Your children will not fall out if you have them properly strapped in with the belts. Our best baby swing rocker seat has “runners” at the bottom that sit on the floor. Because we have carpet in and around the bedrooms of our house, I could slide the seat from the baby’s room to my room while I was showering or getting ready in the morning. Then I could see my baby and know he was safe while I went through my morning routine or did some chores. Around the 8-month mark, our kids started sitting up more and didn’t want to be in a rocker seat as much. They wanted the freedom to sit on the floor and play with their toys.
A brief note on longevity: we’ve been using this swing for two years through two children. At no point during our usage did we have any trouble with the swing. There are occasional Amazon reviews that mention noise and potential manufacturing issues. We haven’t encountered any of these issues, but we’re also on the brighter side of the Amazon reviewer spectrum. If you have any trouble with your purchase, Amazon is great about returns. We don’t believe you should have any reservations buying our recommendation.
Overall, our best baby swing recommendation is a great investment that costs less than many of its competitors while offering more features. I recommend buying it before your baby is born… or within the first few weeks. It was a lifesaver for us; you’ll be glad to have it ready to go! If you have stories about your babies using our pick for the best baby swing, feel free to share them in the comments. I always enjoy reading other people’s experiences!
As with all our recommendations, we hope our best baby swing works well for you. We’re open to feedback and product suggestions from our readers. If you’ve used something else you think is better than our main pick, please let us know in the comments or via the email link in the sidebar. We’ll check out any new items and replace our main pick if something better comes along. Until that time, we believe that the Graco Duetsoothe Swing Plus Rocker is the best baby swing for most people.
Best Baby Swing Competitors
We’ve spent a lot of time looking at the competition so we thought we’d share a few alternatives here and explain why we didn’t recommend them.
- Fisher Price My Little Snugapuppy Cradle and Swing – This swing doesn’t have a removable swing/seat like our main pick. That hurt its versatility and removed it from the running.
- Graco Simple Sway Baby Swing – This is basically is cheaper version of our main pick with fewer features. The seat isn’t removable and it only swings one direction.
- Graco DuetConnect LX Swing and Bouncer – This is a very similar item to our main pick: the main difference is a bouncer verses rocker removable seat. We personally wanted the rocker instead of the bouncer. This may actually be a great choice for you if you prefer the bouncer.
- Fisher-Price Soothing Savanna Cradle ‘n Swing – Again, this swing doesn’t have a removable seat. With it’s price, we’d like to see more features built into the swing.
- Graco Duet Oasis with Soothe Surround Baby Swing – This could be a step up for our main pick, but it’s very similar in overall functionality. It seems like the main difference is synchronized sound and movement. That wasn’t worth the extra money to us.
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