I purchased my Graco Playtime Swing before my second son was even born. With my first born I was given an older version, and to me it was the best thing since sliced bread. How parents coped before hand I don't know, they must have had a lot of patience and tired arms!

If I need to do some work or just have a few minutes to myself the swing comes out and keeps my son entertained for a good half hour at least. The best thing is that most of the time it sends him to sleep.

--- THE PRODUCT ---

The Graco Playtime swing, winner of Practical Parenting, Pregnancy and Baby magazine awards, is suitable from birth. The swing is great for rocking your baby to sleep, or for him/her to just sit in it and play.

The swing folds, for easy storage, you just simply press in two buttons, and then the swing can be easily stored or even transported for when you have places to go!
The swing can be used until your baby weight reaches 11kgs.
The height of the swing is approximately 105cm and the net weight is approximately 6.71kg.

The swing is powered by 4 size D batteries. These are placed in the control panel which is on the right hand side of the swing. Here also are the buttons that control the speed, music and a timer button. The swing has six speeds, three low, which are the powered by the green button and three high which is the red button. The music button is blue.

The seat has three reclining positions to suit your baby, and the covers, which are padded, are machine washable, which is great for sickly or messy babies. For younger babies a head cushion is provided to give that extra support, but this is removable when it is no longer needed.
There is a secure three point harness to fasten your baby into the swing, and a good sturdy tray, which also stops baby from sliding out the bottom. There is a little toy bar that attaches to the tray, and a detachable mobile that clips to the top of the swing.

To put baby into the swing you simply click the tray upwards at one side and strap him/her in, the click the tray back down.

--- SO DOES IT WORK? ---

On purchasing my Graco swing, I took it home and put it together. The swing is flat packed but is very easy to assemble. I did it by myself!

Max used the swing straight away. When he was first born the head cushion nicely supported his head, and the lowest speed setting was enough to rock him to sleep. This was great, it gave me the time to make bottles or play with Leon.

As Max got older, and gained more weight, we increased the speed to let him rock at a nice speed. It doesn't always make him go to sleep, but it entertains him for a while, and now he likes to sit in it and watch telly and eat bananas!
We have never really used the music bit on the swing, there are 15 songs which I think are just nursery rhymes, the toy bar is another thing we haven't really used. Max was never really interested in it, so we just detached it.
The detachable mobile was great when he was younger, he used to watch it and slowly drift off asleep (it no longer works unfortunately!)

One thing I am disappointed with is that the batteries don't seem to last very long, we bought as stated but they do seem to run out quite quickly.

With the swing folding to half the size, I store it under the stairs; it's nice that when people come round there aren't loads of baby toys or items clogging up the living space. I have never used the timer control either, but you can set the swing to go for a certain amount of time.

--- OVERALL ---

I think the Graco Playtime Swing is a great investment to any parent. It's easy to keep clean with washable covers, I think now you can chose from two different colours. It's great for rocking baby to sleep instead of doing it by hand or the dreaded car! But also it's great for them to sit in, when they get to that age where they just like to know what's going on around them.

I purchased my swing from Toys R' Us I paid £69 for it, as it was on offer. I'm not sure if you can get it from there any more as it is not on the website. I think you can expect to pay up to around £99 for the swing. To me it is worth it, and if you keep it in good condition it can always be sold on.

Thanks for reading!