I’m Totally Sold on This Budget Baby Gym (It’s Cute and Cleanable)

The thing about babies is, in the early days, you have to have a lot of options for safe places to put them. There are the bedside sleepers and baby bouncers and motorized swings (which we lovingly called ‘Robo-Nanny’). And for playtime you’ve got another handful of options, from pack ‘n plays to baby gyms. I learned a lot from my first child, who’s six years older than their younger sibling, so when baby number two came around, I knew exactly what I was looking for in the perfect baby gym. After all my research, I ended up buying the Infantino 4-in-1 Twist & Fold Activity Gym and Playmat, which was a Best Budget parent pick in Cubby’s 2024 Nursery Awards. Here’s my review.

There are a few musts when it comes to finding the right baby gym.

• It has to be cute. Don’t overlook the value of aesthetics when it comes to baby stuff. These new pieces of furniture and accessories are going to be scattered all over the house for the next few years, and one way I’ve found to make peace with that is to choose items that just genuinely make me smile.
• It has to be easy to clean. We all make messes, but babies are particularly great at it, with all the spitting up and pooping. It was essential that the materials of the play gym could stand up to frequent oopsies.
• It has to be easy to move. For me, portability was essential. We have a two-story house, and I knew I’d need a play gym that could go with me to any room in the house or the basement or the yard. 
• It has to keep the baby busy. Babies have a lot of important business to attend to. They have to learn and download pretty much every single thing about the world around them. I wanted a play gym that could keep my baby engaged for enough time for me to fold a load of laundry or, perhaps more accurately, scroll through my phone in a quiet haze.
• It has to be safe. Safety takes on new meaning when there’s a new baby in the house, so of course it’s important to me to know that the materials are safe for my baby and that they won’t break or come apart, creating unexpected hazards.

The Baby Gym I Tested

Name: Infantino Go gaga! 4-In-1 Twist & Fold Activity Gym & Play Mat – Tropical
Current Price: $65.99

This Infantino Baby Gym is lightweight, easy-to-clean, and super cute. My daughter loved gazing up at the singing monkey and, eventually, rolling over on the bolster pillow for tummy time. It grew with her for the first year or so of her life, and I was grateful for every minute of “free time” that play gym bought me.

Over the first year of my youngest daughter’s life, she used the Infantino Baby Gym at least once a day. Here’s what really sold me on it.

• It was very cute: I was initially drawn to the play gym because it was cute. The vibrantly colored monstera leaf play mat reminded me of all those houseplants I was neglecting now that I had a new, very adorable roommate, and the vaguely jungle-themed dangling toys came in a corresponding color palette that was easy on the eyes.
• The dangling toys really kept my daughter occupied: Beyond its looks, the baby gym did everything I wanted it to do — it kept my little one occupied for whole minutes, giving me some much-needed downtime in those early days of parenthood. There’s a mirror, which babies (and grown-ups, tbh) can’t get enough of, and there are several dangling toys, including a musical monkey that my youngest was low-key obsessed with.
• It was definitely easy to clean: I appreciated how easy the play gym was for me to clean. I could just wipe and go (and then wipe and go again several minutes later).
• So portable! And speaking of being on the go, I also really liked how easy it was to move this play gym around the house. It has a handy feature that snaps the gym together, kind of like an upside-down umbrella, so you can move it easily. Plus, it’s lightweight, so there were times when I didn’t even bother to snap it up; I just brought it along with me, hooked on my elbow, while I held my baby girl in the other arm. The toys, too, could accompany us outside the house, which proved invaluable while my little one was in her singing monkey era.

I didn’t have any major quibbles with this play mat, but there are a couple of things I would change. First, I would have loved some sort of carrying case or even just a shoulder strap for toting the play gym around — especially when it went outside of the house. That was pretty rare, though, so it didn’t end up being a big issue for me. Still, I think having a carrying case would have made this easier to travel with.

I also would love it if the whole play gym and all of its pieces were machine-washable. See above, re: Babies are messy. For the most part, just wiping the play mat off with a damp cloth was sufficient, but for sanitizing, it would have been ideal if I could pop it in the washing machine.

Other than these small quibbles, though, this was a great play mat, and at a reasonable price.

Buy it: Infantino Go gaga! 4-In-1 Twist & Fold Activity Gym & Play Mat – Tropical, $65.99 from Amazon

See all the 2024 Cubby Nursery Award winners here!