This is the best baby seat ever! I chose it because Consumer Reports rated it so highly, the Zip feature made cleaning easier and the blue color matched my upholstery nicely while making my little girl's outfits stand out. I had been using the BabyTrend Range travel system, and we still love the stroller, but at 15 months, an infant seat (the 'baby bucket' you can click onto a base LATCH'd to the car seat,) was really getting too small for her. If I had it to do over, I'd just have bought this one from the get-go for our minivan and used the baby-bucket one for the little two-door hatchback my husband used to drive, where getting a baby into a LATCH'd-in seat was not exactly easy. Getting a child into this, rear-facing, in, say, a Scion iQ or a Toyota Yaris three-door, would be an absolute nightmare for most parents, but in a four-door hatch or sedan, it's easy!
(And yes, my husband sold his car and bought a larger one purely to keep our little girl in rear-facing seats longer. Safety engineers are just like that.)
It came with a soft insert for very tiny babies, and based on the little doll we got our daughter that's exactly the size she was when she came home from the NICU, this would even be a fine choice for preemies. I especially love the adjustable recline feature. We can adjust the seat to a more relaxed position when the road trip is getting long, so our baby sleeps, and she quite likes it when we sit her more upright to look at things. I think her favorite features are the padded straps (no more pinches or red marks!) and the insulated cupholder. Mine is the crash-test rating and the zip-out liner, as well as the easy-to-clean fabric. And my husband loves how easy the straps are to adjust. It's so intuitive, even grandparents who remember late-1980s seats and bachelor uncles who wouldn't know a safety seat if Danica Patrick were inside can get a toddler strapped in safely. The dual-position chest clip is especially well designed.
It's pricy, sure, and it's a big seat, but if you can afford to give your baby the best (or have generous, safety-obsessed relatives watching your registry like hawks,) this is definitely the seat to buy. It is safety engineer dad tested and cuddly NICU-graduate toddler approved!
| Product Dimensions | 26.4 x 21.1 x 19.3 inches |
|---|---|
| Item model number | 04079019130070 |
| Is Discontinued By Manufacturer | No |
| Minimum weight recommendation | 5 Pounds |
| Maximum weight recommendation | 65 Pounds |
| Material Type | Fabric |
| Batteries required | No |
| Orientation | Rear Facing |
| Rear-facing minimum child weight | 5 Pounds |
| Forward-facing maximum child weight | 65 Pounds |
| Harness type | 5-Point |
| Item Weight | 25 pounds |
