Comfortable, but a bit hard to tighten
October 14, 2013
Our daughter loves this car seat, and clambers up into it without prompting. She loves the little cubbies where she can store her little treasures, and in our VW Passat wagon, she's the only one with a cupholder in the back seat, which she likes.Tightening the straps takes a bit more force than I'd like; this is the only aspect that's somewhat unpleasant on a day-to-day basis, and the reason I can't give the seat five stars. The crotch latch and the chest clip are at just the right compromise between easy for the parent to fasten and unfasten, but too tight for the child to undo. The strap loosening method (lift instead of push) takes a bit of thinking about still, but I'm sure we'll get used to it.This is our first child restraint with no-rethread shoulder strap adjustment, and it's not as easy as it seems it ought to be: you still only have a finite number of positions where it'll click in place, and they seem awfully far apart -- the one setting seems a bit low, the next one seems way too high, and it's all very hard to judge because of the way the straps are routed around and through the seat padding. So if you're shopping for a child restraint that'll be used by just one child, don't put the no-rethread thing very high on the list of desired features, because it's really not worth it.In the aforementioned VW, we have the seat in the middle of the back, and there's just enough room for two large adults to get in on either side. The absolute width of this child restraint is higher than another restraint we tried, but it's narrower at seat level, where it matters.
Pros
- Comfortable, fairly easy to install with LATCH (haven't tried it with seat belts yet), easy adjustments and fastenings
Cons
- Hard to tighten the harness, heavy/bulky