Car Seat Homework

With so many car seats on the market, it's hard to know which one to choose. Brian and I have been trying to make sense of all the information available and apply it to our situation over the last day or so because Trent is one lb away from outgrowing his infant seat. Which has prompted a mini research project. It's my hope that those of you reading this will find it useful when finding a car seat to match your own situation.

Background:
So a couple of things to consider for new parents when choosing a car seat.

• Convertible car seats can be used from birth to 50lbs (some models) - so this type of car seat means that you only need to buy one. A nice money saver. The down side to this is that you have to take the child out of the seat, which doesn't sound like a big deal, right? until your baby's passed out in the car after a 15 minute screaming session on the highway and your nerves are frayed and all you want is 10 more minutes of silence and a nice cup of tea. This type of car seat isn't conducive to swapping vehicles quickly, either.
  
• Infant seats with a base that stays in the car can be used from birth to 22lbs and one year old - this type of car seat means that you have to buy a new car seat at approximately one year, which is a down-side, however, in the above situation, this car seat is ideal because you can easily move your baby without waking him. You can also snap this car seat into the stroller, so again, no need to wake the baby up. In addition, you can put this car seat onto most shopping carts, making a trip to the store much easier. In addition, if you have multiple cars you can simply buy two bases.
  

We've been very happy with our choice of infant car seat - the Graco Alano Travel System. The infant seat rated quite well on Consumer Reports (Graco snug-ride with ETS) and is a consumer reports best buy. The only complaint I have about it is that the seat doesn't fit perfectly into the carts at HEB, and forces the baby to be too reclined, and it's slightly heavier than other seats.

Narrowing the scope:
Now it's time for us to buy something bigger for Trent. There are a couple of options available. The convertible car seat, and the toddler booster seat. What's the difference? The convertible seat can still be used in a rear-facing position, which is recommended for children under 1 year of age. Some booster seats come with a harness, however, some do not and use the car's existing seat belt system to secure the child. I personally don't recommend this. A 5 point harness is the safest way to transport your precious cargo, and heaven forbid you have to test this theory out - car seat belts have been know to fail in a crash. So we've made the decision to go with a convertible seat. Now that we've narrowed the scope of our search we need to determine what the best option is for us on what's available.

Criteria:
What's important to us (ranked)?

1. safety
2. fit to vehicle
3. comfort
4. ease of use
5. looks
6. cost
   

Analysing the data:
So now we have our criteria, we looked on Consumer Reports to find out which seats ranked highest in those areas. Of the models tested on consumer reports, one clearly stood out for crash protection, which is our number one criteria, however, it ranked marginally lower in Infant fit to vehicle (which is the rear facing position) and ranked high on toddler fit to vehicle (which is the forward facing position) - ok - so we'll only need it to be rear-facing for another month and a half. That's an acceptable concession. For ease of use it rated slightly lower than two others but since that's only #4 in importance, that's another acceptable concession. As far as cost goes, the clear winner in safety also is a lot less expensive than some of the lesser performing models. So I think our decision on which brand and model is made.

Of course, you really do need to go to a local store and actually look at the car seat before buying it. So we went to Target and checked out the top 2 from consumer reports. The colour wasn't ideal for us on our top pick, but that being #5 in importance on our list, we obviously will look for it in a different colour, but will take that one if we can't find a better choice.

And the final step in making the decision - read reviews from actual people who are using the product. You can't go solely by the ratings given, you have to read the review and understand why a person gave it less than 5 stars. For the most part, the seat we've chosen gets great reviews except in fit to vehicle and ease of use in the rear facing position. Again, because this is a very temporary situation for us, it's acceptable. One other thing to note about our choice is that people report that it's bulky and does not easily move between vehicles. This isn't an issue for us because we only have one car that accommodates a child seat anyway. But something to keep in mind for all you people out there that will have multiple cars to choose from.

Conclusion:
So which car seat did we choose?
The Evenflo Triumph Advance LX - Once again we are buying a Consumer Reports best buy :-) Whatever would we do without Joan's subscription to CR?