Tough to install, otherwise nice!
March 1, 2018
I was very excited to receive this product through the weeSpring Parent Panel. Upon unboxing the car seat, I was pleased with the design. The seat had mostly dark colors, which is great for a toddler who tends to make messes. The memory foam was super soft, and it looked very comfortable overall. Further, the steel frame was a pleasant surprise, as that is one feature I love in our regular car seat! I noticed some velcro on the lower body of the seat, but initially assumed it was to hold the infant insert in place, which I had immediately removed because we didn't need it. I later realized, the velcro is to hold the straps to the side while you're putting the child in, so you don't have to fish them out from under their butts! This is a feature I've never seen before and I LOVE it. This is also my first seat with the no-rethread harness and I must say, it is SO convenient.
Then came the install. This is where I became frustrated. I have experience with several different convertible seats and have never had much trouble getting a good install. This seat was a first. I prefer the seat belt install to LATCH, as my son is getting older and heavier and I do not want to worry about keeping track of whether or not he's getting close to the weight limits for LATCH. The steel frame on this seat makes it fairly heavy, which brings him even closer to the LATCH weight limit. The belt route for rear-facing was clearly labelled and I expected it to be a breeze, but that was not the case. I could not fit my hand inside the hole beyond my fingers, which made it very, very difficult to feed the belt through, and in the end my hands were sore from being smashed into a place they did not fit. The recline adjustment wasn't very intuitive either. It's on the front of the seat, which makes it difficult to use when rear-facing, as it's pressed against the seat back. Beyond the less-than-ideal placement, it was hard to get the seat to actually recline to an adequate degree as well. I currently have the seat reclined as far as I can get it to go, but am still not happy with it. The indicated line seems to be about parallel with the ground, but my toddler recently fell asleep in the car and when we arrived home I found his head slumped forward, rather than back or to the side, as he does in his other seats. For a small baby who doesn't have proper trunk control yet, this seems problematic. I'm unsure whether the seat does recline more and I'm just unable to finagle mine to do so, or if that's truly as far back as it goes.
All in all, my tall 3-year-old claims to be comfortable rear-facing in this car seat, though his legs look a tad more cramped than they do in other seats. My favorite features are the steel frame, comfy memory foam, and the velcro to hold the straps.
This product review was collected by the manufacturer.