Neat features, but not as "smart" as I'd like
January 3, 2019
Overall, a very nice car seat. Extremely easy to install, level, and adjust straps for baby. I loved how I can move the headrest (and straps) up and down with just a button and pull/push.
I loved the stabilization foot! Great idea and seems to give more safety. It does have a lot of restrictions as to where or how it can be used, and we could not due to a raised floor in the center of the backseat where we put the carry carseat. But it looks like other positions could utilize it and I feel it really adds a good safety feature.
Installation was quick and nearly painless using the lower Latch system. Tightening was heavenly compared to many other carseats. So easy. And getting it level was also very easy. I could actually see this carseat base being a realistic one to move between multiple vehicles without a bunch of hassle.
I'm taking a star off for the Smart Sensor. It was buggy for us and you have to have a 2008 or newer car to utilize it. Our car is a 2007, so we borrowed a friend's for the day to test that feature.
The sensor app can only be active on one phone at a time. So if both parents plan on using it or taking this carseat with them, they'll have to muck about with turning it off on one phone before connecting the other. If only one wants access it might not be so bad. The app also has a nifty feature to add an emergency contact number and all the urgent notices will be sent to that number as well as the connected phone. So you could almost get by with just having the primary driver having the app and just chance it with the other parent, I guess.
The sensor warns you if the buckle is unclipped while driving, the temperature, and if the baby is left in the car. You have to drive the car for it to start connecting, so we drove it around the block once, without baby, to get out setup. That was fine. The warning we had issues with was the baby left in the car. So the first buggy part of this feature happened right away. We got the base installed and got prepared to borrow the car for a day. We put our youngest in the carseat and clicked it into the base. We had the car on because it was cold. During the time it took to get youngest clicked in and then try to get the eldest child into his seat and everything ready to go, we were already getting "baby left in car" warnings. My phone, which was connected at the time, was sitting on the center console of the car, not two feet from the baby. It wasn't like I'd walked far away from the running car with baby in the seat, which would seem more likely that I'd "left" than that we were sitting in a warming car in the driveway, not moving. It doesn't seem to sense phone proximity to car seat, only that the car seat is in a running vehicle that isn't moving. When I didn't acknowledge and "save" the baby fast enough, it sent the warning to my hubby's phone, which was the emergency contact. Fine, we acknowledged, got on the road, and all was good... Until later that day.
Hubby had to go to work later and took the car. Baby, car seat, and I were at home. Carseat was unbuckled and baby was not in it. Hubby's phone was the last connected to the app. Sometime, I'm assuming shortly, after hubby left the car to go into work, the app started screaming at him that the baby was still in the car. Hubby does not have access to his phone at work, so the notification went unacknowledged. As my number was the emergency contact, I started getting notifications that baby was left in the car, and that the car was at his work place. And since hubby could not acknowledge the notifications from his end, I got those messages all day long. I ended up silencing the app. We uninstalled it as soon as we gave our friend's car back. The idea is great, but the execution is poor. Perhaps if we had longer than a day we might have been able to get it sorted out, but as it was, I don't feel that feature is as good as it could be.
The app is not even Evenflo's. It's a third party who does Sensor Safe for a lot of different manufacturers. If Evenflo could take this in-house and give it the quality their other products have, I think it might be great. But as it is, I do not recommend this seat for that function.
I do, however, recommend it for the safety foot, ease of installation and transfer, and how seriously nice it is to carry this carseat. Super ergonomic. It's a nice carseat, just don't get it for the Sensor Safe.
This product review was collected by the manufacturer.