Car seats, all the same or one better than the others?

[rcharrette]

Check your Fire Dept

Check with your local Fire Dept. Our's does a program where you head down with your car and they provide you with a brand new one and show you how to install it for $20! And it's a nice care seat. We spent $200+ on our first kid (Britax), the second got the $20 fire Dept one and I heard no complaints

 

[86tuning]

We trusted Graco with our kids safety. We used the stroller/car seat combo. They graduated to Graco forward facing seats, they're in Graco boosters now.

Yep, we did just as Big Daddy did. Graco infant carrier with ISO base in wife's car. The stroller has been passed around for years now, my wife's friend's cousin is using it, almost 8 years later. I think its finally due for retirement.

At the time I was driving a 2-door corolla ae86 hatch so we skipped the base for my car, just threw the lap belt over top in the slots provided. Went on many road trips with that car as well.

When they get bigger you will switch to front facing. At first its almost always better to put them in a seat with 5pt harness, it will spread the load across a larger area in the event of impact.

When they're big enough to buckle themselves in, we switched to Graco high-back boosters which are very versatile.

 

[ChuckB]

We had 2 Chicco KeyFit 30 infant carreirs for our twins. No complaints, they worked great. They recently moved up to Recaro Pro-Rides at 18 months. They are great seats, only real drawback is the size. I have test fit the 2 Recaros and 1 Chicco KeyFit in the 2nd row of our Land Cruiser and all three fit, barely.

Baby #3 is due in July and I'm look at adding the Diono Radian RXTs to my car due to their size and recommendations from other parents.

 

[TXLX]

I have two of these. After a lot of research, these are the best in my opinion. I can put two in the second row and still have a seat available. Also, they fold and go into a custom bag for when we fly and need to take the seats with us. I think the company used to be called Radian or Sunshine, can't remember. I think I paid around $250 each. Can go forward facing or rear facing.

Just wanted to add, these are truly great kid seats. The bottoms are low profile and narrow so the kids can get in and out by themselves now. The only thing that is a negative in my opinion is that they are a big pain to disassemble when the kids throw up on them. Probably takes me 10-15 minutes to take apart and 5-10 to assemble.