A car seat that is easy to fit and fits next to another car seat?

[notso]

DS3 is coming up to 13kg so need to look for another seat soon.
It needs to fit next to his brothers Britax seat so we can still use the back seats of our 7 seater.
It also needs to be really easy to take in and out as will be swapped between up to three cars.
My first thought was Maxi Cosi Pearl as we are using the Familyfix base at the moment, however having looked at the Pearl I think it's Isofix only so no good for GP's cars.

Any suggestions?

Hi have you looked at extended rear facing car seat? I find that do to the leg room gap you often can get them next to another seat and of course rearfacing is reported to be five times safer.

You may also like to check out the joie stages car seat. The new stock are now approved for RF til 18kgs and according to friends who have seen it is a good sturdy seat. Babies r us stock it.

I don't think ERF would suit us. DH is very tall so his seat is quite far back which means there isn't much room. I believe ERF seats can be tricky to fit so maybe a problem for taking in and out.

I will have a look at the joie, haven't heard of that make before. Thanks.

Its a myth that ERF are tricky to fit - my partner fitted our axkid for first time solo in four minutes and there are several that are quite compact now.

Joie stages is a good alternative though and on offer at babies are us at the moment. Just make sure you get the one labelled til 18kg if you get it though.

Have had a look into ERF again but pretty much convinced they won't be suitable. The Isofix ones do look easy to fit but the seat belt ones don't look particularly easy though, I think GP's would struggle.

The Joie one looks quite easy on the video but it looks as if it sticks out quite a lot.

the britax two way elite is almost idiotproof if you have spare tethers in everyone's cars

Thanks will have a look

Reviving this thread as am still hunting.

Joie stages is a Which don't buy due to bad crash protection RF and being difficult to fit so I am put off by that.

DH want's to move our 2.7 yo into a group 2 and then put our 15 mo into the group one we have but 2 is too small for group 2 isn't it?

Your 2.7yr old is far to young for a high back booster I agree.

Which? have made the Britax maxway a don't buy too- an that passed the Swedish plus test (very strict test) I take which? results with a huge piece of salt.

Look at rearfacing again especially the axkind minikid.

Where abouts are you? Is there a retailer you could go to? They really aren't hard to fit

I have had a good look into ERF. In an ideal world I would certainly get them but as it is now they are just not an option for us for the following reasons;

The price. I would have to get ERF for my 2yo and 1yo. I'd feel awful making one 'safer' than the other. My younger two children only travel in a car (ours or GP's) about 5-6 times a month. It feels awful putting a price on my children's safety but £500+ is a lot of money to find. We have about £140 to spend on a seat at the moment.

We have underfloor storage in the car which rules out a lot of seats. I don't even know if we could find two that could go next to each other.

We would have to buy ff seats for grandparents cars anyway and if stretching the budget for ERF we would end up having to buy budget less safe ones which seems daft when they are more likely to go in GP's cars than our car.

The seats can't be left in the car. Our only car is DH's company car, he uses it 5.5 days a week and usually has to have the seats free to transport work items and staff. This is why ease of fitting is so important. Also it is hard enough finding room in the house for two seats let alone four.

I am aware that some of the ERF seats are easy to fit but still some of them do seem complicated. The fact that you seem to have to travel miles for someone to show you how to do it confirms this for me. DH struggles to fit our current FF Britax one properly.