Are your children’s vaccines up to date?

Set a reminder

Please or to access all these features

Car seats

Confused about car seat regulations? Find baby car seat advice here. For Mumsnetter-approved essentials, sign up for Mumsnet Swears By emails here.

Recommend me an ERF seat!

5 replies

NotMyChashkaChai · 28/02/2014 15:32

So DD (14.5 months) is almost at 9kg and I would like to buy her an ERF group 1 seat. Before anyone says "she should remain in her infant car seat until she's outgrown it" - we don't actually have an infant carrier as we don't have a car! We hire a car a few times a year and have managed to borrow or hire an infant seat thus far, however we would like to buy a group 1 seat as we'd get a good few years of use out of it and people generally don't have spare group 1 seats sitting around to lend out!

Our criteria are:

  • ERF seat. We plan to keep DD rear-facing until she's around 4 and then we'd to turn the seat around to be used forward facing rather than buying a new seat.
  • Belted not ISOFIX
  • Fit a large variety of cars (as we hire we get a different car every time)
  • Relatively easy to install and uninstall
  • We also plan to take the seat on holiday with us so would like a seat that is (relatively) lightweight and easy to maneuver. I know that group 1 seats do tend to be big beasts when compared to infant car seats (especially ERF seats) but I'm after the least heavyweight of the group!
  • Price not an issue as we would hopefully get a good few years out of the seat.

From my research, it seems to be that the TWE is my best bet, but I just want to check that I'm not missing anything else out there that would be better for our needs. Are we?

TIA

OP posts:
Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
KatAndKit · 28/02/2014 15:41

I was going to say klippan triofix as it will last till she Doesn't need a seat any more but it is not so practical for taking on holiday. I think the two way elite is probably your best bet.

nocheeseinhouse · 28/02/2014 22:42

TWE.

Paintingrainbowskies · 01/03/2014 17:38

Twe we took ours recently on an easyjet flight belted into the seat.

We also have a Klippan kiss which personally I prefer in the cars but much less easy to move around and we use it isofix.

NewJobNewLife · 01/03/2014 18:08

The TWE would probably suit best. It is light, fits most cars (make sure you know how to do the alternative belt routes and understand buckle crunch so that you can fit it properly in different cars), goes to 25kg, can forward face if you get a car that can't fit it rear facing.

The TWE is a great seat :)

NotMyChashkaChai · 01/03/2014 19:45

Thanks all. Think twe is the way to go. Just a further question about the twe/erf in general: at the moment we always put the infant seat behind the drivers (dh) seat. This is so that I can pass drinks, snacks, books, toys etc back to dd from the passenger seat (which is pretty essential as although we drive infrequently, we do fairly long 3-4 hour drives - although dd luckily does sleep a long time in her car seat). However I had read that this isn't always possible/recommend with erf seats as the back of the car seat has to rest on the back of the driver or passenger seat and so the driver may have reduced leg room? Is this likely to be an issue? Dh is 5 foot 6 so not exactly Michael Jordan! (I don't drive).

OP posts:
New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Swipe left for the next trending thread