Joie Elevate

[Wenttoseainasieve]

I currently have my 4 year old forward facing and harnessed in a Joie Every Stage, but have just seen it's pretty poorly performing safety-wise in this function. She's too light to use it as a booster with adult seat belt, so I was debating getting her the Joie Elevate as it can be used with the harness and then the belt too. Anyone used this seat or know how it fares in terms of safety?

I intend to pass the Every Stage seat down to my 14 month old, but I'll rear face him.

It probably is a bit better, because the low score for the Every Stage is lower even than the very cheap teamtex/nania seats. However the Elevate has not been through an independent safety test, so it's not possible to say for sure. I will say that this seat is quite a lightweight/basic seat, and it doesn't get a fantastic fit in most cars.

If you're looking for a 123 seat on a budget I'd personally put a little bit more in and look at the Britax Evolva. But if you can I'd see if you can take her to somewhere that stocks it and try her out in it before you buy, as the harness doesn't go up as high as it does on the Joie seats and if she's over 1 metre tall she won't have long in the harness (but maybe long enough to get to 15kg.)

Just having a scout through ADAC results since 2015 for 123-type seats that performed better, discounting impact shield type seats (since they tend to perform better in these tests than in real-world crashes) - smaller numbers = better. 6 is the worst and 1 is the best. There are not a great many simply because 123 type seats do not perform that well in general. Unfortunately all quite expensive, except for the Evolva and i-max.

Joie Every Stage - 3.9
Joie Every Stage FX - 3.6

Maxi Cosi Titan Pro - 3.0
Team Tex i-max SP (AKA Disney i-max, Mothercare Advance, includes isofix versions) - 2.7 - NB I'm not sure I would trust this brand more than Britax, certainly.
Britax Evolva 1-2-3 SICT - 2.7
Recaro Young Sport Hero - 2.6
Britax Advansafix III - 2.5
Britax Advansafix IV - 2.3 (This is the only one to get a "Good" rather than "Satisfactory" for safety)

Another option would be to just put the seat rear facing again? I appreciate it doesn't have that much space for the legs when rear facing so she might not be very enthusiastic but many children don't mind and even find it exciting to go backwards.

If she is too tall for a standard 123 type seat, she would be tall enough for an i-size booster seat - there's only one on the market at the moment but it's very good (BeSafe izi Flex fix) although also very expensive. It might be a better investment than a standard 123 seat though, because you will eventually need two booster seats anyway.

Or you might want to look at the Joie Bold, which can harness forward facing up to 25kg/about 125cm (but uses top tether) and converts to a booster seat after that. You could hand it down to your youngest when you hit the point you no longer want to rear face and the eldest can go back into the Every Stage as a booster.

Agh has the Every Stage not done well in the ADAC test?? Rats. I have two, albeit only in my parents’ cars. Presumably those were combined overall scores, Bertie, rather than specifically for Ed/ff, do you know?

I’ve actually just bought a Joie Elevate for my in-laws’ VW campervan, and for taking on hols for our hire car, for my 3.5yr old, He’s rf in a Britax TWE in my car but we needed the flexibility of a lightish 123 seat that was easy to fit. I haven’t had him in it yet but have to say I’m not that enthused by it so far! It feels lighter than I expected and looks very much like a cheaper HBB that they’ve whacked a harness on. It doesn’t look like the Bold has done any better than the Every Stage in the OAMTE though.

I think the Every Stage is only really bad if you're forward facing and using the five point harness @Laquila - it's ok used ERF and as a high backed booster so using the seat belt to secure child.

Thanks for all that info @BertieBotts it's really useful. I think I'll measure her and if she's tall enough go with the I-size seat, otherwise the Britax Advansafix. She's quite tall but very slight. I intended to ERF her hence buying the Joie in the first place, but she suffers very badly from travel sickness, which is why I am reluctant to rear face her now as it made it much worse. Luckily my little boy is just outgrowing his infant seat so I was about to buy a new seat anyway but for him.

Yes that is correct - it is fine when used as an ERF seat or a high backed booster. Unfortunately they don't publish the results broken down into the different settings - you can see they differentiate between front, side and fitting, but not different modes (front facing, rear facing, booster) as I understand it, in the safety section the lowest score achieved in any mode is the overall score for that section and then the overall safety score is a combination of those. So for example any high backed booster which can be converted to backless usually scores terribly, even if it's a high-performing seat otherwise.

I didn't see the Bold somehow in that list when I was looking yesterday - it does do better than the Every Stage - low risk in side impacts, average risk in frontal impacts, whereas the Every Stage gets increased risk for frontal, average risk for side. Unfortunately every forward facing seat covering Group 1 gets average risk in frontal impact (or worse) perhaps because they have to test it with a one year old dummy. The only ones which get lower are the impact shield seats, which are skewed for previous reasons, and the Maxi Cosi Axissfix Air with the airbags (also eye wateringly expensive!) So what you want to see when evaluating forward facing group 1 seats is no worse than average on frontal impact, and preferably low or very low on side impact.

You're right it's OEAMTC I was looking at - you can use Chrome to translate these but the numbers are fairly clear and easy to read anyway.

Joie Bold

Joie Every Stage

I really like the Advansafix as 123 seats go. I like the use of top tether, the harness is sturdy, and it converts into a really nice booster. It's what I've considered for if we need to boot DS2 out of his ERF seat for a younger sibling, but that's years away yet so there's time to see what is out there at the time. I also haven't looked into how tall it is either at the Group 1 stage or booster stage - that could be a dealbreaker. I think the Besafe booster is quite tall (but I don't know for sure).

Thank you Bertie. You are an absolute mine of information! I really appreciate it.

I actually tried the BeSafe Flex I-Size in my car the other day for my nearly-6-yr old, but went for the Cybex S-Fix instead in the end. The BeSafe was lovely, but I liked the reclining headrest feature on the Cybex and felt the seat depth was a bit more substantial. It was also significantly cheaper. My 3.5yr old has now gone into the Britax TWE and wants to know when he’ll get a new car seat of his own...(answer: never...that’s what being a younger sibling is all about 😃 ...actually he’s got the new Elevate in his Omi’s car but I don’t think he’s that impressed...)