Help - chosen wrong car seat for 4 year old - Which? review

[OscarandLucinda]

My nearly 4 year old is 17.5kg and 99.4cm. She’s currently in a cyber sirona ERFvseat, which I think goes up to 19kg.

I was very confused trying to find the safest option for the next seat so bought a Which? Subscription which seemed to come up with the Cybex solution S-fix as the safest option for the next stage.

However I’ve now read that Britax do an ERF seat to 25kg. This is a “don’t buy” on Which?, which seems to be because of difficulty installing.

I’m now very confused on what to do as know ERF is the safest overall. It also doesn’t seem right to put her in a normal seat belt rather than a harness yet. But don’t want to get a “don’t buy”!

I’m sorry if this has all been covered before but is someone able to tell me which is actually the safest car seat for her??

Which is useless, they mark seats down for lack of colour choices. Contact the in car safety centre and see what they recommend. We’ve got the Britax Max way plus for our 3.5 year old who weighs about 18kg and it’s brilliant.

Which are awful for car seat safety reviews so ignore them. If you want to keep her rear facing a 25kg seat like axkid minikid is expensive but the best and Swedish plus tested. If you are on Facebook carse at advice UK is a good place to get info.

Thank you very much - will look at both of those. I thought because they do their own tests it would be more reassuring to get a Best Buy. But yes mark down for colours is ridiculous. I do understand if the Britax May be installed incorrectly but just make that clear and advise professional fitting!

I couldn’t get through to anyone at in car safety centre but just spoke to Julie from car seat safety, who was excellent.

Advised axkid, Britax or Joie bold mainly for 5 point harness. Said side impact testing also very important for city driving. Think will go for axkid as also RF but joie bold tempting as half the price!

Which really don't mark down on colour choices.

But they do mark ERF seats down. This is because they consider them difficult to install.

It's tricky really - is it difficult to install? Compared to the Cybex, yes, significantly. Compared to other ERF seats of the same type, not at all - it's perfectly standard.

If you're willing to follow instructions, maybe watch a video, ideally get someone to show you in person (tricky at the moment) and generally just make sure you've got the installation right, then it's likely that "difficult to install" isn't a factor that's relevant to you, and what you should really look at is the safety rating.

What Which? aim to do with their reviews is present a list that any layperson, with no previous knowledge or interest in car seats (or whichever item) can pick up, purchase an item and get a reasonably good performance from it. If there's a high chance that this person will install the car seat incorrectly, because they haven't read the manual and it has parts that they don't know what to do with (Swedish style tethers) then they aren't going to get a good performance from the item, in fact incorrect installation could be incredibly dangerous.

When Britax first started selling these seats on the UK market, even then they had a disclaimer on the website explaining that they would not sell them online, only through specific approved retailers who had training, as the risk of someone misusing the seat through incorrect installation was (they felt) high. It's also why they only tend to be sold through specialist retailers, and not in places like Smyths and Halfords, even though they stock other Britax car seats. It's different in Sweden, because this is a totally standard type of car seat and it's the cultural norm so most people would know how to do it, or be able to ask a car seat shop, garage or other parent for help. But you show this type of seat to someone in the UK that doesn't know anything about ERF and has never come across tethers before, and they will typically ignore the tethers altogether, which would make the seat very unstable due to the higher weight and size of child it's designed to accommodate. And then it's not the safest seat any more.

I would say that the equal safest seats on the market at the moment are

Britax Max Way Plus
Axkid Move
Axkid Minikid
Besafe izi Plus

As these are all plus tested but also have great side impact safety.

They all install in a similar way, so do make sure you're familiar with how tethers work and/or are happy to call the in car safety centre back for advice if you get stuck - they are really good.

Cost-wise, Axkid Move and Max Way Plus are closer to the Joie Bold whereas Minikid and Besafe are twice the price.

Oh sorry - saw it was Car Seat Safety you spoke to in the end - also a good source of advice and will probably help you with fitting qieries.

Bertie thanks so much for that very useful info. What is the real difference between the Move and Minikid? They both seem to be the same age and weight range. I don’t mind paying more if safer but not bothered about extra features not related to safety

The move is the less fancy version of the minikid. Differences are things like the headrest doesn't adjust automatically. Safety wise I don't think there is a difference its more about ease of use.

The features aren't safety critical but might have a marginal effect.

For example you have self tightening tethers on the Minikid whereas they are manual on the Move, so it might be easier to install correctly. But I think this is more of a convenience thing if you swap it between cars a lot. If it's installed solidly in the first place it doesn't make a difference.

The Minikid's headrest automatically adjusts to the child's size every time you use it, so there's never any question about whether it's in the right position, it always is. The headrest will also slowly creep up and eliminate any slack you might have left in the harness, which is a safety feature if you think anyone who uses it is likely to leave too much slack in the harness. The Move doesn't do these, you have to adjust and tighten it manually. Also when the child grows with the Move you have to manually unthread and rethread the harness into the right position, but that's something you'd have to do once or twice ever (there are only 3 positions).

You have in between recline positions in the Minikid whereas the Move is just upright or reclined with no in between. The in between positions can be useful if you have a child who can't yet cope with the most upright position (head flop when asleep) but you want to make it just as upright as they can cope with, because the more upright the seat is, the safer it is, although when a child is very young and lower in the seat shell, the recline is much less of an issue, so this might be completely moot. The other benefit of this is front seat space if that is at a premium - you can do that "just as upright as possible" jiggling to get some more space, that's more comfort for any front passenger than safety.

Then the other differences are just fabrics which obviously don't matter safety wise.

Thank again - incredibly useful - wish I hadn’t wasted that money on Which!

Think I’ll go for the minikid then as not really used to using belts and can’t seem to get anyone to check fitting during lockdown

(Although Julie from Car Seat safety said they are soon launching a site called The family car where you’ll be able to have a virtual consult to check fitting - for anyone else reading this later)

Ah that's a good idea.

At least you'll be able to use the Cybex later, as it's a really good one. You could also maybe use it as a spare for other people's cars if you're comfortable with that.

Thanks I hadn’t thought of that and actually managed to return it despite having opened it! explained the situation to John Lewis and no problem getting a refund

FWIW we have the Britax Max Way Plus for our nearly 4 year old and we're very happy with it.
At the time of buying it (pre-covid) we also tried out the Axkid Minikid and we actually preferred the Max Way Plus as a better / more comfortable fit for our DC. It's also considerably cheaper as it's often on offer for £215.

However, the Minikid/Move are also great seats.

Oh great - well that's even better then as you have the money to put towards the other seat, and possibly when your DD outgrows the seat there will be newer ones on the market anyway.

Just to pop my head in and say some belted seats are actually easier to install than isofix (thanks to my 3 series who had the bar far down and was always wiggling loads to get it clipped )

Watch the videos on rear facing toddlers, spend a bit of time doing it slowly at first and now I can get the seat installed in 2 mins and I'm really not a genius!