Avionaut Pixel Pro, Cosmo, or Britax Baby safe Core?

[mrgrimblesgerbil]

Is there an easy way of comparing car seats, other than for weight? I'm primarily concerned with safety and saw the Avionaut Pixel Pro, Avionaut Cosmo and Britax Baby safe Core recommended for safety. But there are massive price differences between the three of them and I can't really understand why, despite going round and round the internet. Happy to pay more if it keeps the baby safer, but don't want to waste money unnecessarily. Anyone knowledgeable about car seats who can help a very confused mama?!

I'm on a few extended rear facing pages on Facebook.
The avionaunt pixelpro is by far the most highly recommended on there. Mainly due to the position it gives very young babies. The difference between the Cosmo is I believe the Cosmo has one insert (you remove) and you adjust the pro’s insert as the baby grows in stages.
Personally, I have the britax I sense and love it (I can't comment on the core). However if I was to buy again id go for the pixel pro based on how everyone raves about it!

Oh, and now I've just seen the Axkid Spinkid to add to the mix... Help!

We had the pixel pro, DD looked so comfortable in it! Good seat choice

Thank you! Sounds like a lot of love for the Pixel Pro then. Shame it is so pricy.

We've just got the pixel pro. Seems very light and well made.

Highest ever rated infant carrier for safety by ADAC is the Cybex cloud. It also lasts longer than the pixel pro (up to 2 years I believe). I decided against it due to weight and because I had heard positioning in the pixel pro is good. I really struggled carrying my last two in a car seat as so heavy so im hoping the pixel pro will make it easier.

The Cosmo has just had an excellent safety review by ADAC.

The Pixel has been around longer than the other two and was very heavily promoted for a while by all the ERF retailers, so that is why it tends to get many more recommendations than others. More is not necessarily better in terms of recommendations - it just means that a product is more widely used/known. You want to look at what people are saying (e.g. if one product gets a mix of good/bad reviews, then it's probably less good than one which only gets positive reviews, or look at what people say to compare two different models they have used).

TBH they are all very safe, so I would not worry too much about the different ratings. Which features do you like and what are the price differences? Are the features of the more expensive model worth paying the extra money over the cheaper one?

The Spinkid is not an infant carrier, it's quite a different type of seat.

You do not need to pay a lot of money for a safe infant carrier. In fact, even the extremely cheap ones tend to get good safety ratings. It is the next stage where price makes more of a difference - and even then, it's not a straight line from cheap = unsafe to expensive = safest.

You can also save a good amount of money on an infant carrier by not opting for a base. Consider whether the convenience of a base is worth the extra money for it. One thing I wasn't so keen on with the older Avionaut models is they had very fiddly seatbelt guides for the lap belt, this seems much improved in their latest models.

@BertieBotts thank you, that's so helpful. If you're familiar with the Cosmo, would you recommend it? Other than it being slightly heavier than the Pixel Pro and apparently not being as supportive for the newborn spine I can't understand from their website what the real differences are.

When you say the bases are separate, is that because they provide the Isofix, or spin, or something like that? I hadn't realised they came as an add-on.

I was torn between pixel pro and cybex cloud, I went cybex cloud as it will last so much longer (hopefully can go straight into axkid minikid from it)

We've not bothered with the isofix base this time. We've just got the pixel pro. It has very obvious seatbelt guides all the way round it and felt extremely secure when we tested it the other day. The isofix base is really about ease of putting it in the car so you can save yourself a few hundred quid if you want to.

@shinglesmingle interesting, as we are also intending to buy a Minikid as a next stage seat. Do you have a specific model of Cloud that goes up to a higher weight limit? When I google it suggets 13kg for the Cloud which is the same as the Avionauts.

I don't think the Cybex is a huge amount bigger than the Pixel, and they will both be fine to go straight into Axkid Minikid, even if you have the older one. The newer one is suitable from about 4-6 months so there's no worries with any infant seat with that any more, you can even go for the carrycot style if you want to (but they might be less safe.)

The Cosmo is just a more basic version whereas Pixel Pro is more premium. It's common for companies to have two (or more) versions of a seat like this. Safety wise they look the same, the Cosmo even has a slightly better safety rating (the difference is negligible).

The inserts are different - the Cosmo is a one-piece insert which comes out when the baby is over a certain size (which is standard for most infant car seats) whereas the Pixel has a more adjustable insert which will give you a much more tailored fit at every age and stage. I'd say if you're a car seat or orthopaedics nut (said affectionately!) who loves tinkering and is really pleased with getting an exact perfect fit at all times, then the Pixel will make you very very happy in this aspect. It has even won awards for back support. I haven't seen the Cosmo in person, but I have seen the Pixel in person and (as a car seat nut myself) the fit is extremely good. I have never seen a better fitting newborn. Newborns do not often get a good fit in any car seat, so it's surprising when they do.

But if you are a more normal person who would not geek out over these things, and in fact the idea of an insert with a million parts which can all be taken out in different orders brings you out in a cold sweat at the thought of getting it wrong, and you only really care that your baby is safe and comfortable - you'll probably be perfectly happy with the Cosmo or, indeed, the Britax seat. They both give a lovely fit for newborns (that I've seen from photos) and are simple to use and understand. The fact that you can't adjust it for every single 1lb of growth does not really matter.

In terms of the base - with most car seats as sold in the UK, you can fit it by using the car's seatbelt to fit the seat directly into the car, which is easy to do and takes about 30-60 seconds with practice, but if you prefer, you can buy a separate base and fit the base (semi) permanently into the car. The benefit of the base is that you just press a button and you can lift the seat out without having to unstrap a seatbelt, so it's faster, easier and in theory it's less prone to error because all you have to do is push the seat into the base and listen for a click, some also have a little green indicator to show it's in the base properly.

Most bases sold today fit with isofix, so if you want to use your infant seat with isofix, most of the time you'll need a base. (Nuna Urbn is the exception). You can also get seatbelt fitted bases. As said, the benefit of the base is that it stays installed all the time so you aren't having to strap the seat in and out.

Some bases spin, but IMO this is not a useful feature for an infant seat except in a few niche scenarios.

You can get bases which take the next stage seat too but this is usually a bit of a marketing trick - it's very very rarely worth it.

In America they include the base with the car seat which I always think makes a lot more sense!

@BertieBottsthanks for taking the time to write out all of that info - really appreciate it. Think I'm a lot more clued up than I was yesterday thanks to this thread! I'm definitely more of a "cold sweat at fiddling about and potentially getting it wrong" type than a knowledgeable car seat/orthopaedics type, so it looks as if I might as well save a bit of money and get one of the cheaper options, if DC can go into the Minikid or so at 15 months or so anyway.

Yes for sure. You can use the newer Minikid from about 6 months easily. 15 months will be no problem at all.

With the ages these seats go to - take them with a pinch of salt because all the manufacturers seem to pluck an age randomly out of the air and apply it to their seat. There is no logic, and babies are different sizes at different ages anyway.

You can use the infant carrier until the baby's head gets to the top of the seat, which will probably happen before the 87cm or whatever the limit is and almost certainly before the 13kg weight limit. All the seats mentioned in this thread will last you over a year. Some seats on the market have a lower height limit of 75cm, which is often outgrown under a year of age.

The main issue is that by about 8-9 months babies are about 9kg+ and they are SO heavy to lug about in these seats. They also get really nosey and want to see out of the window, they don't like being made to lie back in a nice reclined position when they have started to sit up on their own. So a lot of people find they want to change to a more upright seat by about the end of the first year. If you have a reason to use it longer e.g. you're trying to eke out a seat for an older sibling, or you don't have your own car or you travel a lot or you're just in and out of the car a lot and using it on the pram is convenient, then sometimes people just continue using the baby seat and there is nothing wrong with doing this.

I stand corrected by pp that would pixel might have a similar upper limit. Although the minikids can take from quite small, with DS, I am aiming for infant carrier as long as possible to avoid head slump with a smaller child in an upright seat (had this issue with DD when she slept until she was about 4, however seat was positioned).

Other pro if cybex is the lay back feature, but we haven't really used it tbh.