Next seat for a 4yr old?

[SecretHappiness]

4yr old is about 15kg at the moment but we’re expecting (around Jan/Feb). She’s still in the Joie iSpin Group 0+ which we’ll use for newborn. She loves her car seat and we don’t want her to feel like baby is taking all her stuff so looking to get her used to the next stage soon.

Would love 5 point harness, isofix and ideally something that lasts as long as possible. Budget is around £100 (is this reasonable?)

Another consideration is the seat height. She’s got a great vantage point in the spin as the seat position is quite high so she does really well even on long journeys (3hrs+) as she’s quite happy to look out the window and world watch. Appreciate she will grow but would hate for her to lose this little joy when we travel, if at all possible.

Any and all recommendations welcome, thank you!

Do you know how tall she is? 15kg is well within the bounds of most of the standard type 123 seats which have harness which convert into booster, but if she's close to 105cm then she'll outgrow the 5 point harness fairly soon. However I do think you are right to look to keep her in a harness for now, as 15kg is only just over the threshold to go into a seatbelt and it's better to have them comfortably over that line than only just meeting it.

You will struggle for £100 - sorry. £160 will get you a decent one if she's got a while to go to get to 105cm. (Average 6cm growth per year, a bit less if she is on lower centiles). The trouble is that the performance in safety testing on 123 type seats are so widely variable. The two models I like for £160 are Britax Advansafix Z-Line 2 and Silver Cross Essentials Balance i-size.

If the £100 is a strict limit and/or she is close to 105cm, then you could look at Cozy n Safe Hudson - the R44 version not the R129 version - this has a 25kg harness limit which I appreciate you don't need, but it means it's R44 and doesn't have a height limit on the harness, and the 25kg means that it is built with a bit more space in it anyway. The only thing is this is quite a basic seat so if you don't need the 25kg allowance then it might not be the best one to go for.

If she is further under the 105cm and you are looking at budget seat models then I would look for R129 testing, top tether and isofix as a minimum. You can get these under £100 - it's just the safety is less clear on them.

Also, all of the next stage seats (whether you get a 123 which converts from harness to booster, or just a high back booster seat) sit lower down in the car than the swivel ones in general.

So another option might be to get a reasonably priced infant carrier for the baby and leave her in her current seat until the baby outgrows it. Once she is closer to 18kg and/or more ready for a seatbelt, you could move her into a high back booster, and £100 (or even £60) is a much better budget for a high back booster than it is for a 123 combination harness-booster seat. Joie, Graco (only their R129 ones) and Cybex do good budget HBBs.

I did find this infant seat recently which looked good for that: https://www.kiddies-kingdom.com/birth-15m/41800-recaro-avan-i-size-group-0-car-seat-matte-black.html - it would be compatible with most of the major pram brands as Recaro seats go on the standard "maxi cosi/universal" adapters.

@BertieBotts thank you so much do your detailed response, I really appreciate it! I’m actually not 100% sure on height (terrible I know!) but it’s a prompt that we do need to measure her again (recent growth spurt!).

I was toying with the idea of an infant carrier anyway as we’re expecting an early birth and perhaps a very little newborn, although the spin is from newborn I did wonder if it would be appropriate.

The budget isn’t a hard limit but ideal so we could stretch for the right thing that might last us a while.

I’ll consider all the great points and recommendations you’ve made and have a check on DDs height and make a call once we’ve weighed it up.

Thank you again, super helpful!

If you have an early/small baby, then the Joie i-Spin is likely to be tricky to get a good fit and you might worry about their breathing. Avionaut seats (e.g. Cosmo or Pixel Pro) tend to be really really great for small babies because they have a special insert which works differently to normal car seat inserts and keeps them much flatter and more supported. I will add a picture of an average sized newborn baby (2 days old) in the Joie i-Spin and a picture of a very small baby in the Avionaut Pixel. I know the Avionaut baby was 2.5kg which is about 5lb 8oz. The straps look a bit strange, but notice that they are tight - and see the nice straight supported position of the baby (hopefully yours will also not be quite so tiny!) whereas the Joie i-Spin picture the baby is much more curled up and it looks like they have struggled to get the straps tight enough, because of the pads.

The Recaro seat wasn't that popular in the UK which is probably why it's now on clearance, so I am not sure what the fit is like for a smaller baby, but it would likely be more supportive than the Joie i-Spin. I have seen other Recaro seats have good fit for newborns.

I am normally more chilled about the Joie/spin seats from birth than most people but I do think you are likely to find it harder to get a good fit with a small baby - worth thinking about :) And if DD has lots of space left in it then it means you can just keep her in that seat until one of them is outgrown and then look at a HBB, and she (and baby!) will be that much older that the "pushed out of all my things" feeling should be passed by then.