Car seat recommendations

[Grumpet]

Hello,

It's time for my to upgrade my kids car seats. My partners car doesn't have Isofix but mine does, they would need to be used in both cars.

I'm looking at the Maxi-cosi rodifix S Comfort i Size and the Cybex Solution i Fix.
These caught my eye as they recline and are supposedly very comfortable ( we will be doing long drives).

Has anyone got experience with them? Other seats similar price range you'd recommend?

Thanks in advance!

In general you don't want to use a recline on high back booster seats, as it encourages slouching and sometimes gives a bad position for the seatbelt. If you expect they will be slept in, it's usually better to go for something which has a well designed headrest that supports the child in a sitting up position. Sometimes this is done by giving the headrest a bit of a "V" shape but TBH it mainly is dependent on how the seat interacts with your car.

The best thing to do really is take at least one of the cars, ideally both, to somewhere you can try seats in the car. For example, a reasonably large store such as John Lewis or if you can find one of the warehouse type places out of town, or a local independent specialist - then you can play around with different models, see how they fit with the back seats - you're looking at access to the seatbelt buckle when the booster is secured with isofix, but also whether you need to remove the headrest on the backseat - sometimes this can also be reversed and put in backwards so it is still providing support for the booster seat but not jutting out pushing it forwards.

In case you did want to try out a recline, it's a good idea to get the child to sit in the seat in your car and try what the recline setting looks like. They need to get a good fit with the lap belt across their pelvis or tops of thighs for it to be a good position. Up on their tummy is no good.

With any high back booster that has isofix, the isofix is generally optional to use so would be no issue to use them in the other car, but you might want to look at how it works to hide the isofix away. Some more expensive seats have a system where you pull it in and out using a lever, whereas a more basic system is for it just to pivot around so it can either face into the seat or face out to clip into the car. If it's too fiddly to swap between isofix vs none, then it might be annoying. It can also make the seat cheaper and lighter to just skip the isofix fitting and choose one without. It's no less safe but it does make the seat more likely to move around as the child gets in.

It might be worth looking at Joie i-Traver too as that has a good comfort to price ratio.

Sorry, I managed to totally miss out the important part: Both the seats you've suggested are also good

Wow thank you for giving me such an in depth reply.
I've just found the kinderkraft unity 2 which has the benefit of folding, but I'm not convinced it is as comfortable as the others. Do you know anything about it?
The Joie I Traver looks great but is unfortunately out of my budget.
We live in France and I can't think of anywhere that would let us try out seats unfortunately.