safe spare car seat

[Camelia22]

Hi
Can anyone recommend a good 2nd lightweight car seat from 18 months onwards. I would like isofix and also now there is i-size safety I have just read about. I find it all a bit confusing as grandparents. Just need a solid spare car seat. Thanks

it isn’t isofix (the weight limit is quite low) but one that will last until a good age whilst rear facing would be the Graco Slimfit

Don't stress about i-size - basically this just means two things. One is that it conforms to the latest safety standard, which almost all car seats on the market do now anyway. The other means that if you remember, you used to have to consult a fit list for compatibility between the car and seat - in theory, i-size means you no longer need to do this because it's "universal" as long as you have an i-size seating position in your car, which have been standard since ~2013.

Unfortunately what you do find is that isofix seats are not lightweight. The more lightweight seats tend to be seatbelt fitted.

One other thing which has changed since you might have previously used car seats is that parents are now advised to keep children rear facing longer. That's possible to do in most car seats on the market now. You might want to check with your DC what they prefer for DGC, though.

Personally I'd probably recommend either Graco Turn2Me i-size (£110 here: https://www.thenurserystore.com/p/turn2me-i-size-r129-360-rotating-isofix-car-seat-navy) it's not light, but it is isofix and easy to use, goes both rear facing and forward facing and spins to the side to help get the child in/out.

Or Graco Slimfit R129 is another good option, £120 at Argos or amazon. That one is more lightweight but no isofix - just seatbelt fitting. This one transforms into a high back booster seat to use after the child outgrows the 5-point harness stage.

Or Graco Extend LX R129 which is on amazon for £75 - again seatbelt fitted, and much lighter, though doesn't convert to high back booster.

The R129 seats are not "i-size" but they do have the newer safety regulation, so the only safety benefit missing is that isofix tends to reduce the chance of errors when fitting the seat.

Thank you so much both of you, that has helped alot. Things have changed in the last 6 years since I had to get car seats for the grandchildren. Sounds like it is recommended rear facing until the age of 4, that might be awkward sometimes if the child has long legs and they reach the back of the seat

Yes, rear facing until 4 is recommended but most people forward face from far younger. Having a child rear facing so that you can't see them or easily interact with them makes it far more likely that you are distracted by an unhappy child when driving. A distracted driver is more of a danger than a forward facing child.

I thought the recommendation for rear facing was based on height not age? My mother in law has just got the Joie i-Spin 260 Max for our nearly 2 year old. It seemed to be the only one that could be rear facing, isofix, and had passed highest safety standard. Was £200 but it'll last til my daughter doesn't need a seat anymore. Spinning feature also helps massively with wrestling a reluctant toddler in...

The recommendation is just to keep them RF as long as possible really, with the absolute minimum for FF these days being 15 months. It's more to differentiate between what it used to be a generation ago which was rear facing is only for the baby seat, whereas today most of the second stage "toddler" seats can rear face up to approx age 4, obviously size is dependent on the child similar to clothing sizes. (Many can also FF from 15 months - more people are turning at around 2-3 years these days) But I can see you are already up to date OP

The Graco spin seat, which is a clone of the popular Joie Spin 360, doesn't have much leg room rear facing. You can use it up to 4 - many children will happily lay their legs over the sides or rest them on the back seat (this is perfectly safe) but we found we had to remove DC's shoes for comfort rear facing after about age 2.

Joie i-Pivot is not much more expensive and does have slightly better leg room. I think the Graco Slimfit is also OK for leg room, not fantastic but not awful. That one doesn't have a forward facing mode with 5 point harness at all, the only forward facing is the high back booster mode using adult seatbelt. Some people are opting to skip the forward facing with 5-point harness stage entirely, indeed this is where the "up to age 4" recommendation comes from, because 4 is the minimum recommended age for moving to a seat which uses the adult seatbelt (high back booster).

If you did want a seat which will guaranteed get you to age 4 RF and has better leg room, the Swedish type seats are worth looking at as they go up to 125cm which is around 7 years for an average sized child so they have plenty of leg room for younger children as they can accommodate a (tall, Swedish!) 7yo's long legs. However these have a much higher price tag, and you often have to either buy online or visit a specialist - the cheapest one is usually Britax Safeway M when it goes on offer (but it's still £200) or the easiest to use/most lightweight is Axkid Core, or Avionaut Stardust if you did want a spinning/isofix one. (Both of these are £349 though). If you look on Axkid's website they only make rear facing seats, so their stockists are often carriers of the other ERF seats as well. I don't tend to think of these as candidates for "spare" seats because of the price, but just to cover all bases!

I've attached a picture someone shared with me years ago and gave me permission to use although I've since blocked out the children's faces. The little girl closer to the camera (approx age 3-4) is in a seat similar to Graco Slimfit, and the boy further away (approx age 5-6) is in an Axkid seat. This shows how the leg room works in those different kinds of seats. Young children usually find it comfortable to sit with legs crossed. Lastly in the blue seat which is like the Graco Turn2Me is DS2 at age 2.5 and then at age 5! He was slightly over the weight limit then and it was not his usual seat but I just wanted to try him for a picture to see if he still fit, and he did.