Car Seats for 4-11 year olds

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Can anyone help? We've been trying to decipher exactly what is the best car seat for our rapidly growing 3.5 year old. We like the Graco Rally Sport, it reclines and has the handy cup holders. Which? seem to rate Britax very highly but some of these lack arm rests, reclinability and cup holders, although safety is good. Graco Junior had a bad safety report on Which? yet is a favourite of Mumsnetters. It seems the most attractive seats are not the safest and vice versa.

Does anyone have good advice?

Britax evolva 2/3 has a cup holder if that is what floats your boat.

Your son can stay in his current seat until the top of his ears are above the top of it anyway.

Personally I choose safety over attractiveness and funky features.

always safety first.

we have jane ones, not overly impressed, will be changing them to britax 2,3's once dd3 has outgrown her eclipse.

maxi cosi rodi is one of the safest you can buy

also britax highliner (which has cup holders) and britax evlova 2/3 (almost same seat) do well and a concord lift or something ivenever seen or herd of!

Go for one of those and the childrne will be safe and that is what ultimately matters

Or britax kid does well too

The which report recommends the top ten for satefy, mainly the maxi cosi rodi, britax and concord - go for safety very time over gimmicks - cup holder is handy but being as safe as possible in a crash takes priority.

I bought the maxi cosi a couple of weeks ago and its great, came 2nd in the safety tests - easy to instal, does have a recline feature and comes in lots of colours. You can buy a cup holder as an extra if thats important to you.

We have two Britax HiLiner seats in our car. They are almost always on special offer in places like Halfords, and have performed well in previous Which reports. However, these do not seperate, so can make travelling with them, outside of a car, a real pain - as we realised when we wanted to take a seat on holiday via traina nd plane.

We also have the Jane isofix seat. However this did not perform as well as we would have hoped in the Which report when tested, and it was much dearer. Also one of them broke in a taxi recently, so not great. But, this seat does separate, so it was the seat we did take on holiday with us (see above) as we could transport it easier.

Have to say that we have never used the cup hlders on DD's seats, despite long journeys.

i agree forget the flipping cup holders- if its not safe in a crash what good is having somewhere for a cup of juice?

maxi-cosi rodi, britax evolva 2-3, silver cross navigator etc and the ones to look at.

Graco are good at baby seats and travel systems but they should leave it at that!