Extended Rear Facing car seat help

[JustAMum35]

Hoping there are some people here who may be able to point me in the right direction:

DC is 4.5years, 111cm and 20.4kg.

Unfortunately the car seat we currently have has developed a fault and it appears it’s quite common in the seat we have (BR MaxSafePro) so I’d rather not get the same seat again.

Can anyone recommend the best ERF seats for higher centile children? I’ve been looking at the Axkid Minikid 4? Or BeSafe Stretch?

Will be moved frequently between vehicles - mainly Kia Sportages of various ages, but also occasionally a Golf, so ease of installation is also important 😊

Thanks for your reply!

Happily no one got hurt, there had been an accident already where we were rear ended so police and paramedics were already there and could defuse the situation and check on my daughter right away. We were stationary in a lane of traffic at the lights and the guy behind was probably too busy gawping at the 1st accident to stop in time. He was going too fast but had swerved his smaller car in an effort to avoid us and smacked into the opposite side from where my daughter was. So as far as accidents we were very lucky!

We have a Silver Cross 360 motion. We like it but I would ideally like to keep our daughter rear facing for a longer (the paramedic at the accident was really positive about the fact we have a rear facing) in the car seat manual it states rear facing for the seat should be until the child is 105cm which she is just a few cm short of (she's 4.5 years, 103cm and 15.6kg).

I was worried that the Axkid minikid didn't have enough legroom especially in comparison to the BeSafe Stretch so it's reassuring that you find it has lots and your DS finds it so comfy! With the BeSafe Stretch I am worried it will take up too much space in our car, with our current front passenger seat we've just enough legroom in our Karoq Skoda (compact medium SUV) to be comfortable, don't really want to have to use up more. Currently my daughter does like to sit crossed legged like a yoga guru in the seat so it would be nice if she could do that comfortably too.

How did you find fastening the seats belts on both the seats?

Oh that is lucky as far as accidents go @Tanuki88. Glad you’re all ok!

Do you mean belting them into the car? Or fastening the actual harness?

Belting them into the car is really easy 😊 slightly different technique with each but easy to get the hang of 😊 I preferred the harness on the Axkids. Felt easier to tighten and slacken off.

Bags of legroom in the Axkid. That’s the one worry we had before buying too! You’ll see in the pic where the red line is - there’s a black line on the base of the seat. You can install the seat further back on the car seat to give even more legroom. It can be installed right back until that black line is in line with the edge of the seat (green line!) and the rear of the base is overhanging the edge 😊

ours here is installed a couple of inches out from the back of the seat. DS is leggy and can get his legs down between his seat and the car seat if he doesn’t have shoes on. If we moved it back slightly he’d be able to comfortably rest his feet down infront of the seat. But he prefers sitting with his legs folded anyway 🤷🏻‍♀️😂
The wings of the seat at the sides of his legs are also pretty low so he can sit comfortably legs crossed 😊

Stretch was nice too but definitely a good bit bulkier!

The Stretch is definitely more space hungry.

With the Axkids you have a choice of fitting them closer to the back seat to give more space in the front, or further away to give more space for the child's legs. And no spacer (foam block) in the way like the Britax seats, so definitely the most flexible option.

I did mean the harness but knowing about belting into the car too is handy!

Thank you for the pic and the explanation about the amount of space you get with the Axkid minikid 4. It's exactly what I needed and had been trawling through the Internet for. The amount of videos and pics I've seen which haven't helped! I'm surprised I haven't been dreaming about car seats 😂.

It's good to know your kids likes to sit cross legged too and it's comfy!

I think I feel confident enough to place an order for the seat today. Thank you so much for taking the time to help and let me know what your experience has been like.

Just come across this thread while searching for info on the exact same seats for my 2.5 year old, thanks for sharing so much of your thinking about both. How have you been getting on with the Minikid 4 @JustAMum35 and @Tanuki88 ? I'm 90% sure I'll go that route too.

@raxel Ours is the Minikid 4 Max and we love it! Wish we’d give for one sooner ☺️ almost 5year old is super comfy in it, has plenty of space and still loads of growing room 🙂

@JustAMum35 glad you found your seat and are happy with it 😊 it’s such a relief when the search is over 😂

@raxel we ended up ordering both the Axkid Minikid 4 max and the BeSafe Stretch online and got to compare them. I thought we would end up choosing the Axkid but we actually found for our car that the BeSafe stretch actually fit better and took less space in our compact SUV. With the Axkid Minikid for the same amount of leg room that we had adjusted with the BeSafe it took more room in our car. We also found installing the BeSafe Stretch a lot easier and it was more stable than the Axkid once installed. With our car the Axkid partially hung off the seat when we adjusted it to have some legroom but it wasn't as stable as we would have liked. I know plenty of people online find the Axkid really easy to install.

My daughter seemed happy in both seats comfort wise when she tried them and she hasn't complained during longer car journeys with the BeSafe, she's fallen asleep comfortably with no awkward head tilt forward. It's also convenient to be able to change the position of the tilt when it's already installed.

We are happy with it so far and have no complaints! It's really solidly made and our daughter seems happy in it.

Feel free to ask any more questions. JustAMum35 was so helpful and I was so relieved to get it sorted in the end!

Thanks for sharing your experiences @JustAMum35 and @Tanuki88, it’s really interesting to hear how it worked out for you both. I guess ideally we would go somewhere we could try both seats out in our car and see which is the better fit, but we’re quite a long way from anywhere suitable. I still think the Axkid is likely to be a better fit in our car but it’s very useful to know that you found the opposite @Tanuki88, since everything else I’ve seen says the Stretch is great but space hungry.

Confused over here and wonder if someone can help... looking for an ERF car seat that is also Isofix. Seems like most ERFs are installed with seat belts is that right? Are there many that are Isofix? I (maybe wrongly?) just feel safer with Isofix than using the belt! If anyone has recommendations I'd be so grateful, googling makes my head spin!

The Axkid One is isofix but expensive. We have the BeSafe Stretch and it is belt fitted but easier than others I've used (the axkid move/minikid older style). Do you have anywhere you can go and try them?

Also maybe checkout the Axkid Spinkid and Avionaut Stardust, both relatively new.

The isofix points have a weight limit for the combined weight of seat and child, so at some point it becomes impossible to have an ERF that's isofix. The Axkid One goes further than most standard toddler seats, to 23kg. I'm not aware of any isofix seat with a higher limit. The Avionaut Stardust is 21kg, and the Spinkid is 18kg.

We have two Axkid Minikids, and I find them pretty straightforward to fit (and actually more solid-feeling once installed than isofix seats I've used). I agree it could be worth seeing if there's somewhere you can try them out and get a professional to walk you through the installation in your own car. I think most of the independent retailers than mainly sell the ERFs are happy to do this.

May I ask OP what the issue is with the BRMSP as we’ve 2 of them for our DD 💖

As other have said - it’s to do with the weight limit of the Isofix points 😊 You won’t get an Isofix seat that lasts as long

I was nervous about the seatbelt installation too as I’d never used that before but honestly, it’s so easy! Watch some YouTube videos of different installations and get an idea of how it’s done.
We can swap the Axkid Minikid 4 Max into a different car in about 3 minutes so it’s really straightforward once you know what you’re doing 😊

@Sub2Mumma We loved ours initially but the straps kept loosening off while our child was in the seat 😳
They’d be perfectly fine one minute then the next the straps would be all baggy and I’d be able to lift them a good 1-2 inches away from the body.
I initially thought it was our issue and that DC was just tense when being put into the seat and that as they relaxed the straps had more slack, but then it happened a couple of times mid journey.
We checked everything and couldn’t find a reason for it at all so BR agreed on a replacement one or a refund through our local retailer. I had completely lost faith in the seat by this point so we opted for a refund then paid the extra towards a different car seat.

There are a few, but as others have said, the problem is isofix has a total weight limitation (child + seat) so they tend to have slightly lower limits.

For the 125cm limit you have Axkid One3 or Joie i-Prodigi (or can order the Joie i-Soren seat, which is under £300, from carseat.se), which are 22.5 / 23kg limit and are rear facing only. The Joie models are more basic, while the Axkid has rails to slide it back and forth, which means you can create a lot of child leg space or balance this with front seat space and therefore it fits more easily into small cars. The Joie model can recline, but not slide back and forth. The Axkid is more compact on the tightest setting. All three are Swedish plus tested.

Or there are two spin models going up to 125cm rear facing - Avionaut Stardust or Besafe Beyond. The Besafe seat needs a separate base which makes it pretty expensive, the Stardust is a bit cheaper. I think these are 21/22kg limit.

Then there is also Tinyseats Two which is up to 125cm/23kg. This is actually designed as a travel seat so it folds up, but I've seen reviews saying it's sturdy enough to use as a main seat. I do think this seat has a fairly high chance of accidental misuse. Since the main safety benefit of isofix is in avoiding misuse, I would caution against this one if you re looking at isofix for the safety benefit.

A 21kg weight limit will get a 75th centile boy up to the age of about 5. So this is really not a prohibitively small limit unless you have a child who is right up on the highest centiles and even then, it is still going to get you to about three years old. If you have a child who is very big for their age, it is definitely worth investing in a 36kg ERF seat, even though they are belt fitted, but the vast majority of people will be fine with the limits on the isofix seats.

Plus of course there are plenty of isofix seats on the market offering ERF up to 105cm and 18-20kg, depending on the exact model. Sometimes people use ERF only to mean the 125cm limit seats, so I thought I'd mention these just in case.

In terms of safety the seats with tethers are arguably even more secure than isofix because they are attached to the car via 5 points (two sides of the seatbelt, the support leg, and the two tethers) whereas isofix only has three (two isofix points, support leg) but there is the risk of accidental misuse when installing these seats. However, if you found an ERF specialist near you in person, they will normally be more than happy to install the seat for you and/or go through it with you in as much detail as you need to be confident fitting it yourself.

Wow thanks everyone for your help. I'm quite new here and so grateful! @BertieBotts that is some amazing info, I will dig into all of those and have a proper look. Our DS will be 5 in December and is 106cm and 16.5kg so looking for one that goes up to roughly age 7. Maybe shooting for the moon here but I'm also hoping to find one that's flame retardant free, and I think from looking at some other threads you know about this too @BertieBotts? I don't think an ERF exists that is Isofix and FR free though?! Maybe will look into Britax Romer belted ERFs too as I think their whole range is now FR and PFAS free 🤔
Thanks for your help!

I don't know a huge amount about it, but I have gone down a rabbithole about this before - as I understood it, it's mainly infant carriers which tend to have flame retardants in, because under UK law they come under the furniture & furnishings law as they can be used on a pram and a pram is classed as furniture because a baby might sleep in it. (The whole law is rather old fashioned).

I don't think that seats which stay in the car tend to have this, but if worried, the seats shipped from carseat.se might be a better bet, because they will be the EU versions rather than the UK market versions. The car seat regulation is the same, which means they can be used in the UK legally, but the fabrics are sometimes different, particularly on infant carriers.

The other thing you could look at is whether the seat has been tested by ADAC which is a German organisation who sell their results to Which? etc - you can look them up directly on the ADAC website. Their test for what they consider harmful chemicals is "Schadstoffe" and it's a pretty strict test. I don't know what exactly is tested for but PFAS are mentioned on one of the articles. This is their own description of the test (google translated)

All parts with which the child comes into contact (cover) are tested for harmful substances . Based on the GS test, the "REACH" directive, and Ökotex 100, the content of PAHs, phthalates, flame retardants, phenolic compounds, organotin compounds, AZO dyes, and heavy metals is tested and evaluated.
In addition, since 2025, the seat upholstery fabrics have also been tested for their content of environmental pollutants (PFAS) according to the hydrolysis method specified in the draft standard DIN EN 17681-1:2023-12.

Axkid One gets a perfect score on this. It's an older version than the current one, though, and was before the 2025 change.

Besafe Beyond does as well, and was tested in 2025 so the most up to date version of the test.

There have been 4 belt-fitted ERF seats tested by ADAC which are still on sale. (Axkid Minikid 3 and 4 are basically the same seat, I can't remember what changed, not the covers though.)

Besafe Stretch - perfect
Axkid Minikid 3 - "good" (not perfect score but not too many)
Britax Safe Way M - perfect
Avionaut Sky 2.0 - this didn't do v well on the Schadstoffe test.

All of those were before 2025.

Joie don't have an ADAC test on the i-Prodigi or the i-Soren, but their other seats all to get good or perfect results on the Schadstoffe portion of the test, though I also have a feeling that they use different versions in the UK and I got the impression from someone I worked with in a baby store that this was to do with flame retardants used in the UK versions, but there is also a high chance that I completely misunderstood this, or it only referred to the baby seats or something like that. It was also 5 years ago so could be outdated now.

One Graco seat failed the test purely on Schadstoffe in 2023, that was the Snuglite which is an infant carrier seat. (Graco and Joie are the same manufacturer).

A Besafe seat up to 105cm also failed this in 2023.

Because this is an issue which is getting more publicity you might find info on the manufacturers' websites, too. And I have heard Axkid are very responsive if you email them, I don't know about the others. It's certainly a popular topic in Germany, so possibly the German language versions of the websites might have info if the English language versions don't.