Cheape rear facing car seat or more expensive high backed booster

[IDontLikeMondays88]

My little boy is 5 and a half and still rear faces.

He’s currently in a Britax Romer Max Safe Pro. It’s one of the cheaper extended rear facing options and I don’t like the seat. It’s installed using seat belts and generally just a bit difficult to install. The lower tethers I can’t get right. The shoulder straps are also exceptionally difficult to adjust.

he can stay in this seat till about 7.

however I was thinking about changing now to a Be safe high backed booster as I just don’t think the seat is great and feel there is an element of variability as to whether it’s installed correctly. One of the lower tethers is just never taught for a start.

any views on whether it’s better to be in a cheaper rear facing seat or a more expensive high backed booster? It’s the element of not being completely sure it’s installed right that is putting me off the Britax. I don’t want to spend £££ on another rear facing seat that he might only use for a year and a half more

I don’t think cost necessarily comes into it.

I think a correctly installed ERF seat is always going to be safer then a HBB regardless of cost, although it’s probably very small margins by the time they are 5.5…

A HBB is probably going to be safer than an incorrectly installed ERF, although that depends how badly you are using it.

So I’d say, if you want the safest option that doesn’t involve buying a different ERF seat, you should learn how to use your current ERF seat properly. If that’s not possible and you are concerned you are not using it properly to the extent safety might be compromised, i’d look at switching to a HBB

one of the lower tethers is just always slack and I can’t seem to do anything to change that.

the shoulder straps will adjust but with great difficulty

At 5 he will be perfectly fine in a high back booster. The Besafe ones tend to do very well for safety as well.

There is much more margin for error with rear facing seats - small errors in fitment are less catastrophic than a similar error would be in a forward facing seat, particularly forward facing harnessed seats (HBBs are less prone to error). The tethers are essentially for anti-rebound protection and stability, and you can get away with less well fitted straps as long as they're not so loose the child would be ejected. I think the stability is probably the main issue where it could cause less safety in the seat because you want stability for side impacts. The Besafe HBB is especially good for side impacts apparently because something in the base of it turns the child away from the side of impact (I have no idea if this works IRL or is a gimmick).

If you could get the Britax seat installed more securely would you prefer it? Their customer service tends to be good, if you can't ask the retailer you bought it from. It might be worth a try before you ditch it.

OTOH I tend to think with ERF it's a case of doing this as long as it's working for everyone, and the bar for what counts as "working" exists on a sort of sliding scale where at e.g. age 1, it's worth almost any inconvenience to keep RF them, but as they get older it makes sense to factor in other aspects such as cost, convenience, practicality and even preference, and by 5 you're well into the territory where it makes sense to swap even if it's just slightly annoying to RF.

I would definitely speak to your retailer about the Britax seat - we have this one and the tethers are self adjusting so never slack, and the shoulder straps adjust fine. I wonder whether yours is faulty? I’d ask for some advise on fitting anyway but if it’s under warranty you might be able to get a replacement. Having said that, assuming he is an averagely sized 5 year old, he would be fine in a HBB.