Which infant car seat is one of the safest?

[preggyo]

It’s a minefield and want to get it right.

Looking for an infant carrier and possibly the next stage up, ERF seat (so we don’t have that cost when on maternity leave).

We can’t make sense of the websites as some of them say conflicting things

Which have you gone for?

@preggyo if you are close to the area look at the slate barn Wallingford Oxford they have a good selection of car seats and buggies that’s where we got ours from for our twins we got the spin i360

Which? Magazine have new car seat recommendations for 2024. Their top 3 are:

Baby & newborn
Silver Cross Dream + Dream I-size base
Bugaboo Turtle Air + Turtle Air Isofix wingbase
Cybex Aton5 (belted or can be used with Aton 2 or Aton 2-fix base)

ERF
Joie i-Spin Safe (this seat has also passed the more stringent Swedish Plus Test)
Joie i-Spin 360 i-Size
Besafe iZi Kid X3 i-size

Swedish tested are the best

We have an Axkid Move, that's the best we could afford

When I was researching which car seat to get I learnt more than I ever imagined I would about car seats. It was very boring but satisfying to know my DD is safe.

Swedish tested are best. There is a really good car seat group on Facebook called car seat safety which might be worth a look at. There’s a few Karen’s on there but the admin are knowledgeable and helpful x

Which? Do not base their recommendations on safest.

@preggyo you could join the Facebook group UK car seat safety but it's verryyy full on and can be confusing.

In short, infant carriers are mostly pretty safe as long as they are reputable brands, the cheapest of which is Joie. Avoid Mothercare, Halfords etc as they do not manufacture their own seats
That group recommends the avionaut pixel pro most as an infant/newborn seat.

For next stage ERF seats, that group recommends besafe, britax, avionaut and axkid seats.

Which? do base their recommendations mainly on safety, derived from their own crash tests, which are more stringent than the British Standard tests. They also take into account ease of installation (because it’s not safe if not installed properly) and whether the child is positioned correctly, which also affects safety.
The scores are weighted Safety 60%, Ease of use 30%, Ergonomic assessment 10%

The maxicosi cabriofix is a safe, affordable infant carrier.
With regards to the next stage seat, I would just try and put the money to one side and see what centile your LO falls into as they approach that stage. The Joie erf seats are a good budget option but will only last until a safe high-back booster age for lower centile children. There are more expensive options that would suit higher (and lower) centile children but you may not need to spend that much.

The BeSafe Stretch B is suitable from birth till approx 7 years and Swedish plus tested. it cannot be taken out of the car like a standard infant carrier though.

Something to consider is that if you get a spin seat / suitable to 18kg, then if you want to continue rear facing you need to buy an additional seat to get them up to 25/36kg rear facing. so I'd either go all in one (Axkid One+ or besafe stretch B) or infant carrier then 25 or 36kg ERF seat. Apparently the ideal is to rear face them until they are big enough to go into a high back booster and avoid forward facing in a harness at all.

avionaut pixel Pro as op mentioned is a good infant carrier.

May be worth while posting this in car seats section, there are some very knowledgable folks there! But for my bit:

Infant carriers - all the well known brands like maxi cosy, cybex etc will be very safe.
From personal preference I'd go for one of the ones you can get to recline a bit more, we have a cybex Aton 5 and get some head flop in the car sometimes - I don't love it :(

For the next seat continuing to rear face as long as possible is safest, most isofix seats and certainly all the spin ones will only go to around 105cm/18kg. On average this will last until about 4, but a high centile child may outgrow by 3 or 3.5 like mine just has unfortunately! So we have moved them into an extended rear facing 25kg seat (axkid minikid) which will do her another couple of years before she moves into a booster seat. This is belted in and needs tethers, it doesn't use isofix.
If you have a very high centile child (or expect to) then there are 36kg seats available as well.

You can get seats from birth to 25kg, personally I like being able to remove the infant carrier from the car and bringing it in the house or popping on the buggy so would prefer to have the 2 seats.

I got a great deal on my axkid in the Black Friday sales (axkid move for grandparents car for £170) it sounds like your baby isn't born yet so if you could hold off until then you might get a better deal.

It’s horrific isn’t it!

Having had my own headache over this my tips are:

for newborn look for group 0 (safest)

lie flat and rear facing is considered safest and better for baby (although if you won’t be doing long journeys you don’t need to worry too much if it doesn’t lie flat)

there are two regulations at the moment ECE R129 iSize is the newer one (I looked for ones that met this one in case I have another)

make sure that the car seat fits and is safe for your car - see https://incarsafetycentre.co.uk/safety-centre/car-seat-compatibility-fitting-lists

you’ll have to translate it to English via your browser but all the safety test ratings can be found here https://www.adac.de/rund-ums-fahrzeug/ausstattung-technik-zubehoer/kindersitze/kindersitztest/

Extra things to consider:

not major but car carriers / seats can be used with travel systems. A lot of travel systems have adapters you can use with certain car carriers or seats.

weight - how heavy is it - could you manage with baby in it?

can you swivel it in place for easy onboarding / off boarding (not essential but may make your life easier)

I also looked at sites like madeformums.com to checkout reviews for carriers.

hope some of that helps. Good luck!

For a newborn I would get an infant carrier rather than a seat that goes all the way up to age 4 or 6/7 at this point.

If you will be doing long journeys, weigh up the pros and cons of a lie flat seat. I do a lot of long journeys and would have struggled to restrict our driving stints to a safe timeframe for a newborn in a standard carseat so I opted for a lie-flat carrier (I won't recommend our specific one as there have been vast improvements in other brands in the last few years) where DD could travel safely for longer journeys and the only reason I would have to stop was to feed her.

also note that a lie flat seat may not be safer in the event of an accident. I'm sure I saw a new release a few days ago where the seat is fairly flat but if there is an impact it goes more upright automatically. can't remember the brand tho, maybe britax?

Axkid seats are brilliant and some of them are from birth. They are Swedish plus tested (the highest level of safety testing) and ERF till around age 6. We have one and it's absolutely great.

They don't come out and click into a travel system but we never ever used that feature on the seat we had at the time as DS just woke up as soon as we opened his door anyway 😂