to quinny or not to quinny

[wonderif]

3rd baby have liked these for ages

r they a waste of money or handy?

I had one of the original three wheel quinny's and loved it. Then tried the Quinny buzz and found it flimsy and dreadful off road. I guess it depends what you will use it for mainly. I have a mountain buggy which I love, it is easy to steer and not as wide as the Quinny which I found did not always fit through shop doorways!!

i will prob do a lot of walking but i am looking for something quick that i can put up, as i have 2 seperate school runs in a day to do so would need somethign handy for getting out of car also.

I have the buzz, bought it for DS2 a few years ago.

Pro's

Like the travel system aspect, just clicking the car seat on the base.

The gas spring thingy quite handy, it puts itself up!

Handle adjustable,good for tall mummies/DH

But, thats about it!

Con's

Frame very heavy and wide,check boot space

Does'nt collapse with pram inplace,has to be seperated

Very unstable going down curbs (three wheel version)

You can't hang shopping bags off the handle, and the basket you buy seperately is not that big.

Saying that, if you do a lot of walking, not off road though as greenbeanie said its rubbish, it may suit you, I switched to a lightweight umberella one so did not use it as much to justify the price!

DH was not a happy bunny , but I did keep it and will probably use it more for DC3 due next week! As I no longer work,and live in a differnt area closer to shops etc so will be walking more!

And they do look pretty cool!

my quinny zapp is in the attic

too heavy
pushchair does not recline, so if they sleep they look soooo uncomfortable
too bloody heavy!
no way to carry shopping
cant put things on the handle

It was OK when I used the car seat on the frame. but thats only 10 months (ish)

and its like bloody scaffolding, had to carry it over a railway bridge one day and nearly died!

I have quinny buzz and loved it! DD now 3 and doesn't use push chair at all but will use it for DC2 (expected soon). Loved gas sprung mechanism (so easy for one handed put up, esp in rain) and easy to fold down. Adjustable height handle great for DH and car-seat system v. handy. Also one-handed steering and being able to have DC forward or backward facing or reclined. I did not find it unstable at all, although, like others say, you can't really hang stuff of the handle. Shopping bag is pretty small. Was great for general walking. Never occurred to me to try taking it significantly off-road, but was fine for gravel etc. Main down side for me is the weight - for lifting it in and out of car-boot. Also, not a very practical holiday pushchair for that reason.

I have just 5 prams now and two of them are Zapp's. I have never had a Buzz though. I don't know why you think it is heavy porcamiseria, I don't think it is, but I do think it is rickety. Way too rickety.

I use it for chucking the car seat on to when I pick up the older two from school. I have a small car, which has a full boot of my work stuff and 3 car seats, so the zapp fits in the back footwell, thats it's main selling point really. If it reclined, it would be fab!

I have the buzz.

It is heavy and massive when folded down. It's awkward around town because of the width, but not impossible. It's a PITA not to be able to hang bags on the handle but I do like the adjustable handle height. Don't bother with the dreami carry cot - biggest waste of £200 I ever spent. The pram seat itself reclines to an acceptable degree for a new born, and besides, I mostly just used the frame with the maxi cosi car seat when she wad tiny.

I love the fact that it can be forward or backward facing. Dd looks really comfortable in it. I like the big back wheels because it makes getting up or down steps a doddle (something I find impossible with my lightweight tiny wheel buggy). I loved using the frame / carseat combo when she was tiny. We find it pretty good off road with decent enough suspension to keep dd comfortable on rough ground.

If you have a big boot and you do a lot of walking, go for it. But be prepared to end up also owning a lightweight umbrella fold for town trips!

i am quinnying for the first time ds due in july...i have a mini cooper s with a ridiculously small boot and the frame fits in there fine so cant be that big...i really love them, some of my friends have got them and they love them and say they are really easy to use. i think they look fab too and really comfortable...good luck deciding xx

I've got a quiny zapp, I bought it 10 months ago and mine definitely feels light (it's 8kgs I think which is the weight of my 1-mo dd.). (mc larens are lighter though, 5kgs some of them).
the maxi cosi car seat fits on it and then it has a nice material seat to replace it, raincover as well.
You can buy a shopping basket for it (£20 on Kiddicare) but it is very small. Its enough for going to the park and putting a change of clothes, wipes, nappies, camera, bottle of milk & a bottle of water in it but you wouldn't fit your changing bag (any changing bag).
And it does not recline, dd has slept in it but yeah, it doesn't look comfy.

I was going to sell it and get a maclaren but changed my mind when I found out about the shopping basket. You cannot put anything on the handles, mine tipped over.

a friend of mine has the maclaren techo xt which reclines. She's really happy with it and it's lighter than the zapp. I've tried them in the shop, they don't fold as small BUT they're not much bigger and I think it is worth it because of the basket which is bigger and she always puts her bag around th ehandles. (I have seen it tip over but that was because the baby was not in the seat, when the zap tipped with me, the baby WAS in the seat, very scary.)
I think the only thing with this one is that the baby always faces out which is a bit of a shame when they're little (

Don't buy the Quinny Buzz, it's a PITA.

It's as wide as a double pushchair, it only just fit in our boot (VW Golf, so not small!) it's really really difficult to click the maxi-cosi car seat on to. It's a pig to fold, it doesn't steer well on shiny floor surfaces (wouldn't corner at all in waitrose) and the shopping basket (which doesn't come with it and costs about £15) is shit, really tiny and totally useless.

In it's defence it was very handy when DS was tiny and in the carrycot, but as soon as he outgrew that at 4mo, and we started using the seat part, it was an unwieldy, hard to steer piece of crap. The centre of gravity is far to far forward with the seat unit on, and most of the weight is centered over the shitty front wheel.

No point buying anything with air tires if the front one(s) are solid.

(sorry for the rant - I HATE my buzz)

Quinnys do tend to bring out the love and hate in people I have a question for those writing in about the Quinny Buzz -- are you talking about the 3-wheeler or the 4-wheeler version?

We've bought the Quinny Buzz 3 for our first (due in late June), because we wanted something robust that handled well. We don't have a car, so it will stay assembled most of the time (and we live somewhere devoid of hills!), so issues with weight will be less important. And we asked lots of random strangers on the street with Quinnys whether they liked them, and whether they would recommend them -- and all of them universally said they loved them.

Of course, when the time comes, we may hate it, but we did think about it quite hard and test our options quite a bit, and we think we've made a good choice.

OP, some people totally love Quinnys and other people absolutely loathe them -- I think you're probably going to have to think about how you will be using your pushchair, and go and try lots of different makes.

beanlet - mine was the 3 wheel version, I can see that the 4-wheel would be much easier to handle.

Mine was the three wheel version as well, my friend got the four wheel version and loves it!

We also had the harness problem with ours (would not fasten as not long enough)and had to get extentions from dorel, it then turned out that we needed a whole new seat cover as the original was not big enough, I think now the larger seat comes in addition to the original one?!

But it was suggested that this was the reason for it being unstable, as someone else mentioned the weight being distributed seemed odd? Was better when we replaced the seat with the larger one as it was deeper and ds2 seemed to fit better in it!

And we have a vauxhall astra new version and have to take a wheel off to get the frame in, also a pain as you take the pram off and have to put it on the floor while you collapse the frame to get that in the boot first then likewise when you come to get it out! Not ideal in bad weather!

Meant to say the seat problem was when he got older about 12 months I think!