Since C is a heavyweight and he's tall, I'm thinking we'll need one of these sooner than I'd like. But I have no idea where to even begin looking.
I know most (ok quite a few) people go with the Britax. And I've heard the Evenflo Triumph is good.
BUT I'm having a hard time explaining to J why you pick one car seat over another. With the infant one it seemed like there were two obvious choices - Chicco Keyfit & Graco Snugride. We went with the Chicco because of the latch system it has and how easy it is to remove the base.
So, tell me what you have and what I should look for when picking out a car seat.
Re: Convertible Car Seats- what do you have?
This.
Ditto. We also have the Evenflo Symphony. We use it as our main carseat. In December I bought the Recaro Signo because it was on sale for a great deal. We use it when we are using a different vehicle, other than mine. I got tired of taking out the car seat from my car for us to ride in DH's truck or with someone else.
I like both car seats equally, except I don't think the Recaro turns into a booster like the Symphony does.
We have and Evenflo Triumph Advance and an Evenflo Titan. The Triumph is definitely huge, but G is much more comfortable in it. It's too big to fit in our Jeep (lengthwise when it was RF), so we bought the Titan for DH's car.
I have a chunker of a kid and he was definitely more comfortable in the Triumph. It's a nice seat, cushy and wide enough that he's not squished.
We have the Marathon, and I admit I didn't do a lot of research at the time. It just seemed like the thing to get. I do think I could have gotten something better or equally as good had I spent more time. It just happened to be Britax sale time when I bought it.
However I just bought a second one just for travel because the Marathon is heavy, may not fit into all airline seats, and so we don't have to uninstall/reinstall at the airport. I got a pink flowery cosco scenera for $40 at overstock.com. I bought an evenflo Titan sporta for my parents and we borrow one from my SIL when we visit my FIL, but we travel enough to other places to make it worth it.
We have the Evenflo Triumph Advance, it's what DD has used the longest. She still fits in it RFing, though she's approaching the weight limit, she fits by height, and she's tall for her age. We will move DS into this when he can sit up. I love the infinitely adjustable straps - especially when they're little and growing so fast.
I wanted a seat that will keep her RFing longer so I got a Sunshine Radian 65. It works well and she seems comfy (and she would tell me if she wasn't). The only thing is that it takes up a LOT of room RFing. A lot.
We also have 2 cosco sceneras (one for DH's car or friends' cars, one in grandpa's truck). They are recommended on car-seat.org, but to me it's not enough padding for an everyday seat. But for a second car, grandparents car or for travel they're great.
And the best car seat is the one that fits well in your car and is easy for you to use. I also visit car-seat.org when I have a question, it's a great site.
we have 2 sunshine radians as well. they have great safety ratings, which is 1st and foremost but we switched to them from Britax because of their slim profile. with the sunshine we can still squeeze someone in the back seat between 2 kids if we need to.
in DH's car we have a britax marathon. before we had mathis, we had a britax decathalon in my car. safety was always 1st and foremost when we were seat shopping. once we decided what our options were based on safety ratings, we did look at things like color choices.
a lot of people mentioned ease of installation. that wasn't a huge factor for us. as long as they have the latch system, they all install in a few simple steps. for us, once they were in, they were in so ease was only going to benefit us once.
BFP with no treatment!
Car seat buying is very overwhelming! Honestly, you can't go wrong with any of the above, so don't stress too much about it. We went to USA Baby (or Baby's 1st) and just looked and felt all of them and decided from there. It was between the Marathon and Signo, I think. We just picked the Signo - no real reason why besides that we liked the feel of it more.
Therefore, we have a Recaro Signo. We like it a lot. We also bought a Combi Coccoro b/c it is supposed to fit smaller cars (but doesn't last you as long weight and height wise) b/c we had my 2 door coupe to try to fit it into. Unfortunately, b/c of the bucket seats in the back, it was very difficult to get to install RFing, so we just moved it into DH's car (VW Jetta Wagon), and I got the Signo - which fit, it was just huge and the front passenger would be squished.. (We just traded my coupe in for a Honda Pilot, so the Signo fits fine back there, now). We went ahead and kept the Coccoro b/c it is SO much lighter in weight than the other seats (like by half), and we knew that we would have some travelling to do in the next year, and didn't want to have to lug our Signo around the airport and rental cars, etc.
Here are some more recs that I have saved to confuse you even more
)
https://community.thebump.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/26946843.aspx
https://community.thenest.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/23811851.aspx?MsdVisit=1
https://community.thebump.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/8329513.aspx
This has some recommended car seats for certain cars -but I think it's just based on people's opinions - not sure how "scientific" it is.
https://carseatdata.org/
Also, my car website has a car seat sheet that lists what fits best into the car, etc. You may want to do a search for your particular car and see what you find. One might be easier to install than another.