Babies: 6 - 9 Months
amanda_wahl
member
Diono carseat?
amanda_wahl
member
Does anyone have any experience with this seat or plan on buying this? Thought we were going to get britax and now I found this so I'm confused again! Ha! Big purchase want to make decision!
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Re: Diono carseat?
I just got this seat for my 3 1/2 year old because she outgrew the weight limit for the 5 point harness for her other seat. I spent hours and hours trying to figure out which seat to get her.
So, for us, what it came down to was:
Pros: We have a Dodge Dakota (mid-sized pick-up truck) and I frequently need to have 3 carseats. This seat is narrow enough that the other two seats fit as well. The weight limit could accommodate a giant. I could turn my 3 1/2 year old to rearfacing again-but only for 1/2 a pound! She is almost 40#. She can have the 5 point harness until she is 65#, I think. Then, she can use it as a booster until she is 35 years old or so...
The LATCH system can be used until she outgrows the seat. (Did you know that seats and vehicles often have weight limits for the LATCH systems? I did not know that until a few days ago.)
DD is really comfortable in it and has some decent leg room. That doesn't, however, stop her from kicking my seat. Little stinker.
It got great reviews from almost everyone I've talked to about it.
Cons: It weighs a zillion pounds. Or, 30#. It is heavy and kind of challenging to switch from one car to another.
Some people have had a hard time installing it into their car. We didn't have a problem.
I could imagine that it would take up a lot of space rear-facing...This isn't a concern for us, however, as we already have another rear-facing seat for DD2 that I am happy enough with.
Overall: We LOVE it and it is great for us. We got ours off of Amazon...it was on sale, they shipped to our PO Box and I'm really happy with it. So is DD.
I also really looked into the Britax seats, but ultimately decided on this one because I needed the narrowness to fit three seats in my truck.
This is not completely true. Since the Radian is so tall, it ends up requiring a lot of room for RFing and subsequently takes up the leg room of anybody sitting in the seat in front of the carseat. We get around this by placing our Radian in the middle seat, so it doesn't really affect either of the front seats. Diono also sells an "angle adjuster" which is a piece of hard foam that you can put under the carseat to reduce how much the carseat is reclined. This in turn creates more room between the back of the carseat and the back of the seat in front of it. The angle adjuster is only recommended for use after 1yr of age. Like I mentioned above, we put the Radian RFing in the middle seat (w/ out the adjuster), and it works just fine.
I do agree that it is very heavy, but overall we are satisfied with ours. IMO, if you or your DH are very tall and have tall babies, then I would choose the Radian over the Britax. We love Britax, but the shells on their convertible seats are kind of short and we are tall people.
I agree with PP, we put our radian in the center seat of our ford taurus and it fits great. We don't have to move either seat forward. The angle adjuster is meant for children over 1 year old.
We chose this one over the Britax because it allows to RF longer (as the shell is longer) and I plan on RF him as long as I possibly can
We are really happy with our purchase! Most importantly LO loves his new seat and we feel that he is safe.
Check Amazon, we ordered ours right after thanksgiving and got it for almost $100 less than it was listed for at BRU.
Just bought the R120 last month. Overall I like this carseat and I'm glad I bought it. I also bought the maxi-Cosi Pria 70, and I like the Diono better.
Pros: Narrow (if you have a small car buy the angle pad thing), it can fold up if you are traveling. My kid loves this seat. He seems much more comfortable in this than our Maxi-Cosi seat. He has more room to move his head and his arms. The MC seems to cradle him so much that he can't move at all.
Cons: Its really heavy. Kind of a pain to put together (adjusting straps) compared to my Maxi-Cosi .