If you choose to use a seat belt to install your car seat, pay close attention to how to “lock” your seat belt according to the vehicle’s owner manual. Before installing your car seat make sure you understand the function and location of the vehicle and car seat parts that are used in installation. In addition to its generous 50-pound rear-facing weight limit (with a seat belt install), the Extend2Fit 3-in-1 facilitates extended rear-facing riding with the same unique design feature as the Convertible has.
We’ve installed the 4Ever in a number of vehicles over the years and discovered that this recline position can be a bit tricky because 80% of the 4Ever’s base must be on the vehicle seat. In addition, the entire base must be flat on the vehicle seat but there can be a gap between the back of the 4Ever and graco convertible car seat the back of the vehicle seat as long as the car seat is installed correctly with less than one inch of movement at the belt path. This seat works for babies ranging from 4 pounds up to 30 pounds or 30 inches; like our other picks, it can accommodate most preemies who are able to travel in a car seat.
The bottom of the seat is smooth and solid, designed to minimize the pressure marks that occasionally result on vehicle upholstery from a tightly installed seat. The insert itself has a separate head and body support, with an adjustable elastic to raise the head support as the child grows. Later in 2022, we tested four additional seats, putting them through the same paces as the previous batch.
The KeyFit 35 has its own range of fabric options, different from the KeyFit 30’s. Spot-cleaning the KeyFit 35 is fairly easy, and the cover also tolerates graco convertible car seat being removed and machine-washed and line-dried. The KeyFit 30 has an average sun canopy; it’s smaller than the canopies on our other picks, but it’s fine.
You can also unsnap the lower portion of the cover inside the belt path to expose the entire belt path — whichever method helps YOU install the seat correctly is the best one. Once the vehicle seat belt is threaded through the rear facing belt path and the shoulder portion of the belt is accessible, graco convertible car seat press down on the seat pan with one hand while pulling straight up on the top portion of the vehicle seat belt to remove all slack. Once the slack is removed, engage the seat belt’s locking mechanism to secure the installation and feed the excess slack back into the seat belt’s retractor.
If you’re planning to use the SnugRide SnugFit 35 DLX mostly with its base, this shouldn’t be a big deal. We also caution car seat shoppers against getting talked into infant seat and stroller “systems” where compatibility is the main selling point, since the payoff is bound to be short-lived. The time period in which most families actually use an infant seat and a stroller together is relatively brief—usually around a year or so—whereas a stroller is likely to be around a lot longer. So we believe it makes sense to choose the best infant seat and the best stroller individually, each on its own merits, rather than settling for a subpar version of either. Adjusting the Extend2Fit harness height is better than most with non-rethread adjustment on ten levels with two different buckle strap possibilities.
The portion of the cover that’s most likely to be a casualty of a classic up-the-back-of-the-diaper blowout is actually a separate piece that you can unsnap, wash, and put back on without taking off the rest of the cover. We were not nearly as successful in installing this seat without the base—that is, using just the bucket portion of the seat and the car’s seat belt. Like the Chicco KeyFit 30, our runner-up pick, the SnugRide SnugFit 35 DLX uses an American belt-path configuration, which requires the seat belt to be routed through guides across the top front of the bucket, above the baby’s legs. This configuration makes it hard to get a super-secure install because it’s tough to push down on the seat with one hand and remove slack from the belt with the other—and the belt tends to slide through the guides if there’s any slack. Based on the criteria above, we narrowed our list of contenders to 12 infant car seats to test (or in some cases retest) in 2022.