The 4 Best Convertible and All-in-One Car Seats of 2024 Reviews by Wirecutter

Though the process is fairly intuitive, it does require some force and coordination to get those tabs closed. In general, it would be helpful to have graco convertible car seat strong fingers and three arms during much of this installation process. With many car seats, getting a tight install relies on human force or skill.

The Nuna Rava was one of the easiest seats to install of those we tested. It has panels that you route the seat belt through; when you close them, the seat belt automatically tightens, so there’s little effort required. The seat has graco turbobooster a no-rethread harness, which makes it easy to adjust the harness height as kids grow. It also has a nifty mechanism for sliding the crotch buckle (video) between one of two possible positions, depending on the size of your child.

graco convertible car seat

Tightening the strap is easy but requires threading back on the same path (read your manual!). The 4Ever is one of the highest-ranked for crash test analysis, with impressive sensor results for both the HIC and chest sensors in our hotter-running crash tests. All safety seats in our review meet federal guidelines and should be considered safe. However, we run a slightly faster test with a sled that more closely mimics a modern-day vehicle seat, looking for those seats that stand out compared to competitors. We are looking for seats that perform better than the average, and this one is stellar.

Graco also provides instructions for removing and reattaching all the pads, but we found that watching YouTube tutorials was the best way to learn. There are four main pads that come off the car seat, but some of the smaller tabs and elastic loops are tricky to reattach. The hardest part graco car seat of the cleaning process (for us, anyway) was having to carry the bulky, 22.75-pound car seat in and out of the car and house. You can switch it from rear- to forward-facing easily and even recline it to a lying down position when rear-facing, which is ideal for use with smaller babies.

This makes it one of the best convertible car seats for small cars or for front-seat passengers who are very tall. To help you pick the best convertible car seat, GearLab spends tens of thousands of dollars crash testing car seats at the same certified testing lab the US Government uses for its safety certification testing. In this update, we bought and crash-tested the top 20 convertible seats available today to find the best. We conduct side-by-side tests of each convertible car seat over several months to determine the best in metrics like crash test performance, installation, ease of use, quality, and more.