The Britax Chaperone Infant Travel System - an infant car seat and stroller that sell in combination or as separates - has won over our family with combination of advanced infant safety features and parental conveniences. Like the Chaperone itself, this is a heavy-duty review: We've been testing the Chaperone infant car seat and its companion stroller for six months, have installed and used the seat in four cars of varying interior dimensions, and have a lot to say about some design advances in both the Chaperone's car seat and stroller. The Chaperone made us put our own money where our mouths are (but we'll save that for the end). First, we need you to know that although we love and are willing to pay for quality, we're a brand-agnostic family of car seat users with two children as well as in-laws in need of safe transport options for our son and daughter.

Our Brand Background

When my oldest was born we bought car seats solely off Consumer Reports' recommendations. That meant that our first car seats were an assortment of Graco, Evenflo, and Cosco.

I bought our first Britax car seat when our tall two-year-old outgrew his convertible car seat, two and a half years ago. At that time, sticking with discount brands would have meant taking him out of a five-point harness and placing him in a booster with a lapbelt - it was hard to find a forward-facing car seat with a five-point harness to kids over 40 inches. I just couldn't stomach my two-year-old riding in a lapbelt booster. The arrangement seemed unwise and unsafe.

Back then, Britax's Regent was one of a few seats large enough offer my son a five-point harness with room to grow. When our second was born, I didn't feel like replacing already purchased equipment, so we used a Graco Snugride through her early infancy.

When our daughter had come close to outgrowing her SnugRide this past summer, we were offered the chance to review Britax's new Chaperone Infant Travel System. I didn't know if we would be able to cram our unusually tall baby into an infant seat long enough to offer a good test, but it turns out she has been able to use the Chaperone seven months beyond completely outgrowing the Graco, and is just now growing out of the Chaperone.

The Chaperone's height limit is 32 inches; our Graco SnugRide maxes out at 29 inches, although the new SnugRide 35 reaches 32 inches as well (and both it and the Chaperone offer a maximum seated shoulder height, or torso length, of 11 inches). [Thanks to reader MBR for some of this info.]

Assembly and Initial Impressions

As soon as I pulled the stroller out of the shipping carton and started laying out parts, my friend working in South Africa called. My geek mind couldn't resist assembling the stroller while we talked. Even while holding a phone, it took me about 7 minutes for a flawless assembly. Britax's instructions are sequentialand very clear. I knew where every part had to go and didn't have any trouble identifying the right part for proper installation.

The car seat assembly consisted of snapping on the sunshade.

An unexpected kids' gear critic in my life is an Engineering Ph.D. (mechanical and aeronautic) who is also my dad and a doting grandfather. He tends to hone in on a product's weakness in seconds. Comments starting with the phrase "That will work fine until you..." have proved entirely accurate. Don't tell my dad this, but I rarely lose the receipts until he's given new gear a thoughtful once-over.

When I rolled the Britax Chaperone set before him for review, he said "That is built to military specification." In case you don't speak engineer, that's high praise ("an elephant is a mouse built to military specification"). He declared the materials to be a surprisingly high quality and he chuckled with admiration at the folding and braking mechanisms.

I stuck my hand into the basket and showed him how the brake cable was slightly exposed. "Could it be broken with rough treatment?" I asked. For my dad, that may have been the funniest suggestion of the year. Apparently the cable is of notably high strength and I have better chances of headlining on the engineering comedy circuit than I do of disrupting that cable.

On the car seat base, he liked the mechanism that secures the carrier in the base and the rebound bar.

The Car Seat

One of the Chaperone infant car seat's most distinctive features is its interior head supports. One in four car accidents involve a side impact, and in the absence of a federal standard, almost every car seat company now has an official-looking program name and badge to go along with their side impact technology. Britax's design, which they've named "True Side Impact Protection," includes well-padded wings which support the neck and spine in a side impact collision. These are significantly thicker than those offered on the SnugRide, and appear to offer significant additional support.

Side impact collisions are particularly dangerous to infants, who lack muscular development which protects the neck and spine. While there are many facets to Britax's TSIP, the snug, reinforced, and well-padded head rest is my favorite feature on the Chaperone. I want an infant seat that gives special attention to head and neck protection in an accident.

Other features of TSIP are deep side walls to prevent direct impact when the car doesn't offer an adequate crumple zone, a seat that curves around the infant to retain their bodies and shield them from intruding objects, and energy-absorbing foam (EPS).

The Britax is a heavier seat than most infant carriers on the market. While this heft made me joke that it should come with a personal trainer, I am happy to know that my baby is surrounded by something of substance. While it's tempting to choose an infant carrier for convenience in carrying, caregivers shouldn't forget that a car seat is what may stand between an infant and the tremendous and violent forces of a car crash. It's easy to get distracted by fabrics and secondary features, but when the chips are down, the seat's performance in a wreck should hold primary attention.

As my dad noticed, the carrier's handle is well-reinforced with metal. This allows the user to leave it in an upright position while in transit (something banned in most infant carriers because of their less substantial construction).

The five-point harness offers no-rethread harness adjustment. Not needing to rethread the seat straps saves time, makes the seat much easier to adjust as the child grows, and prevents performance problems from misthreading. It's also more versatile than a threading seat, as the height can be adjusted gradually rather than being threaded through one of a few designated slots.

Here's how it works, compared to standard fixed-height threaded harnesses.


The Chaperone's front harness tension adjustment is easy to access and operate. Tightening the straps snugly before driving and loosening them when getting out is simple. Britax makes it easy to secure an infant properly every time.

The very large infant canopy works well providing shade and protection from inclement weather.

The lower buckle's belly pad prevented me from pinching the baby's clothing (and the baby) when locking the harness. The seat's fabric is resilient but soft and wiped clean.

The Stroller

Let's start with a video rundown of the basic features and functionality. Text discussion and more details below.


At 25 pounds, the Britax Chaperone stroller weighs more than a jogging stroller we tested (bumbleride Indie, 19 lbs.), but less than Graco's popular full-sized Quattro Tour Deluxe (26.1 lbs.).

The stroller's weight proves advantageous. With a low center of gravity and solid materials, the stroller is not prone to tipping even when fully reclined or with an infant carrier on board. Compact and lightweight strollers simply cannot offer such stability. I enjoy being able to set the kids' coats on the stroller without worrying that it will tip over.

The adjustable handle raises to 42 inches, which is high enough to be comfortable for adults over six feet tall. It has a central hand grip for one handed steering and foam coated grips for two handed driving.


Storage capacity is one of the stroller's strengths. The parent console includes sizable cup holders and a large storage compartment with a snapping lid. I can easily put my sunglasses, wallet, and/or giant key chain in this handy space. I am pretty surprised how often I use it, and I love how it keeps my prescription glasses out of the fray.

The basket design, shown below, is smart. Not only did the designers make it so the back side lowers for good access, they placed the basket far enough forward that a walker with a long stride doesn't accidentally knock it open. The shape allows for taller objects to sit behind the stroller seat supports which is really handy.




The wheels seem to have metal bearings, so they roll with less friction than plastic wheels; this smooth functioning promise a longer life. The front wheels have a quick release mechanism so they can easily be removed for transportation and storage. This presented no problems in use or when the stroller was stowed upright in a vehicle. For some reason when I stowed it laid down in my station wagon, the release was periodically accidentally tripped when I pulled the stroller out of my car. It was easy enough to set the stroller up with three wheels, then quickly reinstall the fourth wheel. I would recommend stowing the stroller upright (which also has a smaller footprint, but doesn't work in my cargo space) if possible.

For the passenger, the included tray serves as toy storage and a traveling snack bar. (I love that Britax didn't cut corners and make this useful feature an add-on accessory.) Our determinedly independent baby loves being able to manage her own stuff, so the tray's basins and a sippy cup or toy provide her ample amusement.

For the convenience of older kids, the tray can be removed and replaced with dual armrests.

Our tall four-year-old son can ride comfortably in this stroller, although we usually make him walk. There's even some room for him to grow.

Using the Infant Carrier on the Stroller

One of the distinctive new features in the Chaperone is the mechanism that locks the car seat into the stroller.

Most strollers that tote a car seat do so by locking the head end of the infant carrier onto either the front tray or a bar at the front of the stroller. Depending on the stroller, the foot end of the infant carrier is secured by a strap, a set of small plastic tabs, or not at all. These configurations rely heavily on gravity and always make me wonder what would happen if the stroller were to fall or be knocked over. I am uneasy with the unsecured feet and feel like the tabs are easy to forget. While the strap system may be the most secure of the methods mentioned about, it is the least convenient of configurations. I often see parents skipping or forgetting the strap when using car-seat-carrying strollers.

The Chaperone breaks new ground with its mechanism that locks the seat into the stroller at the foot. In order to use the carrier in the stroller, the user must pull up a flap located at the lower back of the stroller seat and turn two large tabs upwards before lowering the seat back fully. This two-minute process prepares the stroller to hold the infant seat. These simple steps must be reversed for a child to sit in the stroller without the carrier.

The carrier is lowered straight down (not tilted in) into the stroller seat. The foot end of the carrier locks solidly onto the stroller frame via the metal reinforced tabs. The head of the carrier rests upon the snack tray (which is locked in its lowered position). Because of the locking mechanism at the carrier's foot end, the entire carrier is very secure. The head end cannot be lifted or wiggled from side to side without unlatching the carrier from the stroller.

The locking mechanism for the stroller operates in the same way as it does with the car base. The user simply grasps the handle under the car seat head and slides it back while lifting directly up. For me, the motions to remove the Chaperone carrier from its stroller are simpler and more efficient than removing the Graco Snugride carrier from its matching stroller frame. (Britax offers an adapter strap which makes the stroller compatible with most other infant carriers. If you are committed to a competing brand of carrier, you might call Britax to confirm that it will be compatible with the Chaperone stroller.)


The steel-reinforced supports in the photo above are where the car seat docks. The supports are raised to the position shown, the stroller seat is then reclined to the lowest position to accomodate the infant carrier.

The overall weight of the stroller and carrier combination might make it difficult for a mom who had a C-section to use on solo trips in the first week's of the baby's life. However, the weight of the stroller coupled with its low center of gravity make the Chaperone a surprisingly tip-resistant carrier-toting stroller.

When the carrier is in place, the baby is facing the caregiver. The stroller's large sunshade can overlap the carrier's ample shade which is great for keeping out the weather, offering some naptime privacy, and offering shade on a sunny day. The peep-hole window in the top allows caregivers the opportunity to check on the child without disturbing the baby.

The Infant Carrier Base

Since both of our cars are pre-LATCH, foreign cars, we chose to test the seat in an additional two vehicles that are more modern and larger. The four cars we used to test the Chaperone in were a 1995 Toyota Corolla, a 1997 Honda Accord, a 2000 Ford Winstar, and a 2007 PT Cruiser.

The Chaperone car seat base is much easier to install well than our Graco Snugride bases. With the non-LATCH, lap-shoulder belt installation, it's sometimes rather challenging to get the slack out of a seat belt. Britax has made the process a lot easier to see and the belt pathway more accessible. With average geek upper body strength, I am able to pull the belt taut enough that the seat can't be moved more than 1" after installation.


To aid in the non-LATCH installation, Britax has added some clips that clamp over the car seat belt when it is properly threaded. These clamps keep the base from shifting along the car's seat belt.




LATCH installation is simple. By pressing the red button on each clip, the user unlocks the LATCH belt from its ingenious in-base storage. Clip the belt ends to the car's anchors and pull the slack from the belt.

The anti-rebound bar not only keeps the seat from rebounding, but it also wedges the infant carrier into the car's seat base. A lot of infant seats attach to the car only at the foot, and that limited amount of contact with the car seems to offer a lot of opportunity to shift. The Chaperone has the foot anchor, but the 90 degree angle formed by the anti-rebound bar offers a second contact area (touching the back of the car's seat). The anti-rebound bar not only prevents the base from lifting off the seat during a crash, it also minimizes side to side shifting by offering a second contact area with the car seat.

The only drawback to the addition of the rebound bar is that it makes the seat's total footprint longer than most car seats on the market. This doesn't make a big difference in larger vehicles or when front seat passengers don't need all the legroom available, but it might be an issue in smaller cars with taller drivers.

The base's height adjustment knob solves a lot of positioning problems without adding rolled up towels or swim noodles. These feature assists so greatly in achieving a secure installation that I had to wonder why car seats were ever designed without it.

Another feature of the base I really love are the easy to see instructions for placing the car seat in the base. While the guidelines' prominent placement might not seem important to a caregiver who uses the seat more than once a day, they can help to secondary caregivers who only uses it a couple times a week or month. When our kids ride with other drivers, we usually install the car seats in their vehicle. With an infant carrier, I always want to be sure that the adults know how to secure the seat to the base. The simple, visible instructions provide ready answers.

Attaching the seat to the base is simple. The base guides the seat into the proper position.

The base is easy enough to install, even in non-LATCH situations, that a second base might not be required. This is a base I wouldn't mind moving from one car to another because I feel confident that I can get a secure installation every time.

Cramped in Small Cars

For the first installation, I was able to place the Chaperone in the center of the back seat of a 97 Honda Accord. The Chaperone fit, but if I lowered the carrier handle to the head it projected into the front row. This might not bother other drivers of similarly small cars, but I keep my front row seats in the farthest back position. Also, the Chaperone's carrier handle (unlike most infant carriers) does not have to be lowered while in transit.


Britax has given the Chaperone a much stronger handle than other infant carriers. It looks like the handle is metal-reinforced plastic, while competing brands tend to opt for a honeycombed plastic design. Leaving the handle upright (or lowering it below the head of the carrier) reduces the seat's length about 4 inches.

Because of the narrowness of my car's back bench and the width of my son's car (large) seat, the Chaperone doesn't install in the middle position with both seats in place. See photo at left. It can be installed behind the Honda's passenger seat, but it doesn't leave much leg room for the tall people who ride in my car. The configuration is fine for local travel without adult passengers, but it wouldn't work for a long trip. See photo below, where it is paired with a six-foot-tall passenger.

Our 95 Corolla yielded similar results: Good fit in the middle position, too cramped behind a tall driver (my knees hit the dashboard when the driver's seat was forward enough to accommodate the Chaperone's length), and okay (although crowded for tall folks) behind the passenger seat.

Better in Bigger Cars

In a 2000 Ford Windstar the seat's length was less of an issue. It would have fit behind a driver's seat in its farthest back position except for the poor placement of an odd handle on the back of the driver's seat. With this atypical obstacle, we opted to lower the handle below the carrier's head rather than leaving it upright. This made the seat a little harder to lower and raise from the base, but it worked well otherwise. Take a look:


We later moved the Chaperone behind the passenger seat. In this location we were able to lower the handle to the head and have the carrier fit well with only a slight forward adjustment of the front passenger seat.

We also used the Chaperone in a 2009 PT Cruiser. It fit well in the center, with some crowding behind the driver, and an acceptable fit behind the passenger. In the PT cruiser we could place our son's large car seat on one side and still have the Chaperone in the center position.

In my opinion, the Chaperone (like many car seats) is easiest to use in a larger vehicle. There may be some legroom compromises in a smaller car, but the seat does fit.

Summary

Despite the complications of fit in some of our cars, the seat's nestling head supports and sturdy body won my heart. The Chaperone's excellent materials and design innovations convince me Britax's designers have each infant's well-being in mind. The Chaperone seat is heavily constructed, but the weight is not notable when used with the stroller. The stroller is likely one of the strongest (in terms of construction) I have seen on the market. It will last through a number of children.

Perhaps the best testament to the the Chaperone's strong, well-considered design is that it convinced me to replace our previously purchased mass-maker convertible seats with two new Britax convertible seats with similar head supports, purchased at my own expense. After using the Chaperone, all our non-Britax seats looked flimsy by comparison, and the additional expense felt like an investment worth making. All in all, the Chaperone is the heavyweight car seat that I want in my corner.

The Chaperone retails at $230 for the car seat, $300 for the stroller and $90 for an additional base. Stroller accessories include a rain cover ($30), canopy netting ($30), foot muff ($40), and arm rest covers ($8). While the accessories might be nice, I didn't feel that any of them were necessary to enjoy a full range of stroller use.

Adrienne Jones has reviewed the bumbleride Indie and bumbleride Queen B strollers for Z Recommends, and also blogs at Baby Toolkit. ZRecs does not require guest reviewers to dispose of review items in accordance with our Keep No Stuff policy.

There has been a lot of great conversation surrounding our post earlier this month in which we did something we don't usually do: Recommend against a product (the Safety 1st Air Protect car seat) based solely on the track record of the company that developed it. Depending on whether or not you think that's an acceptable and precautionary position to take (obviously, we think it is), this bit of consumer reporting will strike you as either further evidence of our prescience, or just another blip on the radar for a large, well-meaning company that makes the occasional slip. Pun intended.



Presumably the four car seats this consumer activist located (and he declares himself just that - a consumer, not a car seat technician, safety expert, or representative of a competing brand) are all new, but that is not made explicit. Presumably he did not tamper with them, and does not have some hidden and nefarious agenda. Presumably he found the prospect of waiting however many months or years NHTSA and Dorel might enjoy discussing this issue unpalatable, and decided to take to the internet. There is now serious journalism afoot to get to the bottom of this issue, and NHTSA is under pressure to resolve it in some time frame that is shorter than nine years.

The question NHTSA must look at now is not just how widespread the faulty harness adjuster issue is within the Safety 1st Vantage - a car seat which would not be on the market today if the Vantage had not passed crash tests and met existing federal safety standards at the moment they were tested. It's what other Safety 1st seats use the same adjuster, what other seats in the Dorel Juvenile Group family of trusted brands use it, what other DJG seats use other harness adjusters made by the same, non-industry-leading parts supplier, and what other factors might make the world's least expensive car seats so inexpensive.

We haven't seen definitive evidence either way on whether the Air Protect uses this harness adjuster, and we aren't taking any bets on that. But we will be among the many others who will be looking into this question in the coming days.

If you missed our Feb. 9 post on the topic of Safety 1st's new Air Protect car seat, we went through some Dorel history and concluded with the uncomfortable conclusion that we really thought buying any car seat made by Dorel brands Safety 1st, Cosco, Maxi-Cosi, and Eddie Bauer - was a pretty bad idea, no matter how forward-thinking the company seems to be feeling today. We wrote:

"As much as we applaud Dorel's efforts to make forward progress in car seat safety, we shudder to think that an innovative design alone would encourage safety-conscious parents to buy car seats made by the Dorel Juvenile Group. ... Good design is meaningless without both consistent execution on the production line and the integrity to swiftly correct errors and place children's safety above all other goals. When a company can't deliver all three, we'd encourage you to look further when it comes to trusting companies to protect your children from harm."

To which one commenter responded with (among other good points): "I do appreciate you providing information about the politics behind everything, but as a parent, bottom-line, I want to know whether or not a product is safe."

What we were trying to say in our post is that looking at individual products in isolation - even if they pass existing tests or meet industry standards - will only take you so far. The rest is context. Sometimes it involves deeper context than anyone but true specialists have full access to, and surely context that involves nuance and the possibility of redemption - but something that reaches beyond the scope of a specific product and a specific test that was performed on it.

As for the potential hazard illustrated above, we'll keep you posted. You may be hearing about it from other news outlets very soon.

Imagine you hired a babysitter and caught her driving around town with your baby in a laundry basket in the back seat. So fired, right? Ten years later, a friend asks you if you can recommend a good babysitter. I'm guessing there's at least one person you would definitely not recommend.

If you've been considering Safety 1st's new Air Protect car seat - which sports newly-designed air-padded head wings - you're in pretty much the same position. Because whether you know it or not, you're dealing with a car seat manufacturer that has demonstrated time and again that it shouldn't be trusted with your baby.

The Dorel Juvenile Group recalled over four million Cosco, Dorel, Eddie Bauer, and Safety 1st car seats in mid-January for failures of its webbing (seat belt material) that could degrade to the point of posing a significant hazard to its occupants. Wonder why you didn't hear about it on ZRecs? Because the car seats were all nearly a decade old, which means that not only are they unlikely to still be in use, but shouldn't be. Advances in car seat design combined with the gradual weakening of a car seat shell mean that there are few seats on the market with a lifespan over six years. The recall made us curious about the politics behind it - why would the National Highway Transit Safety Administration even take the time to recall seats that are probably all in landfills by now? - but the announcement itself wasn't of much use.

As it turns out, the recall of 2001 products happened in 2010 because Dorel was dragged kicking and screaming to the table, and NHTSA wasn't about to let them off. The agency first demanded they recall the car seats for its dangerous webbing back in 2002, when the seats had been on the market for only a year. Dorel appealed the decision, lost the appeal, appealed it again, and managed to stretch out that timeline eight years before finally being forced to recall the seats in two recall notices on January 16 and 17. (Three days later, Dorel would recall over 600,000 cribs. Roughly a month earlier, Dorel had announced the recall of 447,000 infant carriers for handle detachment and baby-dropping.)

Now the company is in the ludicrous position of contacting owners who registered car seats nearly a decade ago, car seats that are no longer road-worthy, to offer them replacement webbing. Given that any reasonable script would include the phrase "you should not be using this car seat anymore, period," I'd be pretty surprised to hear that they were keeping much in stock. Cue the high fives throughout the DJG legal department.

So that was January. February refused to disappoint by offering up another Dorel recall, this time a time out on nearly 30,000 infant car seats sold under the brand Maxi Cosi because "interference between the mounting bracket and the base caused by warping of the base or inadequate mating between the shell and the base mounting bracket can result in difficulty attaching or detaching the shell from the base. If the shell is improperly mounted to the base, the child could be injured in the event of a crash."

Maxi Cosi? Cosco? Eddie Bauer? Safety 1st? Why are so many brands selling junk car seats made by the same recall-prone company? Because Dorel owns them all. It also owns Air Protect technology, the padded pillow wings it is incorporating first into the Safety 1st seat we saw at BlogHer last June, at the ABC Kids Expo in November, and on the back covers of parenting magazines in doctor's office waiting rooms all fall and winter long. If all goes well, the technology will be introduced into seats in every Dorel brand, putting the conglomerate in the enviable position of implying an industry flocking to a new technology simply by having its brand-name finger puppets do the wave.

We aren't saying Air Protect doesn't work. How it measures up against other side-impact technologies remains to be seen, and given that we don't yet have a federal standard, there is a lot of room for everyone to call their technology the best - car seat makers can define quality, and success, however they like. Still, side impact protection is one of the core car seat design challenges of the next decade, and other factors aside, Air Protect is probably better than no Air Protect.

But it's those other factors that keep nagging at us. As much as we applaud Dorel's efforts to make forward progress in car seat safety, we shudder to think that an innovative design alone would encourage safety-conscious parents to buy car seats made by the Dorel Juvenile Group. Back in 2001, in addition to producing millions of car seats that the company would resist recalling for nine years, Dorel was also stinging from a $1.75 million fine from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, then the biggest in U.S. history. Cosco and Safety 1st earned the fine after it was discovered to have withheld 3,000 reports that had caused 303 injuries and two deaths caused by defective cribs and mattresses, strollers with faulty locks, and other hazards, even going so far as to redesign products to eliminate hazards but failing to pass them on to the CPSC for possible consumer alerts or recalls.

Good design is meaningless without both consistent execution on the production line and the integrity to swiftly correct errors and place children's safety above all other goals. When a company can't deliver all three, we'd encourage you to look further when it comes to trusting companies to protect your children from harm.

Children's product manufacturer Lerado Success has recalled more than 5,500 Mia Moda infant car seats due to two dramatic defects. "The harness splitter plate located on the rear of the seat has sharp edges which can cut the harness," the NHTSA recall notice states. "Also, the base could crack in a crash."

The recall applies to both the Viva and Viva Supreme - seats with model numbers 5000, 5050, 5070, and 5080, and bases with model numbers 5001, 5051, 5071, and 5081. The company is offering a full refund.

There's no word yet on what portion of their product line these models represent, but the company's product recall page appears to be a work in progress, and makes no mention of the recall as of this writing.

The Viva Supreme was introduced to replace the Viva just this year, so it's notable that both car seat models are included in the recall - that means this has been an ongoing problem that persisted through the seat's redesign process, which doesn't speak well for the company's R&D.

It's also notable because this is the second recall of Mia Moda car seats in the company's brief history; in November 2007 NHTSA recalled nearly 1,000 Mia Moda car seats for problems with its LATCH system design that could cause the carrier to detach from its base, as well as for a pretty egregious oversight - failing to include product registration cards with the car seats, and thus eliminating the company's ability to alert Mia Moda car seat owners to just such a recall.

Mia Moda car seats were supplied by Lerado Success, Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of China's Lerado Group, which manufactures a wide variety of children's products - everything from strollers, beds and playards to soft goods and battery-operated ride-on cars - for sale in the U.S. and China. The company may also produce parts or the whole enchilada for some cheaper car seats common on retail store shelves - U.S. companies are often secretive about who supplies their internationally-produced products, but given that Lerado has counted Evenflo, Kolcraft, and a host of other major U.S. brands in its past portfolio, it wouldn't surprise us.

Viva and Viva Supreme car seats are also still widely available for purchase on shopping websites like Amazon.com. Buyer beware.

Note: This post has been edited to reflect corrections offered by Lerado Success. The changes correct a misstatement regarding the recall's nature (it was voluntary, and brought forward by the company, not initiated by the NHTSA) and the relationship between Mia Moda and Lerado Success, which is not one of ownership but a supplier/contractor relationship. We apologize for these errors.

It's National Car Seat Safety Week, and we're thinking a lot about car seats. In part, it's because we've been testing one of the better car seats we've ever used, the Britax Advocate.

Longtime readers know that we value ease of use as much as strong crash performance, because the best-designed car seat is only as effective if it is simple to install without error or undue exertion. We have seen many car seats that were installed too loosely to provide their full protection, in part because it is hard for many parents to believe just how much pressure and force they have to use to properly install many car seats. We learned early on that an adult often has to kneel in a car seat to tighten it enough that the car seat performs as tested in a crash.

Britax has been working on some interesting innovations over the last couple of years, including being at the forefront of side-impact technology (almost unheard of when they were first expanding their car seats' side wings and, later, displaying their Advocate in prototype last fall. It's now easy to find car seats claiming enhanced side-impact protection, although they are at present designing their own standards or selecting from international ones, as the U.S. has no side impact standard yet. (NHTSA is working on it.)

Here's how the Britax Advocate handles side impacts - with a pair of air-cushioned plastic panels:



But we've frankly been even more impressed with the emphasis Britax has placed on ease of installation. Over the course of several car seats, we've watched them evolve a method of raising and lowering the harness without unthreading the straps (with a plate that shifts up and down with a giant screw:



We'll have more to say about this car seat when we can shoot a couple more videos - including detailed specs and how this car seat fits into a chain of safer car seats based on its height and weight limits. But whatever car seat you're currently using, we'd like to encourage you to check its installation with a certified car seat installation technician. It's a free service, and your tech may have some insight into how your seat and car interact for best fit, which is something no manufacturer's installation instructions can fully address.

The Britax Advocate sells for about $370 on Amazon.com.

The Chicco KeyFit 30 infant car seat is one of the most user-friendly - and easiest to install - infant bucket seats we've seen. That's great news, because what really makes the KeyFit notable is that it will keep your infant in a bucket seat longer than most other car seats on the market, which max out at around 20-22 pounds and 29" in height. That's also good news if you tend towards big babies - Z was over 9 pounds when she was born!

But first, why use an infant car seat instead of starting with a convertible?

Most convertible car seat harness slots start too high to be properly positioned for the average-sized newborn. Infant car seat harness slots start lower and provide better protection for newborns and infants. Rear-facing, the shoulder harness slots should be at or below the top of the child's shoulder; using a bucket car seat will ensure that the height of the straps for your newborn can be arranged low enough. Some people also find the detachable bucket seats to be convenient - a sleeping baby can be transported directly from the car to the stroller without having to be removed from the car seat, and may stay asleep.

We weren't aware of the increased safety in using an infant car seat, so Z started out in her Britax Roundabout (a convertible seat), but we were always jealous of how other parents could bring their sleeping child into a restaurant or store without waking them up. Even on the rare occasions when we could get Z out of her seat asleep, we then had a baby to try to hold in our lap or put in a sling while eating a meal! If we had it to do over again (and we don't plan on it) the increased safety would be enough to allow spendthrifts like us to go ahead and buy a good bucket seat, and we'd consider the KeyFit a great option.

The KeyFit 30 is rated for infants from 4 to 30 pounds and 30" in or less in height. It has a level on each side of the base to insure that you get the seat installed at the proper angle. If you don't have the LATCH system in your car (or if you don't have it in the middle seat of your car) you can use the seat belt installation, which has the best-designed seatbelt lock-off device we've seen. Jeremiah got the car seat installed using each method without any of the cursing and sweating that accompanies some car seat installs here at ZRecs - he got a solid install for each within, I kid you not, about two minutes - and that's on his first try, glancing at the instructions as he did so.




The KeyFit 30 comes with an adjustable "foot" on the base so that you can make sure that you have the seat installed at the proper angle - indicated by the level on the base. It's very easy to connect and disconnect from the base, and makes an audible click when it's properly set. Compared to other models of infant bucket seats on the market, it also felt softer in the seat which means additional comfort for babies who often fuss when placed in a car seat. It has energy-absorbing foam for better side-impact protection and comes with a newborn insert for babies up to 11 pounds.




The harness strap was easy to adjust. We passed this car seat on to a local friend, and she has had great experiences using it with her new baby. Like all infant car seats, you can buy an extra base for the seat to install in a second car rather than installing and uninstalling the car seat each time baby needs to ride in a different car.

As for the price, a quality car seat will never be able to compete directly on price with the cheapest brands. But at under $170, it's comparably priced with other quality infant car seats, and offers innovations, ease-of-use features. and seat padding that keep the price tag from seeming out of place. Making car seats that install the right way easily is an engineering challenge, and one many companies skip. For its excellent ease-of-use and safe-install features, we're naming the Chicco KeyFit 30 a ZRecs Top Pick for car seats.

You can get the Chicco KeyFit on Amazon.com.