S1 by Safety 1st Complete Air 70 Convertible Car Seat - Lemans

Comments about S1 by Safety 1st Complete Air 70 Convertible Car Seat - Lemans:

This is our day to day carseat, incredible. Easy to adjust the head rest and shoulder straps. Only complaint is the cover is NOT washable and will come out of the washer in shreds... However the company willingly sent me a new cover for free no questions asked. I now get it shampooed when I get the seats of the car. :)

Comments about S1 by Safety 1st Complete Air 70 Convertible Car Seat - Lemans:

Great seat! This is the new 2013 model of the Complete Air and it includes an extra 5 pounds (up to 70 now) of weight limit. Also new is seat padding in addition to the lumbar padding from previous models, great for small accidents and spills, and just adds a little more cushion. The seat has better fabric too, more textures, not just flat grey, it looks higher class than last year's models. (why can't they make boys car seats as attractive as the girls???) BRU always has coupons, save a lot and get the newest model!

I bought this for my 22 month old who I want to remain rear-facing til 3.5-4 years old. He is already 34 inches and 29 lbs and was getting close to the weigh limit of our old britax boulevard (6 years ago they only went up to 33 lbs rear facing). I looked at several options:

-another Britax Boulevard, nice, but just didn't want to shell out the money again. Saw lots of recent complaints about its harness issues that scared me away too.

-an Evenflo Symphony E3, nice but when I put my son in the car seat at the store, he was already an inch from the top of the shell, so that carseat is not good for extended rear-facing.

-a Graco mysize/myride/all the other graco extended rear facing models I looked at, but the problem here (and I realllly love graco) is that in rear facing, the seat has to be in complete recline ONLY. What 2-4 year old wants to LAY DOWN? none, so it doesn't matter if it goes up to 40 lbs.

So that is how I narrowed down my search to the Safety 1st Complete Air. My only hesitation with the Safety 1st is that the seats are quite a bit lighter than the other brands. I watched lots of crash test videos though of the seats and like that they test for side vehicle intrusion. They get good marks in the consumer testing magazines as well. I like that this seat has the wings on the side of the head, if you've seen a side impact crash test, you'll never buy a seat without guards around the head, the neck just gets slung all over the place. My kid is already used to the wings on the Boulevard so nothing new to balk at.

This seat installed really tight with just the belt in my minivan (and one pool noodle for leveling). I like that it has two different level indicators, one for infants (under 22lbs) and one for older toddlers (22 to 40 lbs). I guess you'd just add more pool noodles for infant mode (get a professional to install it for you in this case). It's big, but I still have an inch or two from the top of the seat to the driver's seat.

In rear-facing mode, a common complaint is leg room as kids get taller. My son has quite a bit more leg room on this compared to his old Britax. Also, the sides taper nicely so that kids have room to sit cross legged if they need to. (kids are bendy and really, it's the parents who don't like their kids looking so cramped, not the kids).

I was also looking at the Complete Air LX's with the recline on the front, I really don't think you need it unless you are putting a 2 or 3 year old front facing. The little flip flap on the back of this model works fine for recline for rear facing. For front facing mode, it says it cannot be in recline mode, just so you know.

This seat probably isn't great for newborns, but great once they outgrow their infant seat it's perfect. It probably isn't for you if you have a tiny car, but anyone with a small car is going to have issues with the extended-rear facing car seats, they are going to be longer. If you're part of the minivan crowd, this seat will fit fine and your kid has lots of room in it.

The straps are easy to adjust, the headrest moves fairly easily and it looks like something my kid won't mind using until he's 8 (which is when my oldest hit 70 lbs and 52 inches). Would be nice if this went into a booster mode too, but I'm happy I'll get 6 solid years of use out of this, and really happy I'll get to keep him safely rear-facing to 40 lbs / 40inches!

Comments about S1 by Safety 1st Complete Air 70 Convertible Car Seat - Lemans:

This is a great car seat but I wouldn't buy it for a newborn. The height of the harness fit right where it should on my 10 month old and that was at the lowest setting. There's no way a 5 lb baby would fit properly in this car seat. There's a ton of room between his feet and the back seat so he has plenty of growing room still. I barely had to adjust our front passenger seat for it to fit. We drive a Ford Edge in case anyone wanted a comparison.