Customer Reviews

Britax Roundabout 40 Convertible Car Seat, Onyx

5 star:		(147)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I searched for months before buying this seat for my daughter. I read lots of reviews on the internet and had a hard time deciding if I should spend $219 on this seat of just buy a cheaper one. I am so happy that I went ahead a spent the extra money. This seat is SO worth it. The print is great and the fabric is very easy to clean. My daughter loves to snack in the car and can make quite a mess. I just vacuum the crumbs occassionally and wipe down any other messes with a damp cloth.
The restraint design is great and very easy to access and use.
The straps have never gotten twisted or tangled like some other cheaper seats do. I used this seat in the rear-facing position for about 3 months until my daughter was big enough to turn forwards. It was very easy to use in this position as well. I
love the button you push to loosen the straps and it was still easy to use even in the rear facing position (this is a problem in some other convertible seats). I have a Nissan Maxima and the
seat fit very well both front and rear-facing in this relatively small car. I highly recommend this product!!!

Even after just 2 1/2 months of use I can tell you that this is the best carseat we've ever owned. It is comfortable, durable, easy to use, attractive, and has a great safety record. It is a little pricier than the average seat, but we really feel like we've gotten our money's worth.

The seat is undeniably comfortable for our 8-month-old son. He went from near-constant screaming in his infant seat to blissful silence when we moved him into the Roundabout. The seat is well padded and has plenty of "booty room" (he's 23 lbs so that is a concern for us). He also has ample room to grow. The recline feature and deep headrest area give him a very comfortable place to take a nap.

This seat is a little bigger than some that are out there but the base is really not too bad. We have two older sons (10 and 5 years) who have to share the backseat of our Sport Trac with the baby. There isn't a whole lot of extra space back there but they are all comfortable. We may have some issues with shoulder room for our 10-year-old when we turn the seat forward-facing, but we're planning to purchase a mini-van around that time anyway.

This seat would definitely sweep the carseat contest for "ease of use". We use the LATCH system and it was a breeze getting the seat installed. The velcro tabs are a wonderful feature. My husband initially thought the velcro feature was hokey, but he's come around to agree that it really does make it easier to get the baby in and out of the seat. We've never owned a seat that required less cussing when dealing with all the various straps and buckles. Seriously.

We really like the New Denim fabric, too. It's really very attractive and is dark enough that any stains it might have in its future should be pretty unnoticeable. It's not "scritchy-scratch" either. It's really just a very nice, soft fabric.

I won't speak to safety because we've not been in an accident with this seat and I only know what I've read. I can only say that this seat seems sturdier and more solid than any of the other seats that we've owned. We would definitely recommend the Roundabout.

I did A TON of research on convertible infant-toddler car seats before my son outgrew his Graco SnugRide at 4 months. Consumer Reports gave this and another seat the highest safety ratings (this seat had the highest rating of all Britax convertible seats!) I chose this seat because it has EPS side-impact protection under the carseat cover. It's worth the extra money because it's your child's life! Also, it's really easy to tighten and loosen the straps, and the cover is really silky and comfortable. My son falls asleep within minutes of pulling out of the driveway.

My only gripes are that none of the existing toddler pillow neck/head supports fit into the seat, but that may be a problem with the manufacturers of the supports, not Britax. Also, the straps don't have soft covers to keep them from digging into my son's neck. I just bought some soft terrycloth ones from Babies R Us for $4.99. It works.

I am so happy with this purchase that I want to let you all know about it. I was rammed by a guy who ran a red light 6 weeks after I bought this seat and was so happy my baby was safe. The only thing that woke him up in the accident was the smoke filling the car from the airbags! We now have a second roundabout since britax recommends replacing the seat if you're in an accident where the airbags deploy. This time I chose the grey fabric but I kept the old one so I can change it if I want.

My favorite points about this seat:
* Easy installation (especially when you have to switch between cars)
* Sturdy construction
* Velcro to keep the seat belt aside while you manouver baby
* Baby seems very happy and comfortable in it
* Five point harness is easy to height-adjust
* Fits in an airplane seat (I can't imagine how anything bigger than this fits but the roundabout is great for the airport...check out the go go kidz travelmate by the way - it works great with this seat).

In the past, we've purchased Graco and Evenflo convertible seats for our other children. They were difficult to install and it was even more difficult to keep the straps from tangling or get a good fit of the straps. Britax seems to have thought of everything. The straps are high quality and do not ever tangle up. When you take your child out, the straps self-attach to the side of the seat with Velcro so that when you put your baby back in, you don't need to move the straps out of the way first. Big time saver and helps when they are wiggly! The chest clip is not flimsy like many others. It clips quickly and easily and stays locked, yet it's also easy to undo. The seat seems very comfortable and plush with lots of padding. The LATCH attachment was easy to figure out and install and has better, easier to use clips than our other convertible seats. The seat stays put and doesn't move. My only complaint is that the crotch pad always seems to come off and stick to our little one's legs when we take her out--we've found it lying on the floor in a store more than once. But that's a small annoyance, and the fact that it's removable means that you can wash it. Wish we'd bought this for our other kids!

This car seat is magical. We had ot switch to this seat when our boy turned 4 months old - when he grew out of the infant seat carrier. He is so comfy in this seat that he never cries in the car and he easily falls asleep in it. Sometimes he falls asleep the instant he gets put into the seat! This is a baby boy that used to cry cry cry all the time in the car. I am so pleased with this purchase!

I bought the Roundabout for my husband's car after purchasing the Marathon for mine. I originally bought the Marathon after reading that tall children outgrow the Roundabout pretty quickly (my daughter is 80% in height). So I bought the Marathon and compared to the Roundabout, it is pretty big. I really love the size and shape of the Roundabout and wish I bought it for my car. The straps dont seem to get twisted like they do on the Marathon. And the Roundabout is much smaller, less bulky and easier to install via seat belt (as opposed to Latch which is easy either way) than the Marathon. I also LOVE the color. Onyx is a fantastic color in person. I bought the Marathon in granite and the color is not as nice as the onyx. All in all, if I had to do it over again, I would purchase 2 Roundabouts in onyx.

There is a Britax sale each year around February when most of their models go on sale. Prices come down as much as $50. Most of the big baby websites, including Amazon, Baby Center, Albee Baby, Tiny Ride, have the sale. I already had the Marathon and decided to buy a Roundabout when the sale came around again since I have 3 trips coming up and read that the Marathon was too wide for some airplane seats. I bought the Roundabout for $167 on Amazon but saw it for $165 - $185 elsewhere. The Marathon is a VERY BIG seat and rather bulky for travel. I was expecting the Roundabout to be a smaller version of the Marathon but was quite surprised when the carseat arrived.

The LATCH system on the Marathon is a really great design. There is a tubular "L" shaped metal bar that is attached on either side of the seat. The LATCH straps are looped around these bars and adjusted up on one end of the "L" for forward and down the other end of the "L" for rear facing. When I first opened the Roundabout I noticed that there was no bar on the side of the seat and actually had a hard time finding the LATCH straps - they were tucked inside the seat. The LATCH strap on the Roundabout is actually removable and threaded under the seat where you would loop the car safety belt if you weren't using LATCH. When it comes time to position the carseat in the forward facing position, you take the whole LATCH strap out and loop it around the back of the seat (again just like how you would loop the car safety belt). Don't have me wrong, it works fine; it just wasn't what I expected.

The roundabout is also much smaller than the Marathon and I would expect a tall child to outgrow the seat fairly quickly. My son is on the small side 10%tile for weight and 40%tile for height and at 13 mos the top of his head is less than 6 inches from the top of the seat. For proper fit, your child's head needs to be at least 1" from the top of the seat when riding backwards and the seat back needs to reach at least the top of the ears when riding forward. He's about foot from the top of the Marathon. Children actually outgrow their carseats by height much sooner than they would outgrow them by weight.

We purchased this seat for our daughter at 11 months old after trying to use a Graco Comfort Sport and getting frustrated with the tightening and loosening of the harness of that model. The function of this harness is WAY better and she seems a lot more comfortable in this seat. The Graco straps were always lopsided. Plus, we like the size of the seat (not too tall) and the fabric (easy to clean and doesn't make the baby as sweaty as the velvety plush.) The only thing that would make it better would be a leveling window, hard to be sure the recline is just right without this.

After recent car seat buying nightmares I thought I should come and write a review for the Roundabout in case anyone runs into the same issues we had. I got this carseat before my son was born and it has worked faithfully for us until he turned 20 months. The seat is wonderful and I really have no complaints about it.

What we have run into now however is my son has outgrown it early (he is taller then most) and he is unable to move into a full on booster such as the Turbobooster because of age and size..he has to use one of the transitional boosters like an Evenflo Generations etc. So what I might recommend to parents looking into car seats is that you go with the other convertible Britax (Marathon?) because the weight limit is higher and you can use it longer then the Roundabout or you might look into a seat like the Britax Regence that grows with the child (up to 100 pds) so you dont have to buy many car seats over the first 2-3 years and spend a ton of money. We already spent $250 on the Roundabout and we are now possibly looking at an additional $250 for yet another car seat. Had I known I wouldve tried for a seat that I couldve used longer.

That being said, if you really like the look of the Roundabout I loved it. Easy to install and/or move between cars. I always felt my son was safe in it