Customer Reviews

Combi Connection LX Infant Car Seat in Chili

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

 

 

I have been researching infant car seats for a couple of months and finally decided on this one. I have been going back and forth between the Chicco Key Fit, the Graco Safe Seat, and Peg Perego seats. I chose this one because:
-The Chicco Key Fit looks a lot difference in person than it does on the internet. The fabric of the carseat did not seem like it was skin friendly, expecially for hot weather, it looked like it would cause irritation and just be uncomfortable to be in.
-The Graco Safe Seat also looked a lot better online than it does in person. The colors were great, but the actual seat and base looked very cheap. When my huband and I went to Babies R Us to test out how this seat would fit in our car, we had two problems with it: it was huge in our car, and our car is not a small one. And the base, no matter how much we tightened it, once the seat was on the base, it would wobble around and i hated that!
-The Peg Perego car seats are great looking, but too expensive and they do not look that comfortable.
I am so happy with my purchase of the Combi Connection. The fabric is so soft and I love the Mommy's Lap insert. There are also two little covers that go over the straps to keep the straps from rubbing against the baby's neck and face. We love the fact the you just have to pull one strap on the front of this seat to tighten all of the other straps. One of the things that I love the most about this seat is that the BASE will recline to fit any baby's needs. This has been the easiest car seat to install. Our car does not have a LATCH system, so we had to undo the buckle of the middle seat belt and "rig" it the same way the LATCH straps were and it was still very easy (This only work if your seat belt is a lap balt that has a buckle that will come off). Overall, the quality of this seat, the fact that it's sturdy in any position, and the soft fabric were enough to win me over. But once I got the seat and installed it, the fact the it doens't budge at all just reassured me that this car seat was very safe and sturdy. I love this seat, and face it, babies outgrow these things faster than you would believe and there is not point in spending over $200.00 when you have to turn around and but a convertable car seat a few months later. This car seat is worth the price and is padded so well in the right areas and very light yet heavy enough to be very safe. BUY IT! It's the best car seat around...trust me...I've looked.

I got this infant car seat for my first daughter who was 8 lbs and 19 inches at birth. It was really too big for her and I had to use the infant positioning support and the additional GoldBug 2 in 1 infant head support when we took her home from the hospital. Our car was latch compatible so installation was easy. She grew quickly and we eventually bought a Britax Decathalon (the best convertible ever!) and I loaned it to my friend who had twins. She already had a Graco Snugride from her first child. Anyways, I noticed a lot of differences between the two carseats:

Pros:
Very well padded and washable cover. There was an extreme difference between the Snugride and the Connection padding and overall quality.

Security straps are well-constructed and didn't twist at all.

Seat is deep and narrow, which is good for small infants and somehow seems safer.

Installation of the base using LATCH in the bucket seats in the outboard (as opposed to the center) position was super easy and very secure. My husband and my friend's husband struggled with the Snugride base which didn't fit well except in the center position of the backseat. It kept tipping up and seemed loose. I think it was because of the bucket seats since they didn't have that problem with the first child and it was the same car (Acura TL).

Putting the carrier in the base and removing it was super easy.

Carrier has shorter handle which is a plus for shorter parents.


Cons:

Connection doesn't fit in the shopping cart upper area.

It's a bit expensive.

If you have the Combi Savvy Soho stroller, it was often difficult to tell if you snapped on the carrier since it would "snap on" and the carrier would indicate it was locked, but then one side wasn't attached. We usually would lift up on the carrier handle to check and then really push down hard to get it locked on.

The canopy is a bit small and doesn't provide enough sun protection in the stroller...it was also confusing to remove it to get the seat cover off.



All in all, I loved this car seat and felt it was safe and good enough for my friend's babies. She also informed me that she uses it a lot and puts the smaller twin in it since it was deeper.

We just purchased this car seat. Overall it is great. However, please note that the car seat comes with a base! purchasing the base separately, as we found out, is not necessary!!!

So far this car seat has been great...it is easy to adjust and the infant insert is great and very comfortable for our month old son. Highly recommended!

I have this seat in the Wasabi color and absolutely HATE it! It's not the seat so much that I hate, but rather trying to install the base into a car. We have 3 children and have been through quite a few car seats (Evenflo, Gracco, Britax, Combi) and this one is by far the worst one yet. The LATCH hooks suck because you can't adjust them once you hook them, meaning you have to adjust them to the correct length and then hook them. Anybody who has used the LATCH on a Britax will hate this and find it nearly impossible to do. I refuse to use the LATCH because of this...it is nearly impossible, in my opinion, to get it hooked tight enough to be safe. Because of this, I use the seatbelt to hook the base in the car. Who designed this thing?? You have to run the seat belt in all kinds of akward ways to get it strapped and it still doesn't strap down tight enough to be safe. Plus, even if you do manage to get the base strapped down tight enough, the seat still wobbles back and forth in the base. I thought mine was broke so I requested a replacement and it did the same thing. I have tried strapping this in multiple cars as well thinking maybe it was the seat (tried in an 06 Audi A4, 03 Audi A4, 08 Audi A4, 01 Yukon XL, 05 Camry) and the same problem in all of them. Combi advertises that you can also strap just the seat in using a seat belt without using the base....UH NO! Not if you mind your child's seat rocking back and forth like it's an amusement park ride. Again, tried that option in the cars above and no luck with an of them.

As for the seat itself, it is just OK. I would have given the seat 1 star because of the base/seatbelt/LATCH problems, but the actual seat is OK so I bumped it up to 2 stars. It is fairly easy to take apart to wash in the machine and to adjust the straps...but the material isn't so soft. It has rubber grips on the bottom of the seat that keep it from sliding around when strapping baby in and it is placed on a table or so, which I actually loved...but they fell off within the first week of using the seat. The sunshade is just a joke because it doesn't pull over baby enough to block any light. If you have a chunky or wider baby, do not even think about buying this because they will only fit in it for a few months.

I really wanted to like this carseat but after 4 months of using it, I can't recommend it at all. With my older daughter, we used the Graco Snugride which was great over time - lightweight, clips into everything, good shade, roomy - but she hated it for the first couple of months and we thought it wasn't comfortable enough. So this time around, we looked for a carseat that looked comfy. This one certainly seemed to fit the bill - the fabrics are high quality, there is a lot of padding, and it includes the Mother's Lap insert which seemed great. I do think that the carseat is well padded and comfortable in that sense. Unfortunately, all of the padding and especially the temperpedic-style foam padding makes my daughter extremely hot. She is dripping in sweat when we take her out of the carseat. Overheating is very unsafe for newborns.

It is a constant annoyance that the carseat won't clip into shopping carts and I have to set it in the body of the shopping cart leaving no room for items. The sunshade is way too small and doesn't cover her at all and also comes detached all the time. Whenever you try to rotate the carseat handle, the sunshade is in the way and I end up trying to cram it under the handle and then it comes detached.

All in all, I have been extremely disappointed by this seat and if she weren't already almost out of it, I would have switched back to Graco.