Customer Reviews

Graco Safe Seat Infant Car Seat, Rittenhouse

5 star:		(61)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

For our first baby, we had a top-rated infant car seat made by Century. We did not like the fact that our baby was not leaning back properly and her head was always hanging to the front. Then we got the SnugRide as a hand-me down from a friend. It was ok, but outgrown too fast, so we lost the convenience of just taking her out of the car in the car seat instead of having to wake her up. LAst year we had our second baby and after using these two car seat for about a week (one on each car), my husband decided he hated them both and went and got this Safe Seat and two bases. Wow! What a difference. It is very comfortable. Our son fitted just right and seemed very comfortable. It is so easy to install and adjust. Our son is now 14 months, 31 inches long and 25 pounds and we are still happily using it... probably for another month when he reaches the limit. We are super happy with this purchase.

This is a great car seat. I recently bought this one, it is cute for a boy or girl.

Travel. I took my child in a plane for travel I used the Graco car seat bag for the valet check, it worked great. I did not take the base with us and it fit safe and secure in the car using the seat belt. It was a little tricky since the belt strap has to go over the car seat, it was easy with two people one on each side it took less then a minute to secure.

I also bought the Graco SnugRider Infant Car Seat Stroller Frame. They work great together. Just a couple problems. 1. If you put coffee in the cup holder and go over a bump it could spill on your child. 2. If you have a diaper bag you want to put on the bottom of the stroller, put it in before you put attach the car seat. Otherwise then that, it is fast to open and to travel with.


Note about the base, it is easy to adjust. However, if you have a car with leather seats it is difficult to secure the base. With the use of a non slip rug mat between the seat and base along with a cut up noodle (yes the ones you use in the pool) it was secure. I learned this trick from a fireman who installed the car seat for my 2 year old.

Working with a double stroller by BOB. I also recently bought a Bob Revolution stroller with car seat attachment. Some of the other carseats that work with the BOB stroller requires the back of the stroller to be adusted down (this would mean that everytime you open the stroller it would have be adjusted). I did not have to do this for this carseat, just pop it in and attach the strap and go.

I am very pleased with my purchase.

I absolutely recommend this infant seat! My son is almost 1 now and I am still using this seat. It is fabulous for it's fabric options of colors and most importantly for it's roominess. My son is on the chunky side, being an exclusively breastfed baby. He is still quite comfortable in this seat and I love being able to just attach him to the stroller as i walk my 4 year old into her her preschool. The travel system as a whole catches the eyes of many and I am always stopped by people saying.."what a ride!". Well it is, quite a ride. If you buy this car seat, it will last you for the entire FIRST YEAR of your baby's life. Thank you Graco!

This is one of my best purchases ever. This car-seat is not much heavier than Chico or any other brands. I have been managing carrying it with a baby pretty well (I am 5'5", 120 lbs lady). It has a side protection, head support, very convenient adjustable harness (they are not twisting, easy locking/unlocking, has three steps to adjust for different age...). I would like my baby to stay in an infant car-seat as long as it is possible, I would like to hold off dealing with convertible car-seats as long as it is possible'. My baby is 1 year 2 months, he weights 26 lbs (pretty big boy) - but he still fits this car-seat perfectly. He likes it very much! We have already purchased a convertible RECARO Signo, but do not rush to install it into the car. I love this Graco Safe Seat as I can grab my little one being in the car-seat and place into a shopping cart for just one sec. I love it b/c of three different ways to install it - latch system, belt with base or belt without base. I prefer to use the base - one click and you are ready to go! At the same time if it turns that my husband or nanny has to pick up the child, I don't need to worry about a car-seat. They can use it without the base easily. I saw bad reviews on this Safe Seat car-seat in the baby bargain book and still do not understand why this great product was given such a low mark "C"...Well, go figure... I also forgot to mention that this car-seat is usable with no problem with almost any strollers you see in the market. If you are a decent person, with two hands, two legs, in a good healthy shape and looking for a great car-seat which is worthy the money - Graco Safe Seat is for you (and your little one). Based on my experience - it is a very good car-seat and I will definitely recommend it to everybody! Thanks.

First of all I want to say the ONLY reason I give this seat a 4 out of 5 stars is b/c of the size. This thing is huge. However, I do like the design and safety features and after reading all the reviews and comparing it to other infant seats, I feel the best about this one. I had an older graco one that was a lot smaller but this one has way more padding and the fabric is easier to clean. I really am super happy with this purchase, it just takes up a lot of room in our van!

I wish we would have just gotten this one to start with. We got the Graco Travel System with a Snugride seat for our shower and that worked great - but it's not meant for bigger babies. I really like the fact that we can use this one (hopefully) until our son is 1 year old. It is so much easier to transport him to and from the car and in and out of stores when he is in his carseat.

This carseat works great with our Graco stroller and the pattern, while it doesn't match the Bancroft pieces that we have exactly, is still close enough that it doesn't clash.

My only real complaint is that we needed all new bases. It would have been so much easier if this seat fit on the Snugride base. Oh well.

Overall, though, we love it. And I've read other reviews that complain about how heavy the seat is; I just don't think it's that different from the snugride. I mean, we have a 20 pound baby in it, and then the carseat weight itself is in addition to that, so it's a bit to lug around, but I don't find it more cumbersome than just a regular infant carseat.

This is a great infant seat. My daughter is currently 17 months 22 pounds and 31 inches and we are just now starting to research her next step car seat. The seat fit very well in my old Jetta, my husband's 2 door Honda and my current Saturn vue. We've also used it in my mom's ford, MIL mini van and GPIL old truck as well as various rental cars while on vacation. Only my husband has a hard time getting it in and out of the car, but it is a 2 door, so I don't know that a smaller seat would make that any easier. We use LATCH with a base on my and my husbands car, and just the lap belt with no base on all the other cars we have used. It's easy enough to strap in using the seat belt, though I feel that straight lap belts seen to give a better fit than those with a shoulder strap. This seat will fit onto any Graco stroller, as well as lots of other brands of strollers to make an impromptu travel system, so just test it out in the store and you will probably find one that fits. The material is easy enough to wash, though my daughter seems to get a sweaty head pretty quickly in the summer. The harness is easy to snap together and adjust, as are the shoulder belts. I only had to move the shoulder belt height 1 time and that was quite easy to accomplish. She actually isn't even on the highest setting yet, but I'm ready to get her into a convertable booster even though she hasn't technically outgrown the seat yet, she's close enough, plus she has long legs and they're strting to get to the point that she has to bend them against the seat back so I want to get her into a bigger seat. Overall, I think this would work for most babies up to and past their 1st birthday. We've gotten 17 great months worth of use out of it, and we're able to skip the purchase of a convertable seat because she doesn't have to sit backwards anymore.

We bought this seat for baby #3 to replace the SnugRide we loved for our first two. Both of our girls had to move up to a convertible seat by 6 months, and we are hoping to avoid that this time around. This seat is HUGE, so I suspect we will make it, but it comes with the associated trade offs. It is heavy, even empty. So as your baby grows, you will need to throw it in a stroller or leave it in the car if you are taking it any real distance. But for me, having the option to leave a sleeping baby in the bucket, far outweighs any inconvenience caused by the weight.

Things I was worried about:

It does not fit that great in grocery carts...but it does fit and I feel relatively safe with him in it (he doesn't like the angle it keeps him at, however, so we don't do long trips together).

It works fine in the Kolcraft Snap N Go.

It is not too big for newborns...in fact, he looked more snug than either of my first two in their SnugRide.

It does what I wanted it to do (eliminate the need for me to have 2 different rear facing car seats, and provide me with a place to keep a sleeping 8 month old if I need one), so I would buy it again but if you are a person that likes to be able to carry the bucket around or want to be able to put it in shopping carts, I'd try it out in a store first.

UPDATE: We made it to 8 months before giving in and putting him in a convertible seat. I have to echo a few of the other commenters about it getting tight for long babies (our son is 90+ percentile for height) -- once we moved to the top slot, it got hard to strap him in comfortably. That being said, I'd buy it again.

Pros:
Extra size and weight support
Ease of use
Little guy seems to be comfortable during the drive

Cons:
Have to be a little careful when the clip-in portion (which is made of metal)is released.
Little on the unwieldy side and needs the front seat on a mid-sized sedan (Honda Civic 2007) to be pushed well up front in order for the baby seat to fit in the back.
Some options such as loosening the straps not very intuitive

We started out using the Graco Snugride for our son. He is approaching the time when he is going to outgrow that car seat and we looked to Graco for the next appropriate car seat because we really like our current one and we know that Graco makes very safe car seats. This is a rear-facing car seat and is much larger then the Snugride. The car seat itself is really comfy looking. The seat is super soft and a lot more padded then the SnugRide. I bet my little guy will love this! I wish I had known about this car seat originally, because it can be used on newborns and has a higher weight/height/age threshhold that it can be used until. With the SnugRide, we could easily take the whole seat out of the car if our son fell asleep in it and take him in the house without disturbing him. Because this car seat is bigger and heavier, I forsee it staying in the car and taking our son out and either carrying him or using our umbrella/lightweight stroller to get out and about. Another small setback is that it comes with a different base to install in your car. No big deal, but if you've already bought an extra SnugRide base for a second car, you'll have to do it again for this car seat. If I had bought this car seat originally, I wouldn't have run into this small snag. Live and learn!