A Safe Car Seat That Grows With The Kid And Your Budget

I took my family out this evening to look for a new car seat for our youngest, Noah. He turns 1 this week and he is ready for a new car seat. When looking for a car seat, we try to find a mix between great safety, reasonable functionality, a good price and a seat that will grow with the child. With our next to last boy, he out-grew his car seat much quicker than we had planned because he is a stout fella. So we upgraded him to a Sunshine Kids Radian65 Convertible Car Seat. This is a great car seat with a metal frame that is very sturdy and very comfortable for children up to 65 lb using the 5-point harness.

Although we have really liked the Sunshine Kids Radian65 Convertible Car Seat, this time we decided to go with a Graco Nautilus 3-in-1 Car Seat in Matrix because it was less expensive and shared most of the key characteristics of the Sunshine Kids Radian65 Convertible Car Seat.



      

The Graco Nautilus 3-in-1 Car Seat in Matrix has a metal sub-frame for strength. But it also has all of the additional padding necessary to make a 1-year old comfortable as well. To get the extra padding for a 1-year old from Sunshine Kids, I would have to upgrade to the Sunshine Kids Radian80 Convertible Car Seat. But that car seat costs $249. I think we would rather save the $122 to go toward something else for our children.

I hope that you find this helpful in your car seat pursuits.

Brad