Avionaut - Cosmo 2.0 Smart

Most car seats (no all though so double check) have adaptors for most prams. Universal/maxi Cosi adaptors fit on lots of seats including the avionaut Cosmo, which is good and less pricey than the pixel pro. I personally got all the stuff to fix my carseat to the pram and then did it once. So if/when we have baby number 2 I might just get an erf fixed seat from birth. It didn't take long for the carseat and baby combined to weigh too much for me to carry anyway, even with a lower centile baby!

0-12 year car seats are a marketing gimmick. majority of car seats expire between 4-7 years (the exception is the besafe stretch which has a lifespan of 15). also worth noting a car seat that comfortably fits a 12 year old will not give a safe fit for a newborn baby. you want to remain rear facing as long as possible as it's the safest way to travel, and most multi-stage seats have a very low rear facing limit. you'd be best off getting a safe supportive infant carrier (a good cheap option is the avionaut cosmo) and then moving to an extended rear facing seat once your child outgrows the infant seat and settles on their centile growth chart. then once they've outgrown the ERF seat at around age 5/6, move to a dedicated high back booster until they reach 150cm :)

Bear in mind you tend to get echo chambers recommending the same things again and again but a lot of the time the people making the recommendations are either repeating what they see others recommending, they are talking about the one seat they have used with no way to compare it to other options or they are financially motivated (e.g. influencers, retailers). I used to work with car seats and also have gone down many, many ADHD rabbitholes with them over the last ~16 years, so have more knowledge on this topic than most though appreciate I don't know everything. But am happy to answer what I can. **Seats you mentioned** IMO, Pixel Pro is a lovely seat but the Avionaut Cosmo has many of the same features for much less money. The brilliant thing about the Avionaut seats is the positioning of the baby which is achieved with their inserts, which work differently to most baby seats. The Pixel has a more complicated insert which means you can essentially custom fit it to any age/shape of baby and it will always have a perfect fit, whereas the Cosmo insert is simpler, which makes it easier to use. Do you need a 100% perfect fit? Not really. Good enough is OK. Cosmo will give you a very good fit at pretty much any age, which is a lot better than most infant car seats do. I don't rate the Maxi Cosi 360 seat at all. It's fine, but it's nothing special and there is no way that it justifies the price tag. It's a shame, because Maxi Cosi used to be the absolute stand out gold star in infant car seats but their offerings over the last few years have been gimmicky and don't last long enough. Joie i-Level used to stand out from the competition in terms of offering the "lie flat" type seat at a much lower price point than its competitors, but these days it's not the only one on the market and there are options at various prices. It depends what you want really. **General things to note** The vast majority of car seat brands and travel system type prams on the market today use what used to be called Maxi Cosi type adapters or multi-brand/universal adapters. Notable exceptions are Silver Cross, Graco, Ickle Bubba and Hauck. For some prams you can buy two types of adapter, e.g. Silver Cross do an adapter for their own car seats and then a different one for other brand car seats. The Maxi Cosi/universal type has a distinctive shape, the bottom of the adapter is unique to the pram but the top of it will have a sort of 3D "U" shape with the middle of the U filled in. You can learn to spot this. When you see prams with a list of compatible car seats, what that means is that the company have in their factory or marketing office a selection of currently-popular car seats, plus any of their own branded car seats of course. They will test the set up with those models and list them as being compatible. There is no way that any pram company is going to test every single car seat on the market, but the compatability list is much longer in reality. At a bare minimum, if you see an older version of a car seat listed (e.g. Cybex Cloud Z) then a newer version (e.g. Cybex Cloud G) will be compatible the exact same. Also when you see older models (e.g. Maxi Cosi Tinca) newer models by the same brand (e.g. Maxi Cosi Pebble 360) will 99% of the time be compatible. Then you can extrapolate if for example Joie list that their prams take Maxi Cosi, Joie, Cybex and Recaro, but another pram company lists that their prams take Besafe, Avionaut, Maxi Cosi and Cybex, you can see that all these brands use the same system of adapter and should in theory be cross-compatible. There are a few rare cases where seats from a certain brand have an issue with the depth of the hooks or the adapters on certain models but this is very very few combinations. 99% of the time all works fine. (Avionaut work with this type of adapter, so no worries about finding a compatible pram.) You DO NOT NEED to spend upwards of £400 to get a good quality safe high performing car seat. About £150 without base, or £220 with base is about the going rate for the minimum here. IMO, it makes sense to consider whether any features you like (recline/inserts/weight/rotation) is worth whatever extra the cost is. You don't need a base which takes the next stage seat. It doesn't save money (unless you find a fantastic deal) and it's not more convenient. This is a con which only benefits the car seat company. There is one possible exception and that is Besafe Beyond. **Questions for you** You say a toddler car seat, but you're referencing infant carriers. How long are you hoping to use this first seat for? Do you plan on having more children? What do you actually want from a car seat, when you say it's a "good" seat, do you mean safety and quality or something else?

I think some people like the car seat at the beginning as it keeps baby a bit more upright but tbh I never had that and never missed it and I had a very colic baby. For me the biggest benefit was having a car seat that lifted off so I could take him out of the car still in his car seat. I got a avionaut cosmo, doesn't swivel but that's safer and I wanted something super safe as a lot of roads where I am are rural 60mph. On the pram front the biggest appeal for me has been a frame that folds, I actually just got the joie finiti as once you're on the stroller nothing needs to come apart anymore it just folds in one, although if you weren't rural/ grass walks you could probably get a more compact one.

Also went with the avionaut (cosmo model) for the same reasons. I was less concerned about pram/ buggy so got the pram/ buggy secondhand

Any seat will fit if it has universal adaptors and if it doesn't then you buy them for like £25. Avionaut Cosmo is a great budget option that is also one of the safest. I had the Maxi Cosi Cabriofix which is also a great budget seat and is safe but it has quite short limits so won't last you as long as the Cosmo which is probably the longest lasting infant carrier (or very close to).

Honestly, buy the pram set and car seat separately. You're better spending money on a good car seat than on a fancy pram. I really regret my Egg3 pram. My friend has an Ickle Bubbla Stomp (I think) and it seemed a lot more lightweight but she said it was a bit of a faff folding and unfolding it, whereas the Egg is defo easy to sort one-handed. Anyway, get yourself the avionaut cosmo car seat. It's cheap. You can buy a base separately if you want it to spin but it's optional. The next stage Aerofox also fits onto the same base as well so you can keep baby safer for longer. Car seats are life saving devices. Prams are not. Edit to say that my friend actually has an Uppababy Vista, not the IB Stomp. Sorry! Zero help I'm afraid.

A pram isn't a safety item. You want the bassinet to be certified for safe sleep as some babies sleep great in the pram. You want UV protection and for it to be easy to navigate on the terrain you're gonna push it on. Otherwise, it's a pram. Any will do. The car seat is a safety device. You need to invest more in safety items imo as it will save your baby's life should an accident occur, or as I tell my patients (midwife), you just need to brake a little too hard and baby could suffer serious injuries. The best of the best infant carrier is the Avionaut Pixel Pro. The Avionaut Cosmo is a great budget option. Isofix is not safer than belting in the seat but it is more convenient (I actually found it more hassle whereas my partner loved having the isofix base). I regret buying a whole travel system. So expensive and we bought a cheaper stroller which we now use all the time. If I could rewind time, I wouldn't have got sucked into buying a big bulky travel system.

It's not advised to have babies in an infant carrier (the one that attaches to the pram) for longer than 30 mins so unless it's a quick drive, in out the shop then it's not safe. We had the maxi cosi cabriofix which is a safe and bduget friendly option but it has low height/weight limits so she's outgrown it now at 10 months. The Avionaut Cosmo will last over a year though and around £130. I had a baby in September so the only bonus of the infant carrier is that you can easily bring it inside to keep it warm before putting a baby in. We switched to the Avionaut Sky (which is suitable from birth too) around 5/6 months and it's been great. Love this seat. Should last her until she's 5 at least.

For car seats, while basically all infant carrier are safe in crash tests because they all have the same basic concept, not all are supportive for newborns and especially tiny and premature babies. They can put babies in a chin to chest position which can restrict my their airways. And some seats have really bulky inserts which fit a newborn well but have an awkward transitional stage where they’ve outgrown the inserts but don’t fit properly in the seats. Some of the more supportive ones are Avionaut Pixel/Cosmo; BeSafe Go Beyond; Britax BabySafe; Maxi-Cosi Cabriofix; Cybex Cloud Z. You can sometimes get these seats in bundles.

Avionaut (for newborn) or Axkid belted seats have been my go-to in my 2015 110. We have been working with an ERF specialist and currently have two toddlers in Axkid minikid pros and those things are bombproof 👌

I want to reiterate what so many have said, 0-12 car seats are a gimmick, you won't get a safe and supportive fit across all stages and they won't be tested to the best standards available. There are Facebook groups dedicated to the safest car seat and to be honest it is definitely one of the things that you're better off spending a bit more on, rather than bottle warmers and travel systems and stuff, as your child's life could literally depend on it. Brands like Axkid and Avionaut have a stellar reputation. We went with an Avionaut infant seat and the fit for the baby is superb compared to what my older kids had, no head flop or anything.

In all honesty, you’ll probably hate the heavy travel system after a year to 18 months. The coasatto plans are fine, it’s just the car seat that’s the issue. Definitely try out some prams in store and try some of the lighter travel systems, that are easy to operate. You can find some great offers on FB marketplace if you’re not wanting to spend a lot of money on something you may not like! You’ll probably want a compact stroller at some point and that again depends on what you need. Autofold and lightweight is the way to go. The avionaut car seats for little ones is great.

We have an Axkid Minikid and really like it, the Avionauts are also great. Or if you have a big car, the BeSafe stretch is very long lasting and has lots of recline options - it is bulky though!

We just got our first car seat Avionaut which goes with a Nuna travel system. The thing to understand is many car seats use universal or Maxicosi adapters to put their car seat onto the stroller. Regarding how useful it would be, ideally the car seat should mainly be only used in the car and a carry cot or a lie flat stroller should be used outside. We figured that for quick grocery run or something else ( within the 2 hour car seat time limit), it would be useful to have the option to attach it to the stroller