Signature i-Level Infant Car Seat

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?

Ours is a flip x2 from mammas and papas. It might be worth mentioning not all infant car seats are created equal. Some have a less than supportive fit for newborns, also whilst loads do clip their car seats onto the pushchair and push them around for hours they aren’t comfortable for baby (I mean I probably wouldn’t be comfortable either in a car seat unable to massively move for a few hours). Things to consider. - price (what budget can they go up to) - weight (how much does it weigh? How much effort from you to haul it into the car? Think c section think tears and stretched abs) -fold (how compact) - manoeuvrability (trust me it’s hell on earth when it’s hard to push) - add ons (carry cots are essential for me as I did loads of walking with my 1st post partum it improved my mood, got me some sunshine and much needed exercise, we had a snack tray for 1 of mine at a time, bar to go across, rain cover ect) - weight of child (some only go to 15kg, so not fully last the toddler years) pick something that goes to 22kg and has a long seat. Honestly wish we hadn’t gotten the flipx2 as we use a cybex Easy Twist as our travel pushchair and loved it! So lightweight so easy for the bus and it’s been on every terrain possible and survived. Wish we would’ve bought just the carry cot add on for that one! We also now have a double (first born only turned 2 in Oct so very little to be without a pushchair) Our infant car seat was purchased separately as I didn’t like any of the mamas and papas ones and we already had it (2nd time mum, my first pushchair was 2nd hand and it died on holiday in the Lake District) it’s a Joie I level recline

You can attach most car seats to the pram with the right adapters (apart from seats with fixed isofix base) - the claim that car seats that can be attached to the pram are inherently less safe is just bs. All car seats sold in the UK need to meet the safety standards, and some car seats including many car seats sold as part of travel system choose to meet higher than the expected standards. Additionally, if you buy a travel system most bundles don't come with a car seat or you can choose which one is included in the bundle, or you can choose your own outside the bundle.  Finally, the baby needs a carrycot for the first 6 months, when I was pregnant with my first I was not able to find a single pram with proper wheels that had the carry cot that wasn't travel system. So even if you don't plan to ever attach the car seat to the pram or buy one that cannot be attached you'd still most likely need to buy a travel system pram. Travel system simply means that carcass with wheels is separate to the baby holder (seat, carry cot or car seat), you can choose which attachments you want to use. We got the joie chrome dlx travel system, joie i level seat for new born phase as it lies flat and then joie i spin 360. We were planning to have 2+ kids so the plan was to have younger in the I level seat and older in the ispin until ready for highback booster as I don't think our car would have fitted two I spin seats comfortably. The pavements are rubbish where we live so the bigger wheels and better suspension of bigger travel system pram are so much nicer than the tiny wheels of our smaller and lighter travel pram. Our car is also so small that if we ever needed to take the baby in for errands we'd struggle to fit a pram with carry cot in the car.

I'd go for a joie option, they re good value, have good safety rating and if somehow their percentile estimate is off then you haven't paid 1k for a travel system that lasts a year (from someone who was told 50th and had a 99th percentile baby that then didn't fit in things long). Not many parents get past 18 months old with their original travel system as they switch to lighter-weight strollers and less bulky car seats, so I definitely wouldn't go over the £600 mark.

Idk girl but I’m a FTM and its on my registry. Looked at joie then looked at nuna and we said “fuck it, we ball!”

I tried them both out in person! We did Joie first and it was fine absolutely would have worked. Then went to see the nuna and we could tell the difference in quality. My husband lovedddddd the Nuna Swiv and it was so lightweight and easy to move around compared to the others it made the choice really easy.

Hi. If you want a baseless seat with rigid latch, you have three options. Joie, Nuna, Graco. Of those three, Nuna and Graco are the only two with no added flame retardant chemicals, but that does not mean that joie is toxic and they do test their fabrics for harmful chemicals. Regardless, as you mentioned above, all of the harnesses have flame retardant on them. Nuna is obviously only available as a travel system so you’re stuck with one of their strollers. Joie is available separately and works with their strollers and a small list of other brands as of now. Graco it’s also available separately and has a small list of strollers. It is compatible with outside of the Graco brand. In terms of their weight they’re all about the same, and you mentioned being interested in the Pipa aire because it was lighter, but it’s only about a pound different because they do not weigh the canopy or infant insert. Joie & Graco do you have options for accessory bases, and some people do need the base for the gomax to help it achieve the correct angle for the first few months. So you do have a couple options, it honestly will just depend on what stroller you want your seat to work with.

Central Chidlom has loads but prices are going to be similar across the city, the one we got (can’t remember exactly which but it’s Joie and is whichever was the highest rated on which that was available here) was about 3x what it costs in Europe - this isn’t hyperbole, I actually bought the same seat in Europe when we visited for a month. Check FB marketplace and maybe some of the expat mum’s groups on fb although they are pretty strict on who they let in