Nuna - PIPA Aire

The Noona is probably the best car seat that turns into a stroller - it’s an all-in-one. So you don’t have to worry about bringing along a separate stroller. It is great for the first year or so. And the Noona is stroller is small so you can easily bring it to wherever you’re going without it being a hassle. The ones like Uppababy Vista are good too, but it requires you to bring a separate stroller that you can click the car seat into. But once the kid outgrows the infant car seat, the stroller is just a large stroller and doesn’t really have any major benefits over any other stroller. I’ll say this - we used the Uppababy system for our first two kids then did the Noona for our third - and I really wish we had gone for the Noona in the first place.

Nuna makes an awesome infant carrier we just got two bases

I have a Nuna Rava forward facing behind the driver seat, and a Nuna Pipa rear facing behind the passenger. Both front seats need to move forward from where we'd normally have them to accommodate the car seats behind. I'm 6'2" and when I drive, I do need to move the seat forward a good amount from my normally position because my 4 year old would other wise have only a couple inches for her feet. There is not room to comfortably fit a third person in the middle seat of the second row I'd say. And no easy way to get to the third row with two car seats installed.

Gotcha! My friends visited NYC a couple times with their infant and their Doona worked well for them. May be worth the purchase for your trip. A “hack” I’ve heard is that if you’re planning on gate checking, go up to gate agent and ask (nicely) if there are any open middle seats and if so if you and your baby could be put in that row. If it works out you’ll get to bring the car seat onboard without buying a seat, if not gate check it as planned and lap carry I personally have the Nuna Triv + Pipa Aire and we’ve flown with it (and the car seat) a few times as a gate check and we love it bc the Triv folds easily. I feel like the Triv is perfect for NYC life but is an expensive purchase so the Doona a much better deal unless you happen upon a used Triv Also another option if you’re renting a car for your upstate journey is a car seat supplied by the car rental company - I think almost all of them have the option!

We have one but honestly the price tag just doesn’t make sense unless you’re really sold on it and it fits your stroller needs. We really liked the concept of being able to use it without a base, but the way it functions without the base is pretty annoying (strap across lap). It’s light, but they all get heavy fast, so that’s similarly not something that rises to the price tag, IMO.

The fact that my Nuna weighs less than 9 lbs is why I own it, every person who’s ever grabbed the seat has complimented how lightweight and easy it is to maneuver. And I’d buy it over and over again!

We have the Nuna Pipa URBN and LOVE it!! This is our first baby though so we don’t have much experience with any other car seat. We initially bought the regular Pipa that uses a base and it made our passenger seats virtually unusable (2016 BMW X5 and 2019 Volvo XC-90). The URBN sits lower on the seat due to not using a base and fits much better. It is a breeze to get in and out of our cars, easy and stress free to use in others’ cars, and I love that when I don’t have his car seat in my car all the seats are usable (none taken up by a base). I will say we’ve put it in a couple cars where the seat latches are covered with fabric held in place by Velcro and it has to be undone to install, which is less convenient, but hasn’t been a huge deal for us and in those cases we just use the included latch guides. We also heard people say the base is easier to get in and out every day but for us it’s been super easy, but again we only have experience with the baseless! I’ve also heard critiques about the size/weight limit, but my son was 16 lbs (25th percentile) at 6 months and it’s already pretty heavy. I can’t imagine wanting to carry a baby in a bucket seat around past the 22lb URBN limit personally.

I got the basic Skip Hop backpack style that you see everywhere. Works great so far, holds a lot. Infant car seat and stroller was also really hard for us to decide. We live in a suburban area, no plans to go running or off roading with our stroller haha. We got the Nuna TRVL LX and Nuna Pipa Air car seat. You can snap the car seat into the stroller, and the stroller goes almost flat so we used it for walks starting around 1 month old. Both stroller and car seat are incredibly light weight and easy to manage, 10/10 recommend. Unfortunately not at the point of convertible car seat yet but looking into Evenflo revolve and Cybex Callisto

CPST- feel free to PM me for more details or suggestions. Basically some of the more expensive brands are more complicated to install or are outgrown more quickly. For instance the nuna infant seat needs a rolled towel to get it level in most vehicles. Uppababy infant seats are outgrown very quickly. You mentioned Clek but Clek is one brand that is very recommended by techs. I own 3 of them myself. The Clek liing is one of the most highly recommended infant seats on the market. We couldn't use it in our vehicles because we have Ev's but that would have been my top pick otherwise. We own 3 Clek foonfs. The Clek also has adaptors for uppababy strollers if you go that route.

Which seat? The harness height on all of Nuna’s seats is SHORT. If you have a tall kid they will outgrow the seats earlier than expected. For us the infant seat was also short-lived because my kid started hating it by like 5 months and we switched to convertible , so that felt a waste to me. Also Nuna’s textiles stain, discolor and sun bleach super easily and look terrible. I am learning that it’s more common to have to replace a seat due to damage from something like frequent accidents or sickness /body fluids because there are so many dang rules about how to clean and you cant use basically anything, I would say Nuna is not worth the money.