We have a 23 month old son (our 3rd child in a four year span) weighing 24lbs & 32"tall. He is comfortably seated using first crotch strap. Plenty of room for growth. Spacious & comfortably padded for him with adequate recline providing nice leg room. Side impact head protection seems very high quality and purposeful for safety.
Installation is a breeze using the manual. There are of course belt paths for forward & rear seating positions. I especially like that there are seperate sets of latches for forward & rear facing positions no rethreading latches making it easy to switch btwn different sized kids facing in different positions. It is also very easy to adjust strap height with 8 adjustable positions changed by squeezing the adjuster handle. Fabric is pretty nice & easy to clean.
Until recently Our son was using a Graco snug ride 32 rear facing but out grew strap height. We have 3 Britax seats: 2 boulevards (1 from 2011 & 1 from 2009) & a 2007 Marathon. 1 blvd & marathon are used by our now 4 yr old girl in dads van & mine. 2nd Blvd used by 23 mo old son in Dads van rear-facing. Its a good safe seat but harder to adjust shoulder straps (must be rethreaded) & no near as much leg room (an inch or 2 less). Although we love our Britaxs, cost & difficulty of use made us well-research other options. I have taken a 4 hr car seat safety class which is why we keep the kida rear-facing as long as comfortable. Check out car seat crash test viseos rear & front seat positions & it will likely convince u to keep kids backward too. We switched our kids at about 2.5 yrs. Target sells tjis aeat -graco headwise on sale for $149.99 & there are good reviews as well.
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We did a ton of research before buying this seat. We liked the ease of installation and the limits are higher on rear facing. We have a tall kid and he likes this seat. The integrated cup holder is also great. I have a older Honda accord and it fits into my car with both seats in front pushed back all the way.
There are 3 versions of this seat depending on where yoy buy it. Target sells the headwise version for 199, but we got it on sale for 159 there...it has an extra head side protection so it costs a bit more. The other almost identical ones are the size4me and mysize70 sold at babiesrus for 179.
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I'll admit, I knew nothing about car seats until recently...I just feel extremely lucky that none of us were involved in any car accidents with my 14 month old niece before we were educated on car seat safety! (Google the website "Car Seats for the Littles"--they have a website, Facebook fan page, and Facebook group. [I am in no way affiliated with them, but found their website and group to be extremely helpful and very educational]). This is one of the seats they regularly recommend (along with the Graco Size4Me 70 and Graco My Size 70--the Headwise's "clones" that are sold in different stores), because of it's high weight/height (especially height) rear-facing limits.
This seat is MUCH cheaper at Target than here on Amazon (it is sold for $199 at Target, but sometimes goes on sale for less than that)...so don't overspend here unless you absolutely can't get to a Target or for some reason Target online doesn't deliver to your house/area. :)
The Headwise was extremely simple to install using LATCH on an outboard (one of the outer seats in the back seat, not the middle position in the back seat) seat in the back seat of my 2004 Pontiac Vibe. The LATCH connectors are really easy to unclip from the actual car when you need to remove the seat for whatever reason. It's simple to tighten the LATCH strap without having to be a body builder! The level indicator (only indicates for rear facing) is really nice to have, unlike another seat I tried that just had an arrow stamped into the plastic on the side of the seat. With the other seat I'm talking about (an Evenflo), I had to use rolled up towels underneath the seat base to get the seat level...with the Headwise, it's perfect without the towels (in my car at least). Just make sure you're parked on level ground (probably not in the driveway where it's sloped downwards towards the street), and you'll need to also check that it's level with the child in it.
My niece (who I watch 5 days a week) is in the 90th percentile for height, so I wanted a seat that could extended rear face for as long as possible. With this seat, as long as she's under 40 lbs, she can rear face until the top of her head is at least 1 inch below the red handle on the headrest (and that headrest extends out REALLY far, so I'm hoping this seat will have her rear facing for much longer than the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation of 2 years old).
This car seat comes with strap covers that protect the skin on her shoulders and neck area. We never used strap covers in her infant seat (one of the Graco Snugrides), but she really seems to like the added comfort of these strap covers (for what it's worth). It's fairly simple to get her in and out of the seat without bumping her head on the door frame of my car. I haven't experienced any issues with tightening the harness enough (I know that some people have experienced this). The chest clip was hard to unsnap at first, but once I got used to it (and probably as it got broken in a little bit), it was fine. I haven't had a problem with the crotch buckle "sticking"--it's been easy to get the buckles into the receptacle and easy to unhook them (press near the top of the red button on the crotch buckle, and not near the bottom). The head rest is what adjusts the shoulder strap height, so it's extremely simple to get the straps at the right height (at or below shoulders for rear facing; at or above shoulders for forward facing). You don't have to re-thread the harness (take the shoulder straps out from the back, then move them up to the next opening and put them back together in the back when you're done) when your child gets taller--you just squeeze the red lever on top of the headrest and move it up.
I'm not crazy about the feel of the sort of micro-suede type material on this seat, but I don't sit in it, so it really doesn't matter too much to me.
Be sure to read (and KEEP!) the manual, and read your car's manual as well (the section about LATCH [if your car has it] and the section about child safety seats). You can also access the manual online at Graco's website. You can go to YouTube and get a good idea of how to install the seat and un-install it (if you're more of a visual person...sometimes the car seat manuals can be a bit lacking in the way of descriptions and images). Oh, and register the seat! You can either send in the postage paid registration card included with the car seat or do it online in about 1 minute, using the web address provided on the registration card...you'll get any recall notices if there are any.
In summary, if you have a tall child, or if you just want to rear face as long as possible, this is a wonderful seat for that!
Honest reviews on Graco Headwise 70 Convertible Car Seat with Safety Surround-Red
Just purchase it about a month ago at target nd loved it. My son was ready to transfer over to stage 2 nd this was the one. Loved it from the start nd so does he. Really comfortable. Easy to install.
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OMG WE LOVE THIS SEAT!!!! We had the Graco Snugride 22 before this and it was again a great seat but my son was nearing the weight limit at about 5 months old so we started looking around. I wanted a seat with a high rear facing limit and an affordable price and this met both requirements. It is very easy to install, in-fact i installed myself and it was easier to install that it was to uninstall the old car seat base. Just a heads up, the forward facing LATCH has a 47lb weight limit before it can no longer be used. But aside from the forward facing LATCH having a low weight limit we love this seat. My son falls asleep every time he's in it, the buckles aren't hard to buckle, the headrest and harness are simple to adjust, and it fits in our Mazda 6 hatchback with no issues at all. We got it at Target on sale for $150.
