The Compass Deluxe Folding Booster Car Seat - Bigger, but is it too Big?
Written: Oct 21 '07
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Sized for bigger kids, but fits average children too
Cons: Can block view out the back of the vehicle
The Bottom Line: We definitely like the seat for our larger than average 6 year old. Well designed, but it might be too tall in some vehicles.
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| mmcphee's Full Review: Compass B510 Booster Car Seat - Giraffe |
What's One More Carseat?
We could open our own store with all of the car seats I have purchased in the past 6 years. Our latest addition is the Compass 510 Deluxe Folding Adjustable Booster Car Seat in the Giraffe print.
The Basics
The Compass Deluxe Booster Car Seat is a belt positioning booster seat that uses the vehicles seatbelt to secure a child in the car, there is no internal harness. The seat is designed for children ages 3-10, 38-57 in tall and 30-100 lbs. The seat features open loop belt positioners to ensure the seat belt retracts freely and does not become stuck on the seat. The seat is full of EPS foam for extra protection in a crash, deep head wings for side impact protection as well as lots of comfort padding. For convenience features the seat has two flip-up arm rests and two cup holders that rotate out from the base of the seat. The tan and black patterned cover can be machine washed and air dried. The seat comes with a 1 year warranty so don't forget to register it!
The Set-Up
The seat came folded in half in the box with no obvious instructions as to how to unfold the seat. Fortunately the directions are easy to spot in a bright red plastic holder on the back of the seat. Opening the seat turned out to be nothing more than applying some force and pushing it open until the back locks into place. I found the instruction booklet to be extremely clear and well laid out in a logical sequence. The simple line sketches are a good accompaniment to the text.
I placed the Compass Deluxe Booster Car Seat in the second row passenger side of our van where out 6 year old rides when in a booster seat; her normal seat in the van is a Britax Regent. It sat firmly in the captain's chair and I was ready for her to hop in to adjust the back height. Two bright yellow handles, one on each side of the wings, need to be pushed to slide the headrest up and down. The seat should be adjusted so that one of the six height settings places the seat belt path at or slightly above the child's shoulder. My 50" tall, long torso daughter is on the second setting from the top while my 41" leggy daughter is on the lowest setting.
Once the height is adjust there is nothing to do but place the seat belt around the child. The belt path is not obviously marked, but it is similar to other booster seats. The lap portion of the belt goes under both armrests, while the shoulder harness goes under the arm rest on the buckle side and goes through the loop on the opposite side of the seat at the child's shoulder. While the arm rests can be rotated up to make it easier to access the buckle they must be put back down after.
Isn't it Just Like Every Other Booster Seat?
We have several other high back booster seats to compare this one to, an Evenflo Big Kid and several iterations of the Graco TurboBooster, and there are some notable differences.
Obviously there is the folding mechanism. While nice, I think it is completely unnecessary. Since most dedicated booster seats convert to a backless booster; they are no more difficult to store than the Compass Deluxe Booster. Presumably because of this folding mechanism the Compass Deluxe does not convert to a backless booster seat.
The Compass Deluxe Booster Car Seat and the Evenflo Big Kid Booster both have rotating arm rests. This does make it slightly easier for me to buckle my daughter in, but we do have three seats across the back, so nothing can really make that easy. Unfortunately with those flip-up arm rest comes another compromise. While the stationary arm rests on the Graco TurboBooster have fabric covers, the Compass Deluxe Booster Car Seat has hard plastic ones, which both of my daughters immediately noticed and disliked.
The height adjustment on the Compass Deluxe Booster Car Seat is superior to its competition. With the Graco Turbo Booster, when you raise the headrest you create a gap between the back of the seat and the headrest. Even worse, on our Evenflo Big Kid Booster the gap when adjusting the height is at the base of the seat. No matter what height you have the Compass 510 your child always has complete seat coverage against their back. This is a great comfort feature!
As for all around comfort there is no doubt that the Compass Deluxe Booster Car Seat has more padding than any of our other lower end models. Surprisingly only my oldest was able to detect more padding, and that was at the head rest. I would have believed that the super padded seat base would have been worthy of comment, but apparently not. My oldest did find the base comfortable for another reason, the raised sides. Most car seats with an internal harness have raised sides to help provide additional side support. But, and I didn't notice this until she pointed it out, our booster seats have flat seat bottoms so her legs roll off to the side. She definitely loves having the extra leg support on the side and since these lips are located under the arm rests the seat does not become narrower. The seat is also deeper than either of our other seats. While it doesn't seem to matter to either of them, I would think as children approach the height limit of the seat, the longer thigh support will make them more comfortable.
One of my favorite features of our Graco Turbo Boosters is the obvious belt path marked with red plastic. This makes it easy for adults who don't use car seats on a daily basis to easily see where the seat belt is supposed to go. The Compass Deluxe Booster lacks this additional safety feature. To make it even more difficult the shoulder belt guides on our giraffe print seat are covered with fabric. While that makes it more aesthetically pleasing for daily use, I would hesitate to let a less experienced adult use the seat. It would be easy for someone to think that the belt should pass under the belt path guide instead of being threaded into the loop. Since Learning Curve is advertising how easy the folding feature on the Compass Deluxe Booster makes it easy to move the seat from car to car and how grandparents are involved in picking up children, I think the seat should have a more obviously marked belt path. For us, the well defined belt path makes the Graco Turbo Booster the best choice for my parents to have.
All of our seats have EPS foam and wings for side impact protection in an accident. The major difference here is that the Compass Deluxe Booster has a greater distance between the wings. This made a huge difference to my 6 year old who liked the extra room, yet the wings are close enough together to still make a comfortable headrest.
As with every seat that we have ever had with a cup holder, the holders on the Compass Deluxe Booster are too shallow. For short cups or bottles that are mostly full, they are acceptable, but taller cups are too top heavy and tumble out of the holders. These are better for small toys or snacks if they are going to be used at all.
I Can See You! Is that Good?
The first thing I immediately noticed on our first ride was how much higher the back of the Compass Deluxe Booster is. With the seat adjusted to the proper height for her shoulder, the shell of the seat was still several inches above the top of my daughter's head. With our Graco Turbo booster, the top of her head is even with the shell of the seat. I'll guess that the large headrest area is both safer for my daughter and more comfortable, but if she were in the middle of the van I would not be able to see out of the back of the van; not so safe. In the middle of my admittedly small car I could not see almost nothing but my daughter in my rear view mirror. It took me a while to get used to having the Compass Booster take up more visual space in the van, but since it is in an outboard position it really isn't a safety hazard for us. If you are considering this seat, make sure you can return it if it obstructs your view out the back of your vehicle.
Mommy I Lost My Pants!
Both of my girls liked the super soft giraffe pattern fabric. It is definitely cool looking and appropriate for boys and girls. But that softness can come with an embarrassing price to pay for a child in elastic waist pants. The weather has been cool enough this week for my children to actually wear pants and we found out that some pants catch on the fabric as the child slides back into the seat. This is a much bigger problem for my 4 year old daughter who has further to slide and favors pull-on pants to anything with buttons or snaps. My 6 year old, usually remembers to lift herself back in the seat and rarely has a problem, but my 4 year old is used to sliding in and ends up pulling her pants down so they bunch under her.
Is it Worth $40 More Dollars
The Compass 510 Deluxe Folding Adjustable Booster Car Seat in the Giraffe pattern that we have runs about $40 more than the average Graco or Evenflo booster seats. Is it worth it?
While the folding feature makes the Compass Deluxe Booster distinctive I can't really imagine using it. The seat is still bulky when folded and even though it has a handle it still isn't the easiest item to carry because of its length. Everyone who drives my daughter around has a seat in their car so moving one around is not something we need to do. While there are some minor differences between out three seats for the most part they all come out even. As cute as the giraffe pattern is, you may want to take a look at some of the other options for a cover that isn't quite so hungry for little one's pants!
The Compass Deluxe Booster has a superior overall design for a bigger, older child that is wonderful us. My 6 year old loves the extra side seat support and I also believe they help keep her in a better position. While you can find raised sides in some Evenflo seats (not ours) the wings are shallow and do not offer much comfort. The pricier Britax booster also have the raised edges on the seat base, but they also have extremely narrow span between their wings. Deep but wide spread head wings along with the raised sides on the base of the seat make the Compass Deluxe Booster worth the extra $40. This is especially true if you plan to keep your child in a booster until they reach a size to safely use a seat belt and not just the woefully low requirements of most states. Of course the larger size produces the seats significant drawback, the potential to obstruct a driver's view out the rear window.
Thanks to Learning Curve/Compass for providing this seat in exchange for my honest opinion.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): free
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Epinions.com ID:
mmcphee
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Member: Mary Ellen
Location: Nutmeg State
Reviews written: 1174
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Back from Disney and catching up!
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