jurgrace's Full Review: Cosco Juvenile Alpha Omega Convertible 22-150
When my oldest was about seven months old, her legs were too long for her infant car seat. Since Washington state requires a car seat be rear facing until a child weighs 20 pounds and is a year old, I found myself faced with two possibilities: (a) get a rear-facing car seat to use just for a few months and buy a "regular" forward-facing seat later, or (b) find a convertible car seat that would also serve us well once she was big enough to face forward. Since I don't like a hassle and my husband doesn't like to buy a lot of stuff, we went with (b).
Note: this review is somewhat lengthy, so I have put in relevant headings. If your eyes begin to glaze over, feel free to skip to the sections that most interest you in making a purchase decision.
The Search After scouring the aisles of Babies R Us and Target, I stumbled upon the Cosco Alpha Omega at Costco for $129.99. We chalked it down as a possibility and I headed to the internet to read up on reviews (more like blurbs) on the Babies R Us website. The majority of the reviews said the car seat worked well but that the straps twisted up too easily and were a real pain. I figured I could deal with twisty straps and that the people writing those reviews must just be impatient. The Cosco Alpha Omega was still the most affordable, long lasting and safe car seat we saw, in a gender-neutral dark blue, so we went with it.
I should have placed more weight on those reviews.
What's in the box? The Cosco Alpha Omega comes with the car seat, its base, a pillow that can velcro on to the top, an infant head support insert, harness covers, a belt with hooks for LATCH installation, and a video that can be watched prior to installation. There is minimal assembly required, as adding the pillow, insert and harness covers are all optional. Getting the car seat ready to install took my husband less than ten minutes.
Installation, not so quick and easy Since my husband was in charge of the installation, I never saw the video, so can not comment on its effectiveness. I can report, however, that the manual is not the clearest thing to read. Here is a sample I had to re-read a few times to fully catch:
WARNING: Use only the vehicle's lap and shoulder belt system when restraining the child in this booster seat without the internal shield/harness. Do not use only the lap belt when using this seat as a belt-positioning booster without the internal harness (see photo).
Since the majority of the photos in the manual look to be fifteen to twenty years old, my guess is that many aspects of the manual had not been updated when our car seat was packaged. This certainly did not help us with the installation process.
The base of the car seat is kind of large, and has a recline feature that can mostly be useful to you in the rear facing position. The manual implies that it should be used in all cases, unless it takes up too much room to fit in your car. In the rear facing position, the back of this seat did not allow it to fit behind the driver's seat when it was reclined to where it needed to be when my husband drove, so he had to install it behind my side (the passenger door).
In theory, installation should not be very difficult: the space in the back of the car seat for lacing the car's seat belt is wide enough for an adult's hand to easily guide it through. Similarly, you can lace the LATCH belt through this space and hook the metal hooks onto the lower anchors on any car that is LATCH-equipped (which would be any car made in the past five or six years). The problem is that the opening part of the hooks is very narrow, and the metal is so hard that it is difficult to push down on the part that is supposed to enclose the hook around the anchor. This is also a problem if you want to uninstall the car seat.
Rear Facing Position The manufacturer approves the rear facing position for babies weighing between 5-35 pounds, measuring 19-36 inches tall. As I mentioned before, this position will take up a lot of space, as the car seat is about two feet high. Since the seat needs to be reclined for infants, this means it will be poking out at least two feet in some sort of angle towards the front seat.
Even though it took up a lot of space, I was happy with the Cosco Alpha Omegain this position. My daughter had plenty of leg room and was able to get familiar with sitting a little more upright than she could in her Graco infant seat.
Forward Facing Once my daughter hit one year and 22 pounds, we switched this car seat to the forward facing mode. This is meant to be used from 22-40 pounds and from 29-40 inches with the harness. Without the harness, it can be used as a belt-positioning booster from 30-80 pounds, up to 52 inches tall. Installation is basically the same as in the rear facing mode, except that you turn the seat around. While you can recline the seat somewhat in this position, I wouldn't recommend it, as the 'upright' position still allows kids to lean back and reclining it will only make the seat stick forward even more so than it already does.
Belt-Positioning Booster Each side of the car seat has three different notches along the top (over the shoulder), so that a seat belt can be threaded through and the car seat can be used as a booster for children from 30-80 pounds, up to 52 inches tall. In order to use as a booster, the harness and base must be removed from the car seat. Removing the base is not very difficult: you just push a tab which will release a bar that you can continue to pull out. The harness is a little more time consuming, as you have to unfasten and unthread different parts. You also have to turn the car seat over, which can be a pain if the seat is LATCH-ed in.
We have never used this seat as a booster, since we bought a booster and passed this seat down to my second child when we were nearing that point, but I'm not sure how useful this seat would have been to us as a booster anyways. The reason for this is that the cup holder is in the base. In my experience, by the time a child is big enough for a booster, the cup holder is a pretty vital part of the car seat. Having to remove the part of the car seat that has the cup holder renders this aspect useless to me.
Other Details The Cosco Alpha Omega uses a five point harness. The buckle that meets over the chest clicks together quite easily. My two year old loves the sense of independence she gets from being able to close the top of her seat belt by herself.
The bottom buckles are a bit more problematic. In the five years that we have had this car seat, exactly three people have been able to successfully work the bottom buckle: my husband, a friend of ours who used to ride a lot with us, and myself. Each strap has a part of the buckle that has to connect together before it can be inserted in the bottom (between the legs) part of the buckle. This is a terrific safety feature, adding one more complication to the process of unbuckling, but not very user friendly, particularly when you have other people constantly trying to help you get your kids into the car. I have noticed that the newer models of this car seat have a similar bottom buckle to most other car seats now, where each side of the harness buckles into the bottom independently of the other.
The harness covers are great; they are easy to install around the straps, they are soft, and they comfortably keep the straps from digging into my child's neck.
We used to use the pillow, but my older daughter started complaining when she turned three that it didn't allow her head to rest all the way back, so we took it off. As I mentioned before, this attaches easily by velcroing it to the top of the back of the seat.
There are also storage facilities in this car seat. On one side, there is a netted pocket in the front for binkies, nail clippers and other personal items, as well as a tray in the base where you can store additional doohickeys. My daughter can't exactly reach that while she is buckled into the car, but I sometimes will put a couple of things there for when we get to our destination.
Along with another little tray in the base, the other side has a cup holder that slides out, so that the top of the seat doesn't knock the drink out. I only have two issues with the cup holder. The first is that since the cup holder is only on one side of the car seat, it becomes useless if I install the car seat with the cup holder next to the door, because kids won't be able to pull it out. My other issue is that the seat sits up so high that my two year old can't reach far enough down to use the cup holder, even with a "tall" sippy cup like the Playtex 9 oz. sipster.
The cover is made of polyester and urethane, comes off fairly easily (attached by elastic loops), and can be machine washed. Out of paranoia, I line dry ours.
Sounds great, what's the problem? As I mentioned before, the LATCH hooks are very difficult to attach and re-attach. This makes logistics difficult for us, as we basically need to position this seat in a permanent location of the car: no moving it back and forth between cars or between the middle and back rows of our primary vehicle.
Also, the location of the cup holders renders them useless if you need to put this car seat on the driver's side of the car or if you want to use it as a booster.
By far, the biggest problem, however, is those darn straps I read about. The harness straps thread through the upper buckle. They also twist inside of there, shrinking in width from one inch to one centimeter. The fit of the straps within the buckle is snug enough that they are very hard to untwist once they are looped inside of the buckle. This makes it difficult to straighten them out completely. Since the twisting turns the straps into something that resembles a thick ball, it is nearly impossible to adjust the harness straps to a safe and comfortable tightness once your child is sitting in the car seat. I can lift up on the little lever on the bottom to pull the straps looser, but pulling down on the bottom strap to tighten the harness will only tighten to a very small extent.
Possible Solutions Attempted A friend of ours has the same car seat and recommended ironing the straps with corn starch to stiffen them up, but that did not work for us (despite us adding more corn starch out of frustration). My husband also tried wrapping stiff athletic tape around the straps just above and below the chest buckle, which kept the straps stiff enough not to twist for a couple weeks, but then they found a way to twist anyways, and then the tape started coming undone and its stickiness made things even more annoying in relation to the car seat.
Out of curiosity, my husband and I recently examined a newer model of this car seat at Babies R Us, and the straps looked and felt about the same as the ones on our car seat, so my husband thinks they probably have the same twisting issue.
Finally! The Bottom Line When it comes down to it, the most important question you can ask about a car seat is Will this car seat keep my child safe in the car? I believe that the answer to this question with the Cosco Alpha Omegacould be "yes," except for the harness straps. They twist to the point that you can't always adjust the tightness of the harness for a snug fit, giving my child too much upper body wiggle room. There are better car seats out there; get one of those.
Thanks for reading.
Postscript: After publishing this review, I noticed that the product picture has been changed from what it originally was to a newer model. However, the product details and the links at the bottom of the page show the correct information for the seat that I have.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
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