A booster seat with some drawbacks
Written: May 10 '00 (Updated Apr 28 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Inexpensive, comfortable
Cons: Straps are hard to adjust, straps twist, harness slots are low
The Bottom Line: This seat has too many bad points to make it worthwhile. There are much better seats on the market to choose from.
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| iowamommy's Full Review: Cosco Juvenile 02-442 Booster Car Seat |
The Cosco 02-442 high backed booster seat is an inexpensive booster seat, but I have found the cons to be greater than the pros with this seat.
We bought this booster seat for occasional use in my husband’s pickup or if my daughter had to ride with somebody else so we didn’t have to take out her regular car seat each time and then reinstall it.
Description
This is a booster car seat that has two uses. Seats of this type are actually called combination seats.
For children between 22 and 40 pounds, it is used with an internal five-point harness and it is strapped into the vehicle through a belt path in the rear of the booster, much like a traditional car seat.
For those children who have outgrown the harness, it is then used as a belt-positioning booster only, and the internal harness is removed. As a belt-positioning booster, the child sits on it and the vehicle’s shoulder belt is used to hold the child in place. The booster is no longer strapped to the car through the belt path in the back. The booster is then serving to lift up your child and position him/her in the proper place so the seat belts can restrain them correctly. The model I have can be used for children up to 70 pounds, provided they have not outgrown the seat by height. Once the ears are at the top of the booster seat, the child is too tall.
Is your child ready for a booster seat?
Before buying a booster seat, make sure your child is ready for this stage. While this seat says it can be used with a harness for children 22-40 pounds, a younger child might be better protected in a convertible car seat. The convertible seats offer more side protection, while booster seats have minimal sides. Not only might this protect them better from a side impact, it also offers more support if your child falls asleep and her head slumps over. It is recommended to leave your child in a convertible seat until the height or weight limit is met, and then move to a booster seat. For many kids, this is around age 3, although a heavier than average or tall child may be ready for the transition sooner. All children are different.
If your child is ready for a booster seat, here are my findings.
What do I like about this booster?
The seat is padded adequately and has an attractive pattern.
When used with vehicle belts, you can thread the shoulder belt through a “guide” on the side of the seat so the belt lines up in the correct place on your child’s shoulder, instead of hitting them in the face or too low on the shoulder. There are three levels to choose from to get the correct fit.
There are also grooves where the seat bottom meets the seat back, and this is a guide to help place the lap portion of the seatbelt when used with vehicle belts. .
IMPORTANT NOTE: Do NOT use this as a belt positioning booster seat if you have a lap belt only. This will not be safe. Use a shoulder belt/lap belt combination only. (If used with the internal harness, you can use a lap belt, as it would then be threaded through the belt path of the booster seat, like a regular car seat.)
Another nice feature is that you don’t have to completely rethread the harness to change it from one harness height to the next.
The seat is inexpensive. I usually see it for around $50. It is also widely available at most discount stores.
What don’t I like about this seat?
The harness system does not have a front adjuster on the model I purchased. I don’t know why I didn’t realize that when I bought it. It is very inconvenient. In order to get a snug fit, you have to unbuckle the seat from your car and adjust it from the back. While you can get a “close” to snug fit and leave the straps that way, the straps may be tight one day and loose the next, depending on what your child is wearing. The system where you can simply pull a front adjuster to tighten the straps correctly every time is much more convenient.
The straps have a terrible twisting problem. The straps are a tiny bit wider than the loop they slide through on the buckle. The straps then tend to bunch up because they are too wide to slide freely through that slot, and they fold over onto themselves and get twisted up. Having a wider slot opening on the buckle would have helped this problem.
Not only are twisted straps inconvenient, they are actually dangerous. When the strap is twisted up, it is narrower and has less surface area, which reduces protection for your child in an accident.
Threading the harness straps is a bit confusing and the straps may not hold your child in properly if this isn’t done correctly. The harness is one continuous strap and crisscrosses across the back.
The upper harness slots are a bit on the low side, causing your child to outgrow the harness earlier. Take my case for an example. My daughter's shoulders are right at the top slots, so the harness won’t be able to be used for much longer. She is well under the 40-pound weight limit of the harness. If the slots were higher, she could have benefited from that extra protection the harness offers for a much longer time until she reached 40 pounds. In fact, she is even under the 30-pound weight limit for using the booster without the harness at all! She fluctuates between 28 and 29 pounds. She is 3 years old, but thin. She is too small to use the booster with vehicle belts only, but too tall to use the harness. You may want to find a seat with a higher harness slot height. I don’t want her in a seat without a harness yet, because she is too young to sit still in the adult belts, and if they aren’t positioned correctly on her, it won’t do any good in an accident.
Recommendation
Unless you like wrestling with these straps every day, I wouldn’t pick this seat as your main booster. If you use it for occasional use, it is an inexpensive seat that may fit your needs.
If your child is beyond the harness stage and you are simply looking for a belt positioning booster seat, then this seat would be fine!
Evaluate your needs before deciding.
Other tidbits
If you are still reading by this point, you must be interested in finding out more about boosters. Read on for a few pointers…
How tight is the harness supposed to be?
It should be snug but not hurting your child. There are two ways to test for tightness of the harness strap.
•You should not be able to fit more than one or two fingers underneath the strap at collarbone level.
•The second is the “pinch” test. Test this up above the chest clip, in the collarbone area, too, with the harness pulled snug. Try to make a pinch in the strap going up and down (north and south), not side-to-side (east and west). If you can pinch the material, it is not tight enough.
What other harnessed boosters may be a better choice?
If you are looking for a harnessed booster, most of the other brands have higher slots and can accommodate a taller child, plus they have front adjusters. I would look for those two features.
For a quick summary:
•There is a Cosco Eddie Bauer version of this same seat that does have a front adjuster, but the harness slots are low like this one, so that might not be the best choice if your child may outgrow it by height.
•A new seat, the Graco Cherished CarGo, is only about $10 more than the Cosco. The only thing I didn’t like about it is that it has very thin padding, and I could feel the plastic ridges through the cover where the child’s back would be and I didn’t know how comfortable that would be for extended use. It fit tightly in my van and had excellent side support, though, being the most side support of any booster in this category. It also has a bit of a recline to it. Please check this one out, as it may fit your needs.
•The Century Breverra line of seats have very high slots, but are notorious for being hard to fit in many vehicles. Try before you buy.
•The Century Ascend (also in the Breverra line but with a different belt path) is a new seat that has little arm rests and a cup holder. I liked it, but it seemed to have the same twisty straps as the Cosco, so I decided against it. If the strap problem doesn’t bother you, consider this seat. Also note that there is little side support for sleeping.
•The new Century Next Step II just came out. It is like the original Next Step, but it now comes with a front adjuster! I am getting this seat and have it ordered. I am getting the DX model, which has little shields around the buckles that help keep the straps straight. It has a recline feature if your child still naps in the car and some other nice features, plus the straps don’t seem like they will twist as much. I’ll be sure to write an Epinion about it!
Recommended:
No
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iowamommy
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Location: Iowa
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