snowbird25ca's Full Review: Eddie Bauer 3-In-1 Convertible Car Seat
We bought this seat for my daughter when she was 4 months old and had reached the height limit on her infant carseat. Our main reason for buying it was that we wouldn't have to buy another carseat for her ever again.
I found the instruction manual to be lacking, and I got very very frustrated when I was learning the seats features in order to ensure I installed it correctly. In fact, the car seat clinic I initially went to to have the seat installed, didn't install the seat properly.
Installing this seat rear facing in our Saturn ION was a bit of a challenge, mainly because it was difficult to get the seat at the proper angle. We fixed this problem by buying a leveller kind of like a pool noodle so that the seat back was at the proper 45 degree angle that is optimal for rear-facing.
We also had difficulty with getting the latch belt secure enough. The person at the car seat clinic told us that we may have to remove the base, but made it sound very cumbersome. With not being happy with the installation after a few weeks, we decided to remove the base & reinstall the carseat - perhaps the best decision we could have made. Once we removed the base the latch belt adjusted tightly enough and the proper angle was easier to get.
I have to say the 2 biggest cons for me on this seat are the harness adjustment and how hard the cover is to remove.
When the seat is rear facing, it is incredibly hard to get enough leverage to pull on the strap that tightens the harness. The seat back gets in the way and I imagine you'd have this problem no matter what type of vehicle you drive. It's a tight fit, but the seat did fit in the center position of our car and both seats were still able to be all the way back. This did mean the upholstery on the front seats got somewhat squished by the car seat though.
Adjusting the height of the harness is one area where this seat really shines. It's simply a matter of pulling back a bar that's on the back of the seat and sliding it to whatever notch you need to use. The top of the harness should be at or just below the shoulder for rear facing and at or above the shoulder when forward facing. This easy adjustment lets you experiment between 2 different heights when you're not sure if your child is needing to move to the next height or not.
Removing the cover to wash it took me a good 30 mins and was very very frustrating, enough so I was ready to go out and buy a totally different car seat. The fabric is tight around the seat belt guides for booster mode & very hard to pull over top - I worried about ripping the fabric because it's not reinforced. You also have to remove the belt guides and those are difficult to get off, but the hardest was trying to remove the crotch strap. I used a screwdriver to pry it out eventually, but because of the design of the recline adjustment, it's very difficult to get in there even with a screwdriver.
My daughter is now forward facing and I have to say installing the seat forward facing was much easier. Re-attaching the base was relatively easy although the instructions once again seemed inadequate.
I also found the hook on the tether strap to be a tight fit into the space our car manufacturer designed for the tether strap. I'm not sure if the hook shape and size itself is standard among all seats though & we may have had this problem with any other seat too for all I know...
The person I talked to at Cosco told me that 80% of the back of the carseat needs to be touching the seat of the vehicle, so this meant we could only install the seat in the most upright position. One concern I had with this is that the manual made no mention of this requirement anywhere, and it seems like a rather important thing to be missing to me. We used a folded towel in order to level the seat & get it touching the back of the vehicle's seat properly.
The forward facing installation in our car is extremely secure and I have to say that I feel very confident about it being installed correctly. This is something I had difficulty saying about the rear facing installation and I wish the instruction manual was clearer.
Overall, I'm now satisfied with this seat. We'll be in the market for another car seat soon and I'm not sure if we'll purchase another one, but I do feel we've gotten our money's worth out of the seat. I am still not impressed with the instruction manual, but having used the car seat both rear-facing and forward-facing now I don't hate this seat the way I first did when I first read the manual and tried to install it.
My daughter has never seemed to mind the seat and we were able to keep her rear-facing until she was 18mos old and hit the height limit, and now that she's 2, she still has another height adjustment in the straps to go, so I think this seat will work until she's old enough for a booster.
I wouldn't rave to anyone about this seat, but I wouldn't tell anyone not to buy it either. Just be prepared for some frustration in the beginning. You can't argue with the price though and if you never have to buy another car seat, it's a great value for the money.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 125
Age Range of Child: 12 to 36 Months
Comfort and convenience make this car seat a standout. The obvious plus you can easily use it from the time you bring your baby home from the hospital...More at eBay
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