15 best car seats, tried and tested to keep your child safe, secure and comfortable

It’s tricky to find fault with this car seat – it’s a fantastic all-rounder. That means it’s suitable from birth until your child will no longer need a car seat – and we think this makes it brilliant value for money.

The seat itself was a breeze to fit. The product has a QR code on it, which you can scan and it will bring up a simple audio commentary on your phone that takes you through how to fit it. We thought this was genius, and prevented any arguments or incorrect fitting. The Isofix fittings were easy to slide out and attach to the anchor points, and the leg acts as a counterbalance. Both of these points have a display that shows green when the seat is safely in place.

The seat reclines really easily, and the headrest is also easy to adjust (trust us, this isn’t always the case). The swivel function is really smooth, and we loved that you can swivel it even for a newborn. Unlike some newborn-specific car seats, this doesn’t have a separate base, so you can’t take the seat out and about with you. The padding on the seat is some of the most luxurious we’ve seen – it’s made of bamboo fabrics that are breathable and hypoallergenic, so no sweaty backs for our passengers. One thing worth noting is that it does take up a lot of real estate in the car – in a compact car, the seat in front had to be quite far forward to accommodate it when it’s in the rear-facing position.

It’s now available for pre-order for early August.

Joie have a whole ecosystem of car seats that all fit on the same encore base (£190, Mamasandpapas.com).  This means you can buy one base and fit all the car seats on the same one, making it a more cost-effective and less wasteful approach to moving through the ages of car seats. The i-Level is your entry point seat on the base, and it’s a really fantastic all-rounder.

The i-level recline spins on the aforementioned base, giving easy access to your baby for loading and unloading. It also reclines to flat for use in the car, as well as out. It does take up a fair amount of space reclined though, so any passengers in front will need to be fairly far forward. The baby insert is plush, and the buckle is fuss-free, making things comfortable and easy to use. The wide carry handle is great for slinging over your arm, and we also liked the extendable sun canopy.

The i-harbour is also part of the Joie encore suite of car seats. This means you can travel through the ages and stages of the car seats while only needing one base (sold separately) to see you through.

The i-harbour takes your child from birth to four years, and can be rearward facing and swivel to forward facing when they’re old enough. You can keep this seat reward facing until they’re four though. The spin mechanism on this seat is very nice. One touch of the button and your child will spin around as easily as a judge on The Voice.

There’s a five-point recline, meaning car naps are that bit more comfy – whether they’re forward or backward-facing. Beware, the reclined seat does take up a bit more room in the car widthways, so factor that in. The fabrics on this seat feel premium, as does the buckle, which is easy to use.

Imagine gliding along the road, tucked up as snug as bug in your very own bed. Well, now your baby can live that dream thanks to the carrycot car seat. It sits on a base (£220, Johnlewis.com), which then lies across the back bench of the car. This particular carry cot car seat is made from the finest fabrics, including GOTS cotton, so it’s toxin free and it certainly feels snuggly and soft.

Fear not, your baby is still strapped in a harness, so can withstand an emergency stop or a hairpin bend. We found the buckle on this car seat quite tricky, but perhaps it would ease up with use. We loved that you can lift this carrycot off the base and then slot it onto a pram, so your baby can stay slumbering away and you don’t have to worry about their delicate backs being scrunched up. It also comes with a dream drape, to keep things dark and cosy for your sleepy babe.

The Rolls Royce of infant car seats, Cybex haven’t just given this the gold-standard treatment, but platinum. This just means it’s the fanciest of fancy from Cybex, who are big hitters in the car-seat world. The 2022 update to the cloud sees it have adjustable recline while in the car, which means nap times are even easier on the go. And when it’s not in the car, you can lay it totally flat. This means you’re not so restrained by that two-hour limit.

The seat needs to be used with a Z2 base (£209.95, Naturalbabyshower.co.uk) which might make the whole package seem pricey, but you can carry on using the base with the Cybex sirona S2, if you want to stay with Cybex for longer. The base also allows the cloud z2 to swivel through 180 degrees, saving your back when you’re loading and unloading your tiniest passenger. There is also extra side-impact protection, which you click on to the side of the seat closest to the door. You may find adding and removing this a bit annoying if you don’t want it on the car seat when you’re lugging it about outside of the car.

The newest iteration of the well-loved Maxi-Cosi pebble is the 360. This infant carrier is designed specifically for newborns up to 15 months. It’s rear-ward facing only, obviously. But it can rotate on the base, making loading and unloading of the seat easy. The compatible FamilyFix 360 base is sold separately, but it also works with the Maxi-Cosi pearl 360 and allows you to keep your child reward-facing until they’re four. The base lets you know when the seat is safely clicked in thanks to colour indicators and a click, which gives extra peace of mind.

Our teeny tester didn’t seem to get hot or sweaty in the seat. It has panels and fabrics that are designed to help air flow, which is good for babies as they can’t regulate their own temperature. The canopy no longer clips to the handle like older style Maxi-Cosi infant seats, making carrying easier. The harness is easy to click and unclick, with a very smooth mechanism to tighten the straps and the infant insert has built-in side-impact protection. Basically, there’s lots to love.

We loved that this booster seat fostered some independence in our child. This is thanks to the ClickAssist function, which senses when the seat is sat on and illuminates where to click the seat belt in place. Our mini-tester also loved this function.

As you would hope, the seat complies with all the latest safety standards and has enhanced side-impact protection. And the seat can expand both length-wise as your child grows as well as width ways. This is quite handy if you don’t want the seat taking up too much space while your child doesn’t need it. The fabrics seemed to prevent overheating in our tester, and are fairly easy to wipe clean, if you can keep up with spills.

This is one of the few seats we’ve included that isn’t isofix – but that doesn’t put us off. Firstly it’s made by BeSafe, which is one of the leaders in car-seat safety. Also, this seat lets your child face reward until they’re seven years old, without compromising on anyone’s legroom. Was our tester – who is now normally in a forward-facing seat – thrilled at facing the back again? Well, it took a bit of getting use to. But knowing they were travelling in a safer position gave us extra peace of mind. It also has additional side-impact protection.

It’s also hugely handy if you need to put three car seats across the back seat but don’t have three isofix fixings across your car’s back seat. Larger families, we know your woes only too well. We loved the magnets that hold the straps back for easier loading, and that you can recline the seat for easier overnight travelling with older kids. The seat looks comfy, and our testers reported that is was “good” (trust us, that’s high praise indeed).

Sleek and stylish, this is a fairly narrow seat for those that need extra centimetre on the backseat. It ticked our mini tester’s box of having a cupholder, which admittedly reduced spills on the back seat – so a win for us too. Another, probably more essential, tick is the additional side-impact protection it has.

The Nuna Aace LX also reclines, which was useful on a long journey as our child was more willing to snooze. We liked that as a child grows, not only does the seat expand height-wise, but also the depth of the seat increases for extra comfort. The headrest is also quite large, which meant our tester wasn’t slumped forward as much when they fell asleep.

Another seat that is suitable from birth to four-years/105cm, this seat offers peace of mind when travelling for the first few years of your child’s life.

The seat is really easy to install. There’s a handy bubble to let you know when the seat is in the correct position with the anchor, while green lights make it obvious when the seat is fitted properly. When installing the seat it required us to move the seat in front all the way forward and folded down to allow us the room to fit it. But once it’s installed it doesn’t take up too much room in the car. There is additional side-impact protection, which you can adjust depending on how you have the seat installed (this is a bit tricky to fit at first).

The newborn mode is super cosy for little babies, and the recline function allows them to lie flat, more or less. When it’s in this mode you can’t rotate the seat, but this is a safety feature to prevent newborns travelling facing forward. Adjusting the seat for the toddler stage was easy, and once in this mode the swivel function is easy to use and helps with straightforward loading of our child.

We tried the grey version of this seat, and we liked that it wasn’t black like other seats, as we think it kept our child cooler. Our child seemed extremely comfortable in this seat, and we felt really happy travelling even long distances with them in it – they seemed more than happy to snooze the journey away. This seat is in the upper price range of the seats we tested, but we felt for the safety features and comfort factor it was still worthy of inclusion.

Is it a car seat, is it a pram? Well, we suppose it’s both. This is a bit of a gamechanger of a product for us. It’s an infant car seat that once you pop it out of the car, converts into a pushchair without the need for any extras. It blew our minds. It is really well designed to make it convenient and easy to use.

When in car-seat mode we found it really easy to take in and out of the car using the Isofix base (£139.99, Doona.shop) which is sold separately, and the straps were really easy to adjust. You can also install it using a seat belt if you don’t have the base. We did find though that the green lights to see if it’s installed safely are a bit hard to see compared to others we tried.

When we used it in pram mode it was really easy to manoeuvre and push, and suited every height (although the seat is quite low to the ground). This seat is brilliant for those who have limited boot space in their car, use public transport a lot or are off on their travels. It’s also great for people who have had C sections and aren’t able to lift heavy car seats.

The solar is a forward-facing group one-two-three seat, and is suitable for 9kg to 36kg, that’s about nine months to 12 years of age. So it should last you a long time, and, looking at the price tag, that’s pretty brilliant value for money.

We found the seat really easy to install, mainly thanks to the integrated Isofix connection and top tether strap – as well as the YouTube video that showed us what to do. However, we found it breathtakingly frustrating to move it from group one to group two – the insert was really tricky and fiddly to remove, even for a highly practical person we had on hand to help. But once removed, our group two passenger seemed really comfy in the seat.

It’s nicely padded with several recline positions, and loading our child in was made easier thanks to magnets in the sides of the seat that hold the straps out of the way. It also has added built-in side impact cushion technology, for added safety, should there be any side collision. The seat itself does take up a considerable amount of room, even in a larger car – but, on the flipside, it doesn’t have a leg out front, so it saves on space there.

This lightweight high-back booster seat (suitable for children more than 100cm in height) is brilliant for those who need to store seats away when not in use, or if you travel often, because it folds down and includes a carry handle. We found it really easy to install; the Isofix arms pop out easily and then slot into a place, with red and green indicators to let you know when it’s properly installed.

It comes with an additional side-safety system, which easily clicks onto the door side of the seat, plus a nice padded safe pad to attach to the seat belt to provide extra chin and chest protection. Our child tester was very happy in this seat, and although it’s perhaps not quite as plush as some other seats on the market, for that it’s easier to carry.

Another high-back booster seat for children measuring 100-150cm, this seat will see your child through to the end of their car seat career (hurrah!). This is an iSize seat, so it carries all the extra safety features that give peace of mind and also includes additional side-impact protection. It doesn’t have the big guides for feeding the seat belt through like on other boosters, but it has a soft loop that sits between your child’s legs to feed the belt through to provide a more comfortable position for them.

We really liked the adjustable headrest, which cracks up using a dial on the side – much easier than tugging at the top of a head rest. The head rest comes quite far around our child’s head, which is great for when they’re in the midst of a danger nap as it minimises them slumping forward in their sleep. The seat also comes with a pad that fits onto the seat belt and provides extra support for the neck and chin in a collision. The seat feels comfortable for our child, and there’s certainly enough room so they won’t feel too hemmed in as they grow.

Suitable for children aged from 18-months to 12-years, this seat offers great cost per use. Instead of a five-point harness, this seat uses an impact shield up until they reach 105cm and 21kg. The impact shield buckles across their lap, which protects their abdomen. It is quite restrictive, so it might not be for all children, but if children don’t love being clipped in, or you find it a faff doing up the clips, this could be the answer. It’s very easy to clip in each time – both sides have a seat-belt style point and the button to release is big and red (you literally can’t miss it).

The seat is installed using Isofix points and a top tether, and we found it really easy to fit. Once your child graduates into high-back boosters, you can remove the impact shield and use the seat like any other booster. We liked that there was so much space for our child to grow in this seat, and the high side-impact protection wings felt reassuringly large. However, for this it is quite large compared to other high-backed boosters, once you reach that stage. If you have three car seats across the back row, then you might struggle to squeeze them all in.