Car Seat - Take 2

In a previous post, I had blogged about how Griffin needed to upgrade to a bigger car seat. Well, the one we got him and blogged about wound up being too big for our VAN, amazingly. After returning that one, I did copious amounts of research on convertible car seat features, prices, safety ratings, ease of use ratings, blah blah blah. I won't bore you with the unspeakably boring details, but I found one the I absolutely LOVE. For those of you who are needing or will be needing to upgrade to a convertible car seat in the near future, I thought I would share what I oh so love about Griffin's new car seat, The First Year's True Fit Premier:

 

This seat is a-mazing. I'll list some of the greatest features of this seat:
-great labeling on the seat (don't even need the directions to install)
-rear facing to 35lbs.
-rear facing at 45 degree recline for younger babies and 35 degree recline for older babies
-removable headrest to enable the full amount of recline (unlike the last car seat we bought which forced us to slide the driver's side seat up and lean the seat way forward to make it fit)
-little display with ball that shows you when you've achieved the correct amount of recline
-easy installation
-great fabric! (We got the Retro Rails Stripe. Perfect colors.)
-snap off cover that doesn't require any rethreading of the straps to remove...just unsnap! Moms, you know how great this feature is, what with all the spills we deal with.
-to adjust the height of the straps, you just pull some knobs on the back and slide up/down! (instead of rethreading both straps every time)
-includes great newborn/infant padding and head pillow (We don't need the infant padding, but you could really use this seat as the baby's only car seat!)
-seat is fully lined with EPP foam (what motorcycle helmets are made of)
-a flip-up rebound bar that actually helps manage the rebound in the unlikely event of a crash
-in forward facing position, this seat works up to 65 lbs. and 50" tall in a 5 point harness!!
-deep side wings, and side-impact tested to international standards
Now, there are some other really great and popular car seat brands/models out there. I hear from many, many people that Britax is the way to go, for example. However, I just could not find $300+ to work with, and Griffin had outgrown his infant seat! From the ratings/reviews out there, parents, the NHTSA, and car seat testers/reviewers are raving about this True Fit Premier car seat and rating it at the level of the Britax seats for a MUCH more affordable price and with quite a few more features. It is definitely a safe, affordable, comfortable, feature-filled, easy to use/care for/install, car seat that Griffin has lots of room to grow into. Hopefully, with the very high weight limit, Griffin will not need a booster seat, saving us an additional $30. (Note: most Britax seats in the lower end of the price range max out at 40-50 lbs. We all know Griffin is a big boy. Enough said.) Anyway, I just cannot say enough about this seat. If you're interested in purchasing one, I highly recommend Albee Baby's webiste. They shipped his seat SO quickly (and for FREE, I might add), and they routinely offer 20% off (They have a deal running all summer for 20% off. Just enter "20OFF" at checkout). Hopefully, this is helpful to someone out there :)