Question Best Seat for 2007 Lexus RX350

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What is the best convertible car seat for a 2007 Lexus RX350 (obviously assuming that the child fits in it)?

Thank you.

[bree]

There are a number of convertible carseats on the market that generally fit in a variety of cars. I'm not familiar with installing a seat in your particular car, but maybe I can help jump start your search for a carseat. Some of the frequently recommended convertible carseats on this board are the Evenflo Triumph Advance, the First Years True Fit, the Britax Marathon or Boulevard, and the Sunshine Kids Radian.

If you have a Babies R Us near you, they typically let parents try out seats in their cars before purchasing. That might give you a chance to play around with seats to see what fits best.

If you get a chance, please post back with some more details, then maybe we can help with some more specific recommendations. For instance, what is the age and weight of the child you want to buy the convertible for? Is this going to be the child's main seat or a spare? What is your budget for the seat? Any other considerations, like other carseats that need to fit in the back?

Originally Posted by bree

If you get a chance, please post back with some more details, then maybe we can help with some more specific recommendations. For instance, what is the age and weight of the child you want to buy the convertible for? Is this going to be the child's main seat or a spare? What is your budget for the seat? Any other considerations, like other carseats that need to fit in the back?

My son is currently 7.5 months old, about 18 pounds, and 28 inches. It would be the main seat and we don't really have a budget. There are no other car seats that would go in the car. We would be looking to get one that is not too difficult to install so that we can move it to another vehicle if necessary as we are hoping to only buy one seat. I guess my real concern is that I have heard that some car seats don't work well in some cars and it just depends on the seat and the car. I wasn't sure if there was anything that did not work in the RX350 or something that worked exceptionally well.

Thank you so much for responding.

[bree]

I don't think the RX350 is known for having carseat incompatibility issues, so I think you'll be able to work with most seats. The ones I mentioned in my previous post I think are still good choices based on the info you gave about your son and your carseat needs. They all rear-face to 35 pounds and have decent enough top shells to allow kids to rear-face for quite a while (I'm not sure if you are aware that the old 1 year and 20 pound rule for when kids should be turned forward facing is outdated. It's important to keep kids rear-facing for as long as they still fit weightwise and heightwise in their seats.)

I think you can probably just try your son in the seats and the seats in your car, and buy whichever you like the best. If you check around online, you can often find better deals than in stores (like the Britax Marathon is $279 in stores, but you can usually find them for around $200 at places like albeebaby.com online.)


I think the seats all have pros and cons. The True Fit and the Radian have pretty tall shells, but the True Fit's harness adjuster sometimes gets buried in the seat of the car when installed and the Radian takes up a lot of room front to back. The Triumph Advance has tabs that adjust the harness height that sometimes both kids' shoulders and knobs that dig into the back of some seats. The Marathon and Boulevard don't have shells as tall as the other seats I mentioned, though they are pretty easy to install and use. There is also a new seat just being released, the Graco My Ride 65. It rear-faces until 40 pounds, but it seems like the shell may not necessarily be tall enough for some kids to rear-face any longer in that seat than the others seats I mentioned.

Hopefully someone else will be along with more advice/experience with your car.