Question Wanted: Carseat for a tall child, that fits in a small car, and can be taken in taxis without LATCH

Hey all!

My husband and I are both 6' tall and we have a Nissan Juke. Our daughter, who is 9 months old, is trending tall as well.
We need to upgrade from the infant car seat she is now in to a convertible. There are a few complications:

- With two 6' people in the front, it's hard to fit a car seat in the back seat of a Juke, so I'm looking for something small.
- With one car, we often rely on taxis for quick trips if the other parent has the car for work, so we need something easy to install without relying on LATCH. We are currently living in Malawi (will purchase the car seat on a visit home to the U.S. in a few weeks), there are no LATCH systems in taxis here.
- We travel often, so it would be great if it wasn't ridiculously heavy, but that's the least of my worries.

The car is paid off, I really hope we don't need to trade-it-in to solve our car seat dilemma!

Thank you so much for your help!

Do you have a budget you’d like to stick to?

If it means I don't have to buy a new car, and we can all be comfortable, I'm willing to spend $300. (But not excited about it.)

Gotcha!

Some of your desires are in conflict with each other - specifically light and good for tall kids. Usually the lighter seats are smaller and therefore don't last as long (especially for tall babies/kids). But since you said lightness is the least of your worries, maybe focusing on longer-lasting makes sense. I can highly recommend checking out the rear facing space comparison on carseatblog. It was updated about a year ago, so has most current seats, but not all. size matters blog post

Note that the Britax G4.1 seats on the chart are being replaced by the Britax "Essentials" line. Each seat on the chart has a review on carseatblog too where you can read up on ease of installation. The Britax ClickTight seats are made to be super easy to install with a seatbelt, and they get an A on the chart as far as not using up much front-back space, so one of those would be a strong contender. The down side is a lack of leg room, which usually isn't a problem, but looks uncomfortable. The Marathon is about a pound lighter than the Boulevard but both are quite heavy. The Graco Extend2Fit was designed specifically to give extra leg room, but on the flip side, the installation isn't quite as easy. However it is also lighter so that's another plus.