oh, and here is their girly pattern...
http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3012745
anyone wanna guess how young that forward facing baby is?
Honestly? Probably between 18mos and 2 yrs (closer to 2 if I was going to be specific,) and between 27 and 30lbs.
Not really horrible in the grand scheme of things when you consider the smaller children some manufacturers use - at least this child is close to 30lbs if not slightly over, and well over a year old. Absolute best practice would be to see a bigger kid in the seat, but this kid isn't a "barely meets the minimums" kid. :twocents:
And in the gray pattern, the toddler rf'ing might even be over 1yr and 20lbs just judging from the head to body proportions.
I agree the booster mode doesn't look great, but it may be the way the child is sitting. She looks kind of slouched to me. The belt is at least low against her body - the 3in1 seats from dorel tend to have a physical gap between the body and the seatbelt. So perhaps it's not as bad as it looks since the belt as at least against her. I'll reserve judgement until we see some pic's of kids in the seat. :thumbsup:
As for the demos, the type of movement we're seeing in the rf'ing video isn't physical side to side movement like you would see with a loose installation. I wish they had shown how to better check for movement, as that guy is tugging much harder than what we teach parents and he's twisting as opposed to pushing/pulling. My bet would be if he checked for side to side movement, he'd be under 1/2". Britax seats with the dual latch straps are much different in the seat not being able to rotate under a tight belt. If you pushed down on the side of a tight snugride or any other seat, you would be able to create the identical movement... I can push and shift my EFTA slightly once it's installed with zero movement at the belt path. I'll often do that if it's slightly crooked after I'm done tightening the belt. My snugride was the same way.
The ff'ing kid in the demo, while he is not at the rf'ing weight limit, is probably over 2yrs old. Sometimes it helps to remember that we look at our kids who we keep rf'ing to the limits of the seat, and compare all kids to that. In real world experience and helping parents at seat checks, I'm happy to get kids to 2yrs rf'ing. It would be great to see parents exceed that by going to the limits, but just getting to age 2 is already so much better than so many people do and provides an extra year of protection. Ideal sometimes needs to be tempered with real life, and I can't fault Evenflo for using kids in the 2yr age bracket for the ff'ing demo/pictures. They really don't look *that* small to me. It's so much better than what they could've done.
Honestly, aside from the younger girl in the booster, the demos really aren't bad IMO - I'm impressed with the emphasis to read both manuals, and the general explanation of LATCH - it might be common sense for a lot of us who have been exposed to it, but a lot of people don't have that knowledge base.
And hey, they've put an age minimum on booster use that is above what many manufacturers state. They deserve some credit for that although it's unfortunate they didn't go with a 40lb booster minimum since the harness height should fit most kids to 40lbs...
Overall I'm actually impressed with the seat and the demos. Of course I'm going to have to wait to get my hands on one for probably another year to 18months, and by then I'll have no need for another convertible seat.
