Help!! Evenflo triumph or Cosco Touriva or? special situation...

[lynettefrancois]

I just discovered a friend of the family has a son in an infant carseat he's outgrown. He's almost 12 months old, but was born 3 months early (you don't want to know). Anyway, the baby is fine, but he's still not sitting on his own, so we wanted to get him a supportive carseat. I am considering a Triumph and a Touriva- is there anything else? I personally have a Marathon for my DD which I love, but is too expensive for a gift. I use a Cosco Touriva for travel which I like, but read on the side that it's only for babies over a year. I don't know if there's enough padding for this particular 12 month old. I first thought of buying a Triumph 5, but now I'm worried about the straps falling down his shoulders. Should we buy one and try it? Or is there another option? Any advice appreciated- he needs a new seat asap!!!

[Joyce6830]

Hi,

The Touriva is perfectly fine for babies under 1 year as long as it is used in the rear facing position. The Touriva is a good bottom line car seat. It is light weight and easy to insatll but it doesn't have much padding. The Triumph is a good seat and I really like it but you do have to get used to the harness adjuster. It's much different than other seats on the market and some people love it and some hate it. It's really a matter of preference on that seat. It does have EPS foam which is a great safety feature to have. Graco has just added EPS foam to the ComfortSport. That seat is perfectly safe and comes in a variety of different covers with different levels of comfort. But that seat can be hard to install and hard to adjust the straps rear facing. So if Britax is out of the price range, I'd suggest:

Triumph - Easy to install, some don't like harness

Touriva - Cheap, easy to install, not much padding

ComfortSport - Can be difficult to install, hard to adjust rear facing, you can get a model w/lots of padding.

Good Luck!

Joyce, CPST

[lynettefrancois]

Thanks so much for the info!!! I'm glad to hear that the Touriva is ok for under a year rearfacing, since I used it from 7 months. For the gift, we'll probably go with the triumph- seems to have the best balance of padding and user friendliness. Thanks again!