My 5 year old twins are in Boulevard 70CS seats. I need to move them to boosters and I want them in 5 point harnesses. Britax calls them Harness-2-Booster Seats. I chose the Britax Pinnacle because of the high weight limit for the harness and because of the Britax brand. I didn't do much research into other brands, so I don't have a backup seat in mind. I don't know if I need to move on from the Pinnacle and choose a different brand. I could use some advice.
We have tried 3 Pinnacles so far. The Pinnacle has the ClickTight feature to install it and you squeeze two buttons together to release it. On the first booster (Booster 1), the right button was stuck and we couldn't release / open the seat to thread the seat belt. It was basically defective, so we sent it back and ordered a replacement. Booster 1 was never installed in the car. The ClickTight worked fine on the second booster (Booster 2), so we installed it into our 2011 Honda Odyssey. We found it extremely, extremely difficult to tighten the harness the recommended amount. It was so difficult that I did not want to keep the seat, so we removed Booster 2 from the van. When we returned Booster 1 we ordered a replacement (Booster 3). The ClickTight feature on Booster 3 works perfectly. Booster 3 is currently installed and it is difficult to tighten the harness. If Booster 2 was a difficulty 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, Booster 3 is a difficulty of 6.5. I think for a $300 car seat it should not be difficult to tighten, but perhaps I'm wrong. When I tighten it the front of the seat lifts off of the seat of the van.
Due to these problems, I don't know if we should stick with the Pinnacle. I've found a lot of reviews on Amazon saying it's very hard to tighten the Pinnacle harness and other reviews saying the Frontier has the same problem. I've been looking at other seats and I'm not sure what to do. Live with having a harness that's difficult to tighten? Find a new seat? There aren't a lot of Harness-2-Booster seats to choose from and I'm not wild about the Cons of some of the seats. The 65 pound weight limit isn't ideal. My children are 5 and big for their age (I need to put them on a scale tomorrow because I don't know how much they weigh, but I'm sure it's over 50 pounds). The lack of seat belt lock-off isn't ideal because I would worry terribly that I didn't do it correctly or that it would fail.
I am open to advice and suggestions.
Thanks!