Booster Seat Review

Buying the right booster seat: Five-point harness vs. seatbelt

This report focuses on booster seats, which are designed to keep your child safe when they are too large for a convertible car seat (which can be used up to 40 to 53 inches or 40 to 80 pounds, depending on the seat), yet are too small for your car's safety belt alone. Note: For younger children, we have companion reports on infant car seats (which also double as infant carriers) and convertible car seats (which can accommodate infants in the rear-facing position and older kids in the forward-facing position).

Traditional car booster seats simply boost your child up so that the car's seatbelt fits properly -- over a child's thigh and shoulder bones, instead of his more vulnerable belly and neck. However, experts now say it's safer to keep children strapped into a five-point harness (two shoulder straps, two hip straps and a crotch strap, which clip together) as long as possible -- past the old recommendation of four years and 40 pounds. New "combination booster seats" can keep your child in a five-point harness up to 65 pounds, in the case of the top-rated Graco Nautilus 3-in-1 (*Est. $160). The pricier Britax Frontier 85 (*Est. $280) has a five-point harness rated up to 85 pounds. (There are other five-point car booster seats on the market, too, but these are the two top-rated.) Both can be used as a regular belt-positioning booster seat after your child outgrows the harness and until the vehicle seatbelt fits properly -- usually when your child reaches both 80 pounds and 4 feet 9 inches.

"Children are safer when using the full five-point harness in a forward-facing seat, as the harness spreads the crash forces more evenly over the child's body and better retains the child in a crash than the three-point seatbelts installed in vehicles," wrote ConsumerReports.org in August 2010.

With this in mind, we found that the best child booster seat reviews come from ConsumerReports.org, the only U.S. reviewer that performs independent crash testing, conducting similar tests to those performed by the federal government. The book "Baby Bargains" covers virtually every type of baby gear you're likely to need. While the authors don't crash-test car booster seats, they do stringently evaluate subjective factors ignored by ConsumerReports.org, like comfort, brand reliability and customer service. They also give reviews and ratings for the most currently available booster seats, unlike ConsumerReports.org, which evaluates only 12 models. However, although new editions of "Baby Bargains" are printed frequently, it still contains some outdated information (the latest edition was printed in early 2009).

The website of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also publishes comprehensive ease-of-use ratings for car booster seats. Experts there test dozens of seats and rate each one up to five stars in each of five categories: labels, instructions, securing the child, installation features and overall ease of use. While this is helpful, NHTSA doesn't rate the booster seats' safety, comfort or anything else.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) is the latest organization to perform independent safety testing of booster seats. The IIHS is a non-profit organization funded by the auto insurance industry with the mission of reducing the number of car crashes and crash-related injuries. Unlike ConsumerReports.org, IIHS doesn't crash-test child booster seats, but it does use a "specially outfitted crash test dummy representing an average-size 6-year-old child" in order to perform standardized fit testing. For its latest report released in September 2010, the organization tests 72 high-back and backless booster seats. Using the crash test dummy, engineers measure how well each child booster seat positions an adult lap and shoulder belt to fit a young child. Editors then group the seats into four categories: Best Bets, Good Bets, Not Recommended and Other (those that fit well in some vehicles and poorly in others). "Parents should avoid buying the boosters on this 'not recommended' list," IIHS says. "These are seats that don't provide good belt fit -- the main job boosters are supposed to do."

Manufacturers have quickly dropped several booster seats that made the IIHS Not Recommended list: the Evenflo Express, Evenflo Sightseer, Safety 1st All-in-One and Safety 1st Alpha Omega Elite (all Not Recommended in high-back mode) have all been discontinued, although you can still find them on store shelves. Current car booster seats including the Eddie Bauer Deluxe (*Est. $120), Eddie Bauer Deluxe 3-in-1 (*Est. $180) and Evenflo Generations 65 (*Est. $95) are all Not Recommended for use in high-back belt-positioning mode (all can also be used with their own built-in five-point harness, but IIHS doesn't rate them that way), and the Harmony Baby Armor (*Est. $110) is Not Recommended for use in backless mode (but leave its high back on, and it's a Best Bet).

Backless booster seats: Less protection in a side crash, studies show

In 2005, researchers at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia sifted real-world crash data to see whether car booster seats help children survive auto crashes. The answer was yes -- but high-back boosters proved far safer in side crashes than backless ones. Statistically, kids ages 4 to 8 in backless booster seats were just as likely to suffer injuries (mainly head injuries) as kids the same age in seatbelts alone in side crashes, but high-back booster seats cut kids' injury risk by 70 percent.

That's important, considering side crashes cause 42 percent of car-crash deaths for children ages 0 to 8 in the backseat, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. However, the U.S. government doesn't require side-crash testing for child car seats -- only front-crash testing. NHTSA still says backless booster seats are fine, unless your back seat has a low back or lacks headrests (in which case you need a high-back booster seat). A high-back booster contains the child dummy's body much better, high-back child booster seats also often have head areas and side wings filled with motorcycle-helmet crash-protection foam -- expanded polystyrene (EPS) or expanded polypropylene (EPP) -- to further cushion the child's head.

But Britain's Which? magazine -- similar to ConsumerReports.org -- does perform side-crash testing for child seats. In June 2010, editors there proclaimed backless booster seats a "safety risk" and called upon the British government to outlaw them. A side-crash video on the Which? website shows a child-sized crash dummy in a backless booster seat being "thrown violently against the side of the car, with the body and head striking the door and the base of the window with considerable force," then "flung toward the center of the car" on the rebound.

"Nobody who has seen the footage of a side impact collision on our website would choose to use a backless booster seat," Which? magazine chief executive Peter Vicary-Smith told The Guardian on June 21, 2010. "While they're better than using no car seat at all, they simply don't provide enough protection."

Priciest booster seats aren't always better

Unlike strollers, where high-end brands are in constant competition for "it" status, booster seats have been mostly exempt from celebrity buzz. That is until Canadian manufacturer Clek began getting attention in the blogosphere as a Hollywood favorite. With celebrity moms like Gwen Stefani and Courtney Cox counted among its fans, the high-back Clek Oobr (*Est. $275) has become the high-back child booster seat of choice for hip moms with big budgets. With optional Paul Frank designer seat covers ("Heart Shades" and "Faux Hawk Julius" are the latest) the backless Clek Olli (*Est. $105) is also on the hip mom's must-have list.

The question isn't whether these are safe booster seats -- reviewers say they perform comparably to other well-made models -- but whether they are worth their sky-high prices. For the most part, reviewers say no, although Clek booster seats do have LATCH connectors that keep them securely fastened to the vehicle even when there is no child inside. The top-rated Graco Highback TurboBooster (*Est. $50) and Graco Backless TurboBooster (*Est. $25) strap in with seatbelts only. To prevent the risk of these non-LATCH-secured booster seats becoming projectiles in a crash, child passenger safety technicians suggest buckling them even when empty or stowing them in the trunk. But otherwise, the cheaper Graco child booster seats perform the exact same function and have similar features to the Clek boosters. In other words, the Clek seats are a good value only if having a made-in-North America booster seat -- or not having to buckle an empty seat -- is worth $80 to $225 to you.