Full-Featured Stroller Review

Comparing reviews of strollers

Full-featured strollers are just what you'd think. They have the most bells and whistles: cupholders, extra storage, lots of padding and, importantly, a fully reclining seat for newborns that cannot yet support their heads. Many can hold infant car seats, like the car seat strollers covered in our separate report. Lightweight strollers, usually umbrella-style strollers, often weigh less than 15 pounds and are covered in our companion report on umbrella strollers. Umbrella strollers don't have as many features, and only a few have fully reclining seats.

ConsumerReports.org tests about two dozen full-featured single strollers for ease of use, safety and handling. While there's a good selection of popular strollers here, the excellent baby-gear book "Baby Bargains" by Denise and Alan Fields reviews a wider selection of models than ConsumerReports.org. We found smaller, well-designed stroller tests at Babble.com and New York magazine, plus in-depth video reviews at BabyGizmo.com and a variety of more minor sources. In all, we analyzed nearly two dozen review sources for this report.

There's a lot of buzz about fancy high-end strollers from Bugaboo, Quinny and Stokke. The Stokke Xplory, for example, costs $950, and that's just for the basic model that sells without a bassinet accessory. Yet in reviews, testing doesn't reveal that handling and durability are that much superior to other, less-expensive strollers. In fact, testing actually reveals some compromises. The Xplory, for example, has no storage basket. Rather, there's just a small zippered pouch. While that helps the stroller look streamlined, it also means that you don't have any place to stash a diaper bag, blanket, toys or other essentials.

This is why we also consulted hundreds of parent-written reviews, comparing expert advice with field reports from parents and caregivers using these strollers every day. Take the super-trendy Bugaboo Bee (*Est. $650): Some of our most reliable expert sources have fallen in love with this lightweight stunner that rolls like a dream, but some parents suffer customer service nightmares with Bees that quickly fell apart. On Amazon.com, parents complain about a variety of parts failing -- rain covers, wheels, frames, brakes (about 22,500 Bugaboo Bees sold from August 2007 to April 2009 have been recalled for brake failure) -- and weeks-long waits for replacement parts that sometimes never arrive. After spending hundreds of dollars on the pricey Bee, some parents were forced to buy a second stroller because they couldn't get the Bee fixed -- or because their child outgrew the Bee before age 2, a complaint we found more than once on Buzzillions.com.

Bugaboo admits that "we launched an unfinished product," according to Denise and Alan Fields' Baby Bargains Book Blog. Although the company revised the 2010 Bee with a bigger seat and brakes that work, parents continue to report problems with Bugaboo's unresponsive customer service. Overall, the Bee makes a good first impression, but we found plenty of strollers -- including much cheaper ones -- that satisfy parents better in the long run.