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Nania Baby-Start Dream Booster Seat
by xjemloux
Having nearly 5 year old twin boys I really needed some sort of seat for them to travel in a car. I don't drive, but know a few people who do and when they take us out I like to use a seat for the twins for safety etc. Carseats are so expensive and the twins are very big boys so I decided to purchase booster seats.
I picked up ... the Babystart Dream Car Booster Seat for just £12.99.
These booster seats are only suitable for children aged 4 and over - or a weight of more than 15kg, therefore definitely not suitable for babies and younger toddlers. But they were perfect for my 4 year old boys.
You can either buy the seat in a blue shade or pink shade, so suits both boys and girls. The seat itself is a thick, chunky yet very lightweight black plastic seat with arm rests. The colouring of the seat is down to the cover that sits over it neatly and can easily be slipped on and off - which comes in handy when they need a clean - and yes they are washable covers. The seats are fairly wide - and I'll be honest I don't know what the standard size of a car seat is but the measurements provided in Argos for these seats are H26, W43, D40.5cm.
My boys have been using their seats now for just over a year, they are still like new and are easy to transport to cars, as unfortunately people can't park outside our house as we are on a bit of a main road so we have to walk around a corner. The twins find them, although chunky, light enough to carry and walk with themselves and even put in place in the cars too. There are no awkward slots or holes for seatbelts to fit into, the seatbelt just slips around your child as it would if they were just sitting on the car seat itself, and falls into place comfortably which also means easy access in and out of cars.
I'd certainly recommend these seats to anybody looking for a booster seat for safety for their children when travelling. They are a bargain price and well worth every penny!
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Nania Teamtex Trio Car Seat
by malibu_jenny
We got to the point where M&M just hated getting into her Maxi-Cosi car seat. The other kids her age seemed to have long since outgrown their equivalent seats and it was only because she was pretty tiny and I'm budget conscious (to put it politely) that she was still being squished in there. She had become inquisitive and lying down, ... rear facing, when she could be upright and pretending to drive was a rotten deal. I started hunting for the next seat along. Maybe I was looking in the wrong places, but they were stupidly expensive, especially the few rear facing seats that are available to the UK market. It seemed I was googling and reading Which reports around the clock, worried about what to get.
But then, I saw the Nania Trio car seat in Asda. It was an all-rounder, adjusting to take you from birth to age 4. It could be rear or front facing. It was twenty quid. I reasoned that at least it would do as a stop gap, a spare for Grandad's car. And it stopped the never ending whirl of car seats rushing around in my head. Into the trolley along with all the other impulse purchases!
When I got home and began my paranoid googling for the reviews, most people seemed pretty happy with the seat. I was annoyed to discover (as I hadn't been able to from the box) that you couldn't use this as a rear facing car seat for toddlers, only newborns. Personally, I wouldn't have used it for M&M as a newborn, it's a hard seat with very little cushioning, even rear facing I think this would be too upright and there's no head rest to stop them bouncing around and hitting the sides.
The main issue presented on the internet was that ASDA don't safety check their seats and they can be thrown around and damaged, making them unsafe in the event of an accident. Well, Halfords in Reading were terrible when I bought the expensive Maxi-Cosi, they never safety checked it in any way and repeatedly refused to fit it because none of the staff were trained, so that isn't a great deal of difference. I did check under the seat cover on the Nania Trio, making sure that the polystyrene and plastic weren't cracked or dented and we fitted it into the car.
Having the instructions on the side of the seat is a godsend, meaning that it's easy for forgetful Grandad to fit into his car when he collects M&M from nursery and for me to remind myself what to check before a journey. It fits using a normal seatbelt, no fiddly modern requirements like Isofix. And it's light, so I can carry it around when needed. We found that lifting the headrest in the car and replacing it after fitting the seat keeps it even more secure, with no wobbling. It's a 3 point harness, the two over arm straps fitting together and clicking into the central holder, with a red button release. The straps themselves are easy enough to adjust, even with M&M in the seat.
There are a couple of things I don't much like - it's very low, so M&M can't see sheep or cows from the car window until she grows a little more. Also, when she's asleep and we need to put her in another car or carry her into the restaurant to doze through a meal, the thin back of the seat means that removing the seatbelt nearly always wakes her. The lack of cushioning makes it unsuitable for long journeys, but fortunately we haven't had to suffer any of those with it. We haven't got air conditioning, so our car is hardly the height of comfort anyway. When she falls asleep, the angle of the seat means her head flops forward a bit, but usually I can correct this just by propping her up with a jumper as a pillow. Oh, and the button sometimes sticks a little when I go to lift her out - on the bright side, that gives me confidence that she won't be able to open it.
It's been over six months and we still haven't got round to purchasing a new car seat. But then she loves this one and I'm very happy with it, so we can take our time choosing. I would never compromise her safety for the sake of money, the fact that this cost so little is a bonus.
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