I’m here to do a follow-up review of the Chicco NextFit Convertible Carseat. If you haven’t already, check out Kecia’s previous review of the Chicco NextFit for measurements, installation, etc!
I purchased this seat about 3 months ago to rear-face Liam in my husband’s 2001 Toyota 4Runner. Liam has an insanely long torso, and has outgrown most seats rear-facing. He just turned 3 years old in July, and is 34lbs and about 39 inches tall (give or take…good luck wrangling him to get a spot on measurement).
My first impression right out of the box was that it was a very nicely built seat. Everything was very well thought out, from storage compartments to placement of the LATCH straps. Installation was a breeze, in both the sloped seat of the 4Runner and the flat seat of my 2005 Honda CR-V. Front to back space is about average; not quite as compact as the Britax seats but definitely not requiring as much space as the Radian.
The cover is very nice and has not snagged or pilled in the 3 months we have had it with almost daily usage. Liam climbs in and out of it himself and puts his shoes all over it (velcro!) without any issues. The chest clip and buckle are very easy to use and the harness adjuster is seamless and easy to tighten and loosen.
Pros:
-The build. I’m a huge fan of the shape of it (granted, I’m also an Evenflo Momentum/Triumph lover) and I really dig the deep sides WITH the headwings. Shaun’s truck is older and I just appreciate the extra feeling of protection the sides give. Remember, all seats on the market are perfectly safe to use in vehicles without all the fancy schmancy safety gadgets, especially with the added protection of facing rearward, but as far as personal preferences go, it was a big perk to me on a personal/parental level.
-The harness. We have had a string of bad luck lately with seats in Shaun’s truck being difficult to tighten or tighten evenly. His truck sits very high up, and that made it more difficult for me to mess around with a stubborn harness adjuster. This seat tightens easily and evenly with one firm tug of the adjuster strap.
-The install! While we are not currently using it with a LATCH install, I did attempt it for fun (nerd alert!) in my CR-V and it is amazingly easy and simple. However, so is the seatbelt install for those of us kicking it old school! Threading the belt is very simple with no knuckle casualties. For a lap/shoulder just buckle, tighten the lap portion, close the lock off, and you’re golden! The lock-off actually gave me a “duh” moment because for some reason it looked complicated to me. I stood there and contemplated it and the manual until I realized uh, well, you just flip it open and push it closed. Maybe that’s just me and always looking for at least one catch to something seemingly easy, but trust me, it truly is.
-The fit. It is a nice deep seat that provides a decent amount of leg room. It’s not the Captain Legroom of all seats but it fits the bill for us as parents of a long gangly toddler. Liam comfortably sits with his legs slightly bent, usually crossed or propped up on the seat. He is not eating his knees by any means or forced to keep his knees bent at 90 degrees. Shoulder room is fine, and the headwings are deep enough for parents to like them but not so deep that your kid is going to freak out that they are blocking his view of the semi-truck you just passed on the freeway.
Cons:
-The chest clip. The chest clip on the NextFit has two settings: one for rear facing and one for forward facing. The rear facing setting positions the two shoulder straps fairly close together and while it’s not an issue for us, in bigger kids it may be slightly annoying to them.
-Not being able to easily remove the harness to clean it.
Honestly there is very little I dislike about the seat. I do realize that some concerns have been raised over various things I haven’t already discussed, so I’m going to do my best to address them.
The harness pads seem to be a hot button issue right now. Lots of people are concerned about them digging into the child’s neck due to the harness straps being relatively close together, and also about them getting hot during the warm months. Personally we have not had a single issue with the harness pads. They are closer to Liam’s neck than any other seat we have had, but they do not dig in, rub on him, or irritate him in any way. You can see in the pictures that they sit on the inner parts of his shoulders, but do not rub his neck. We live in North Carolina, and it’s been in the 90’s and extremely humid. The car gets hot. Despite frequently riding shirtless in the car on the way home from swimming, he has not complained of hot harness pads. There have been some reports of kids complaining of the pads being too hot, and Julie Prom from Chicco has addressed this with the following statement:
“As is the case with most car manufacturers’ instructions, Chicco recommends to always cover the car seat when a vehicle is parked in the sun. This will prevent burning from the components on the car seat. This information can be found on page 14 of the NextFit User Guide, http://www.chiccousa.com/nextfit/images/NextFit%20User%20Guide.pdf.
It is important to note that vehicle interiors can get extremely hot when parked in the sun. Here is a video that Safe Kids uses to demonstrate how quickly a car heats up: http://www.safekids.org/video/simulation-rapid-and-extreme-car-heating-direct-sunlight
Here is one item that has been suggested by many safety advocates for covering car seats:
Mommy’s Helper Car Seat Sun ShadeIn addition, I will forward your email to our Quality Team for review. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.”
I’ve also read questions on the quality of the fabric and whether it is a “hot” seat. Personally, I like the fabric. It is slick, somewhat like the feeling of a wetsuit. I would definitely say it is cooler than the plush fabric of many seats out there. Liam was a sweatbox in the plush Britax Boulevard he previously rocked, but seems less so in the NextFit. It also doesn’t get the same damp feeling as a cotton cover. He’s spilled many a sippy of water back there and it mostly beads up and drips off. It is very easy to spot clean, and the squirts of applesauce pouches seem to wipe off rather than get rubbed in like they do in other seats.
As far as loading goes, I don’t think it is any more difficult than any other seat with high sides. Liam is easily able to climb in and out himself, as demonstrated in the video below, and the seat sits low enough that he never received a whacking on the door frame when being lifted into the seat unless he was being particularly squirrely.
Lastly, there have been questions of the crotch strap length being adequate. As the mom of a boy, I can honestly say there have been no near misses involving the crotch strap. My child is long, and tends to slouch quite a bit yet still doesn’t have crotch strap smoosh. Granted, we use the seat rear facing so he has the recline to his advantage, but given the amount of space he has, I don’t see it being an issue forward facing either.
In summary, this seat is easy to install, use, and will last a very long time. There’s not much more you could ask for. Well, there is, but as far as reality goes, this is pretty dang good pick. I frequently get the itch to buy and try new seats but this has scratched that itch very well for the time being. And bonus? It comes in purple (aka “Gemini”). Or ‘eggplant’ if you need an alternative description when telling your husband what color seat you are buying for his truck. 🙂 It fits great in different vehicles, the manual is easy to read, the cover is easy to wipe clean, it has a decent amount of rear facing leg room, and while there have been people reporting issues with the harness pads, it seems to be very selective. And, as usual, Chicco’s amazing customer service is looking into what they can do to improve on the issue to help the small number of people who have had problems. The headrest adjusts extremely high and is an extended rear facer’s dream! The NextFit can be purchased from Amazon.com for $279.99 with free shipping and free returns if necessary.
Here are some pictures. They will be rear-facing for the sole purpose of not informing my kid it is possible to forward face in this seat- he’s a smart one! For a more thorough review and installation photos of forward facing use, refer to Kecia’s official NextFit review.
Rear facing in a 2005 CR-V. Even with a relatively small to average sized back seat, the drivers seat is able to be mostly all the way back.
My favorite part of the manual. Go Chicco!
My hand can easily pass between the front seat and back of the NextFit
Second setting on the recline is perfect in my car. But having 9 reclining options available ensures a good angle for any child.
As you can see, we have no issues with the harness cutting into his neck. And if it were pushing against his neck, the harness pads are very soft.
Installed in a 2001 Toyota 4Runner
Decent leg room although he prefers to prop his feet up anyway.
f 5
I found this site looking for solutions to the ridiculously hard to tighten Chicci harness, so I figure others will find it, too, despite its age, and this I am contributing my experience.
We have two seats, this and the Britax Boulevard. There is absolutely no comparison between the two in terms of quality of finish. The difference is as stark as comparing our 2001 Forester with our 2015 Forester. The Britax is sufficient; the Chicco is so nice. The Britax has 3 recline positions; the Chicco 9. The Chicco is easy too install using the seatbelt; the Britax needs to be partially dismantled and required a flashlight. The cover on the Britax kind of stays attached, in a very loose, approximate manner. The cover on the Chicco is a custom made Italian suit. (Both covers remove completely to be laundered to remove some of the toxic fabric protector and flame retardants. The Chicco is much harder to remove and install owing to its much better fit and finish.)
But, the Chicco is a HOT seat for children, hotter than the Britax. You KeyFit parents know what I’m taking about. In the summer, wear a jacket in the car because the AC is going to be on full blast!
The biggest issue is that the harness tightening strap is so hard to pull tight on the Chicco. (The release button is hard to push on the Britax.) Based on the review above, I’d say that something is wrong with my Chicco seat and about half of those sold (I’m about the millionth person to complain about this.) So, first thing you do when you buy one is to test the harness. If it’s hard to pull, return it until you get av easy on like the reviewer active received!
Is it possible to remove the rest of the fabric from this seat, after unzipping the main seat cushion part? Or is that somehow permanently attached to the plastic?
Will this carseat fit in a 2013 Chevy Sonic? I love the material of this carseat and am hoping it would fit in my car. We do have a tight fit with the Chicco Keyfit 22.
Thanks for the thorough review! I am currently looking for a car seat for hubby’s car that can accommodate both a 1 yr old and a 3 yr old. He has a 2000 Camry so unfortunately it does not have the LATCH connectors. Because we will be using this seat with either child (we have 2 seats in our van but sometimes he takes just one kid and we don’t like to move car seats around too much so we are looking for a 3rd seat just for his car that either child can use) we figure an easy adjust harness will be a priority. We plan to rear face BOTH kids AS LONG AS POSSIBLE. We are currently trying to decide between the Chicco Nextfit and the Peg Viaggio 5-70. The Peg seems to boast a lot of added safety features while I could not find much info about the Chicco other than ease of installation. That being said I understand that the safest car seat is the one that fits your can and child the best and that ease of installation plays a big part in that. Although the seat would be mainly stationary in one car the kids do travel with grandparents every once in a while so I like that the Chicco seems to be dummy proof. Also because we do a lot of 4 hour road trips to the grandparents comfort is also an issue and one thing my 3 yr old complained about on our last road trip was his bum hurting. He was in a Combi Zuess 360 which he is outgrowing RF. I checked all the seats in the store and the Chicco was by far the cushiest with the infant inserts removed! But the Peg was not too far behind it and of course safety is still our biggest concern. One thing that I worry about is getting the kids in and out of a RF car seat with high sides. (That’s what I love about the Zuess 360) But again I want to keep my kids RF as long as possible and the Peg does go 5lbs higher. So my question is which seat would you recommend for our situation of either of these 2 or is there another you would recommend instead? I wonder if it would be wiser to go ahead and get something else that has a higher RF weight limit but with lower sides like a Diono Radian? Do you think that having to adjust the harness on a Dionno between a 1 yr old and 3 yr old would be more of a pain than getting them in/out with the higher sides of the Chicco or Peg? Any information would be greatly appreciated! This is by far the best site I have come across with regards to car seats and taking the time to answer personal questions on individual concerns!
We had a Chicco KeyFit for an infant carseat. I’m leaning towards this one, however I am very worried that we will have the same sweating issue with this one. There were countless times when I would lift him out and his back was wet. We live in the DC metro area and it gets crazy hot, but honestly it was a year round situation. I dressed him to accommodate the length of time I knew he would be sitting in it. It was a pain to remove his winter coat and sometimes sweater in the winter and then to put them back on before getting out of the car. I don’t recall the material or straps getting hot themselves. Now with that all said, when he has sat directly in the KeyFit compatible stroller, sweating was never an issue. Then it really concerned me when I read about other plush material having a sweatbox effect, which indicates a possibility of others being worse. He currently rides in a Graco and even in the most reclined position his head always flops forward. So obviously the numerous positions that NextFit offers really appeal to me. Any input would be appreciated.
I managed to pick up this seat recently and I love it, I was so excited about the great price for an awesome super safe highly rated car seat it made not being able to remove the harness or harness pads irrelevant. We haven’t used it long but I look forward to using it for a long long time since my son is only 11m and still RF.
I’ve seen several people comment in the reviews on Amazon that the chest clip comes open so easily that the child can easily open it which poses a real problem. Have you experienced this? And do you know why the straps aren’t replaceable? I’m so torn between this Chicco model or a Britax convertable for our very tall 8mo. and I like the sound of the chicco, but hear some complaints about the chest clip, the seat and shoulder straps becoming ‘hot’, it being difficult to adjust the straps and the straps not being replaceable. How do you feel about these issues? These pints concern me, but it sounds amazing otherwise!
Question – it looks like the harness is above his shoulders in the last pic. Am I seeing it wrong, or was it in that position for purposes of the picture / review? I ask because I’ve had a challenge getting my tall 3 year old situated RF in the Nextfit with the straps below his shoulders but his head below the top of the headrest, and I thought the priority is for the straps to be below the shoulders when RF. Thanks!
Thanks for the follow-up review! We’ve had ours for a few months now and I wish it had been out sooner so we could have avoided all the other seats we went through. DS has complained here and there about the seat being “hot” but otherwise I have to wonder why every carseat on the market doesn’t have these awesome features?
And about the harness tightening — THANK YOU CHICCO. Everyone else, shame on you! It’s clearly not that hard to make a harness that can be tightened with less-than-superhuman strength.
Great review! I’ve only played with a NextFit at a conference, so it’s very nice to see some real world input from a mom who is using one daily.
GREAT follow up!! We have been using ours for a few weeks now and M LOVES it…. we have had zero issues with any of the “complaints” mentioned above as well. I totally LOVE this seat…. which is rare for me, i have a firmly embedded TF love! 😉
Thanks for this IRL review! And thanks for noting in the video that dad was testing his battery- my kids FREAKED that the car started before the baby was buckled lol.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the NextFit, Alicia!
Great follow up, thanks!