Top kid travel gear: Safety First Go Hybrid Booster

When Noob outgrew his infant car seat last December, we opted to move him into Littles' old convertible seats, and purchase new seats for Littles. I selected two seats that convert from forward-facing 5-point harness seats into belt positioning booster seats as the child grows. In Hubby's car, Littles sits in a Graco Nautilus, and in my car, a Safety First Go Hybrid Booster. Both seats are our everyday car seats at home, but I chose the Go Hybrid specifically with an eye towards traveling as well. Our recent trip to Panama was our first opportunity to see how the Go Hybrid performed on the road.

The Basics
The Go Hybrid provides a forward-facing 5-point harness for children who are at least 1 year old and between 22-65 lbs. It does not rear face, so I do not recommend it for children under age 2, per the AAP's recently revised car seat usage guidelines. Hence why Noob doesn't use this seat.

It also converts to a backless booster for children who are at least 3 years old and between 40-100 lbs. Again, remember that just because you can use it as a booster does not mean that you should. Please review this information to determine whether your child is ready for a booster seat. Littles is 4 years old and just shy of 40 lbs right now, and I have zero plans to convert this seat to a booster anytime soon.

I also want to call out that the Go Hybrid does not convert to a high back booster, only to a backless booster. There is some great information about the safety of each type of booster here. High back boosters are considered to be a little safer, but I’m not too worried about this. When the time comes to move Littles out of the harness, if I’m not comfortable with her being in a backless booster, I figure we’ll move Noob into the Go Hybrid’s harness, and buy a new high back booster for Littles. High back boosters are much cheaper and lighter than regular car seats, so this should be a very workable solution both at home and while traveling.

There is detailed information on this seat’s limits and measurements at car-seat.org.

Design
The seat has a unique design with a soft, flexible back. Because of this feature, it is very light, weighing in at around 8 lbs, and it also can fold up to be just a little larger than the base. This makes it an excellent seat for for traveling! It even comes with a handy (although somewhat thin) travel bag. Here is Littles' Go Hybrid in its travel bag:

Also because of this flexible back, the seat requires a LATCH top tether. It is unusable without it. Ironically, that means that this fabulous travel seat is not usable on an airplane! This is fine for our purposes, because Littles has not used a car seat on an airplane in nearly two years anyway. (If you like the Go Hybrid for the car but want protection on the airplane too, check out the CARES harness, which will provide compact and lightweight protection while in flight.)

At home
The Go Hybrid has been Littles' seat in my 2007 Honda Fit Sport for about seven months now, and I love it. Installation was a breeze when using LATCH. I did try a seatbelt install, and could not get it tight enough to be safe no matter what I tried, so I've stuck with LATCH.

(As a side note, LATCH anchors are typically stated to have an upper weight limit of 48 lbs -- check your car manual to confirm. This is based on a child-plus-car-seat weight of 68 lbs and the assumption that the average car seat weighs around 20 lbs. Since the Go Hybrid is much lighter, it can safely be used with LATCH anchors with a child weighing up to 60 lbs.)

The Go Hybrid works great as an everyday seat. The harness is a little unique in that it is tightened on either side of the child's legs, rather than in the middle, as most seats do. But it's easy to use once you get used to it, and I find that I have a lot fewer problems with twisted straps in this seat vs. our other seats. Her preschool does a car line drop-off, and the various teachers who come to get her each morning never have any trouble with the harness. I also love that it's an "infinite adjust" harness, so I don't have to take the seat out of the car to adjust the harness height.

The seat does not have a lot of padding, and on the rare occasions when Littles does sleep in the car, her head slumps in a way that doesn't seem comfortable at all:

At home, June 2011 (almost 4 years old)

But I should note that the head-slump thing happens in the Graco Nautilus, too. And for the record, Littles has never complained about comfort. She seems to really like this seat. In particular, she loves that the low-profile design puts her closer to the actual car seat, so she's able to reach her books, toys, etc. It really looks more like a "big kid" booster seat than a "little baby" convertible seat, so it's a great way to keep older kids harnessed longer!

On the road
But there are lots of seats that work great for everyday usage. What really sets the Go Hybrid apart is how well it works while traveling.

Because the seat folds up so small, it was a breeze to travel with. We were able to place it on top of one of our large rolling suitcases when walking around the airport. This was fantastic, as it meant that Littles' car seat didn't "use up" one of our hands. One person could handle one large suitcase, Noob’s car seat on the GoGo Kidz Travelmate, and the Go Hybrid. The other person could handle two more large suitcases. Had we used a regular car seat for Littles (on a Travelmate, of course), we would have had to leave one suitcase – and some of our stuff! – back at home.

The downsides of the Go Hybrid? The reliance on LATCH proved to be a little bit of a pain. Our cab driver at the Miami airport got pretty annoyed with us because it took a while to find the LATCH anchors and tethers in the unfamiliar car.

Also, not every car comes with LATCH (or ISOFIX, as it's called in many other countries). If you're renting a car in the USA, you shouldn't have any problems, but if you're traveling internationally or if you'll be driving with a friend who might have an older car, you should confirm that LATCH will be available.

Also, due to the soft back, the Go Hybrid must be installed in a seat that has a back high enough to support it, when used in harness mode. That is, when your child is seated in the Go Hybrid, the car seat's back plus the headrest (if available) must be at least as high as your child's head. We didn't have any problems with that on this trip, but it's something to look out for, especially when using this seat with taller children.

The verdict
I love this seat and highly recommend it! It is a wonderful everyday seat, and the fact that it works so well while traveling is simply icing on the cake. This is hands-down the best car seat I've seen for traveling, as long as you're confident that you'll have LATCH at your destination.

To car seat or not to car seat

Littles snoozing in her infant seat + Snap-n-Go during a layover in Atlanta (3 months old)

Another key decision point that we make on each of our trips is around car seats. Specifically, should we bring a car seat with us? If yes, should we check it with our bags, gate check it, or bring it onboard?

The answer to the first question has always been straightforward for us: Yes! We have brought a car seat on every single one of our trips. Most of the time, we rent a car on the other end and do a significant amount of driving. Rental car companies do rent car seats, but it's usually expensive (around $10/day), they are not guaranteed to have an appropriate seat when you arrive, and the seat may be in very poor condition. It's much less stressful for us to bring our own.

Once we're at the airport, we do different things with the car seats depending on the situation. Our general rule is that car seats do not get checked with luggage. Reason being, if the car seat gets lost or damaged, we would be stuck in a strange airport with no way to transport our kid. And that would suck. (We do sometimes check it on the way home, since this is less of a concern.)

This means that we've needed an easy way to get the seat to the gate. Car seats are fairly bulky and heavy, so wheels are the way to go:

• Littles was in her infant seat until 10 months of age. In this phase, we traveled with a Snap-n-Go stroller frame. This made it easy to navigate the airport with the car seat.
  


• When she moved out of the infant seat, we initially brought our travel system stroller (Graco Metrolite) and simply stuck her convertible seat in the main part of the stroller. This was much easier than attempting to carry the car seat around the airport. It was not sturdy enough to place Littles in the car seat while we wheeled it around, but we usually had her in a baby carrier anyway. (We use an Ergo.)
  


• After a few trips with this setup, we realized that we were almost never using the stroller anywhere besides the airport. So we started leaving the stroller at home, and purchased a GoGo Kidz Travelmate to attach to the car seat.

Once at the gate, we gate-checked the seat if Littles did not have a seat. But as I explained in a previous post, we opted to purchase a seat for her on every trip past 10 months of age. So when she did have a seat, we brought the car seat onboard. We found that she did really well sitting in it, probably because she was used to it from the car.

Around her second birthday, she discovered the joy of kicking the seat in front of her. Unfortunately, the car seat put her in the perfect position to do just that. She was also starting to do activities that required the use of the tray table, like color, play with Playdoh, and watch DVDs, and her car seat did not allow the tray table to fold out fully. So her last trip in the car seat was at 27 months. These days, she sits directly in the airline seat, which gives her full use of the tray table and prevents seat-kicking.

When Noob came along, he was also in the infant seat until about 10 months of age, so we pulled out the Snap-n-Go again for use with his seat. We continued to use the Travelmate for Littles' seat.

We haven't traveled yet with Noob in a convertible seat, but we plan to put him in Littles' old convertible seat, using the Travelmate. For Littles, we recently purchased a Safety First Go Hybrid Booster seat. It is super lightweight (less than 10 lbs) and folds into a small bag for travel. I think it will be a lot easier to deal with than a second convertible seat on a Travelmate! I'll be sure to post a review of it after we do travel with it for the first time.

Updated July 2011: We now travel with Noob in a convertible seat (Britax Roundabout) on the Travelmate, and Littles in a Go Hybrid booster seat. That combination is very easy to transport! Here is a link to my review of the Go Hybrid Booster.