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Carseat Ratings: Helping You Make the Best Choice in Child Safety Seats

It may be true that all carseats in the US market have passed federal regulations for safety, but not all carseats are created equal! Sometimes you'll need a seat that fits your budget, but can't decide between seats with different features, which go for the same price. And in any case, you'll need to know which carseats would meet your unique needs, and give you the best value for your money. Carseat ratings and reviews supplement the product specifications you can find in most reliable manufacturers' Web sites.

As a carseat for your infant or young child is an important investment, carseat ratings and reviews ought to help you make a truly satisfactory purchase. You need to determine a lot of factors when selecting a carseat - the size of your car, for example, as well as your baby's special needs, the cost, and the reliability. Seats may come with similar features, but how do you know which of these seats have features that are more reliable than others?

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is a great place to start for carseat ratings. The NHTSA has compartmentalized its rating system to include different aspects of a car seat, which add up to an overall rating. It uses the A-B-C system, similar to the standard grading system in schools, which should be comprehensible to adults everywhere. The overall rating defines the ease of use of a carseat... but when you're looking at two seats that have the same overall rating, you could also see the breakdown and notice the subtle differences - for example, one seat could have a B rating in Assembly, while the other seat could have a B rating in Evaluation of Labels. Which feature would you rather NOT have a B rating in?

Reviews from other concerned parents and guardians, themselves buyers of carseats, are an extraordinarily helpful source of information. Browse through forums, message boards, mailing lists and consumer-run websites: look for what other parents have to say about the seats you're thinking about buying. If you don't have an idea where to start looking, or what specific products to consider, participating in the discussions on these sites and communities should get you on the right track. You might be surprised how helpful strangers can be. Just bear in mind that these parents and guardians once looked through forums and messageboards too - that's how they got the best deals, eventually!

Carseat buyers could also come up with decent rating systems among themselves. This is of course partly subjective, but how can you argue with consumer opinion? One mother may give a particular seat a 4, while another mother could give it a 10 - but since no two mothers have exactly the same concerns over what their babies need, you can decide from there whose carseat ratings you would like to listen to.