When it comes to car safety, you can focus on driving safely and you can focus on choosing a safe car. However, if you have children, you also need to focus on choosing a safe car seat. This is one of a series of reviews I’ll write on what I consider to be the best car seats currently available in the United States.
Evenflo Maestro – What’s the big deal?
The Evenflo Maestro is one of Evenflo’s latest attempts to make the safe transportation of children more affordable for parents, regardless of income. It’s a combination car seat, which means it can be used in two configurations: as a forward-facing seat and as a booster. It’s not a super-stylish seat and it won’t let you forward-face forever, but it’ll keep kindergarteners strapped in safely, which makes is a combination car seat that should be on every parent’s budget shopping list.
Evenflo Maestro Limits for Weight and Height
Forward-facing: 22-50 pounds, and between 28 and 50″ in height. The tops of your child’s ears must also be below the top of the headrest. The seated shoulder height of the child can extend to 18.” Your child should be at least 1-year-old. Of course, research into car safety indicates children should remain rear-facing for as long as possible (the average is 4 years in Sweden, which posts the lowest child fatality rate on Earth), and after rear-facing, the child should remain forward-facing as long as possible.
Booster mode: 40-110 pounds, and between 43″ and 57″ in height. Again, the tops of your child’s ears must also remain below the top of the headrest. The maximum seated shoulder height of the child is 19.” Remember that children should remain in booster seats until their seat belts fit them over the shoulder, across the chest, and flat on the upper thighs.
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Dimensions of the Evenflo Maestro
The seat is 19″ wide at its widest point. The seat weighs 11 pounds and is 27″ tall.
Using the Evenflo Maestro
The installation is rather simple when using it as a forward-facing harnessed seat, and I love, love, love that it only weighs 11 pounds. This makes it a great seat to take along as a backup or to use when on the go. The fact that it’s also well under $100 also helps lighten the load.
There are some slight annoyances about the Maestro. For example, while the Maestro can also be used as a booster, which is great, the shoulder belt guide cannot be adjusted and is stuck at 19.” This means that once your child outgrows the Maestro in harnessed mode, which has a maximum shoulder height of 18″, it won’t be long before s/he outgrows the Maestro in booster mode.
I do like that LATCH anchors can be used to secure the Maestro when it’s being used as a booster. This keeps it from turning into a projectile in a collision when it’s not being used. Of course, you can also just buckle the booster every time it’s in the car, which is my preferred method for dealing with this issue.
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Why Buy the Evenflo Maestro?
This is the meat and potatoes of this car seat. I’d consider the Evenflo Maestro simply because it’s a budget minded seat that will allow parents with tighter financial situations to keep their children harnessed longer. It’s easy to skip out on child safety when dealing with other challenges in the home, but this is not an issue to pass over lightly. A 3, 4, or even 5-year-old has no business being in a booster seat, and a seat like the Maestro can help keep such a child in a forward-facing harnessed seat, which has a significant safety advantage. This is why I’d buy the Maestro.
It’s not a seat that will allow you to keep a child forward-facing until 8, which is the age I’d recommend for a transition to a booster. The booster mode in the seat is not one that will last most children until they no longer need a booster, due to the inability to adjust the shoulder belt guide. To get these kinds of features, you’ll either need a combination seat like the Britax Frontier 90 or Pinnacle 90 or be willing to pick up a separate booster later on such as the Clek Oobr or Britax Parkway SGL.
However, if you’re looking for a cheap seat to keep a kindergartener harnessed, especially as a backup or travel seat, the Evenflo Maestro is hard to beat.
Finally, the Evenflo Maestro is also simply an easier seat to install than most, due to its narrow width of 19 inches. That means it’s actually possible to install 3 across in a number of midsized vehicles. I do wish that it had more than a 6-year usable life (remember, car seats do expire eventually).
The Evenflo Maestro is a nice budget car seat and, in my opinion, one of the best budget combination car seats currently available in the United States for children above the age of 4. However, it’s highly unlikely that it will be the last seat your child needs before s/he is ready for a regular adult seat belt. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll want to consider a seat like the Britax Frontier 90 or Pinnacle 90. You can buy the Evenflo Maestro in a range of colors here. Canadians can buy it here.
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If you find the information on car safety, recommended car seats, and car seat reviews on this car seat blog helpful, you can shop through this Amazon link for any purchases, car seat-related or not. Canadians can shop through this link for Canadian purchases.