Amazon’s turning 20, which means they’re having a super-sale day named Prime Day on 7/15. Personally, I tend to buy the car seats I review from Amazon to take advantage of their prices, free shipping, and free returns, so I tend to recommend them to readers looking for the best place to buy particular seats. Amazon claims that they’re going to have better prices and deals for everything on their site than they did on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and I look forward to seeing if this is true.

Something neat about Prime Day is that if you’re a Prime Member, you get to take advantage of various deals on the site and get free 2-day shipping for a year. If you’d like to sign up for a 30-day free Prime trial, you can do so here. Similarly, if you’d like to gift someone Prime membership, you can do so here. We’re Prime members for the free shipping, and it’s come in handy with a variety of things we’ve bought lately. We’ve been gardening and experimenting with homesteading while trying to stay ecologically conscious (hence the electric mower, trimmer, and tiller we’ve bought in the last few weeks).

At any rate, here are the best deals I’ve been able to find in car seats throughout Amazon this Prime Day; I’ll update the list with prices as I find more throughout the day. My goal was to find the best values for infant seats, convertible seats, combination seats, and booster seats, and I included my personal thoughts on which of the seats are must-haves if you’re in the market for a new particular kind of seat. I didn’t try to find every seat on the market; there are plenty of good ones. These are just my favorites in particular categories.

Have fun shopping and remember to rear-face until 4 if possible, forward-face until 8 if possible, and booster until your child passes the 5 step test. It takes a bit of work to do so, but the rewards in keeping your kids safer for longer are worth it.

Looking for more car seat reviews, recommendations, and tips on best practices? You can read all of my reviews of recommended car seats here. Friends in Canada, your recommended list is here.

The 4 Best Convertible Seats that Rear-Face to 50 pounds

   

The Clek Fllo – Review Here, Buy Here.
The Diono Rainier – Review Here, Buy Here.
The Clek Foonf – Review Here, Buy Here.
The Diono Pacifica – Review Here, Buy Here.

These are the four best car seats available today in the United States when it comes to extended rear-facing. Any of these seats will allow you to rear-face just about any child from birth until age 5, and any of these seats will also allow you to forward your face afterward for some amount of time.

The Dionos are the best value for the money if you’re looking to maximize the time you spend between buying car seats, as both offer longer forward-facing usable times than the Clek seats, and also include booster modes, even though those modes aren’t going to be useful for some kids. The advantage of the Clek seats is that they’re as narrow as convertible car seats get, which means it’s possible to fit them 3 across in just about any vehicle.

My favorite seat of the four is the Fllo, followed by the Rainier, but you can’t go wrong with any of them. No seats on the market will allow you to rear-face longer than these 4, and since rear-facing is the safest position we can place our children in whenever traveling with them in a vehicle, this is where you want to be if you can afford it in terms of child safety.

Remember to pick up the infant insert as well if you’re buying one of the Cleks and want to use them from the day you leave the hospital, otherwise you’ll need to wait until your child has head control and can sit up independently. Similarly, if you’re buying one of the Dionos, make sure to pick up an angle adjuster so you’ll have a reasonable amount of room when driving or sitting as a passenger in the front row of your vehicle.

The 4 Best Convertible  and Infant Seats on a Budget (i.e., under $200)

   

The Graco Size4Me 65 – Review Here, Buy Here.
The Graco Contender – Review Here, Buy Here.
The Chicco KeyFit 30 – Review Here, Buy Here.
The Graco Snugride Click Connect 40 – Review Here, Buy Here.

If you’re on a $200 budget, these are my favorite convertible and infant seats currently on the market. The Size4Me 65 and its clones have long been my favorite overall car seat recommendations, simply because they’re designed to enable just about any child to rear-face from birth until 4, due to the 40 pound weight limit and extraordinary height limit. The Contender is a cheaper version of the Size4Me that skips out on some padding and a few creature comforts (e.g., additional LATCH straps) but offers the same rear-facing potential at a slightly lower price.

If you’re interested in infant seats, below $200, Chicco and Graco are doing excellent jobs with the KeyFit 30 and the Click Connect 40. The KeyFit 30 is very user friendly and compatible with a range of strollers, including the Bravo, while the Click Connect 40 will allow many children to rear-face well past 1 without needing to switch seats due to its additional height.

Personally, I’m a fan of just starting out with a great convertible so you don’t have to switch later on in order to keep rear-facing, so if I had $200 and a baby on the way, I’d go with either the Size4Me or Contender and skip the infant seat stage. However, if that’s not an option or if you need to be able to transport your infant in and out of a vehicle without waking him or her, then these are two great infant seats that won’t break the bank.

The 2 Best Combination / Booster Seats that Forward-Face to 90 pounds and Booster to 120 pounds

 

The Britax Frontier G1.1 – Review Here, Buy Here.
The Britax Pinnacle G1.1 – Review Here, Buy Here.

The Frontier and the Pinnacle are combination seats, which means they can both be used as forward-facing harnessed seats and as booster seats. Often seats that do one thing well do something else poorly. However, in this case, you’re looking at the two best forward-facing seats and the two best booster seats available in the United States as of this writing. I think that’s pretty cool.

There isn’t another car seat that does either of these jobs (forward-facing or boostering) better than these two seats. I love the Frontier and Pinnacle because if you buy either, it’s pretty much guaranteed to last your child until s/he no longer needs a car seat any more (i.e., when s/he can pass the 5-step test). That’s pretty awesome in my books.

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.