The Graco Size4Me 65 is perhaps my favorite budget convertible car seat of all time, simply due to the amazing value it offers families interested in an affordable entry to extended rear-facing. This is a review of the Size4Me 65, which you can buy at Amazon, and why it should either be the first car seat you ever buy for your children or the first seat you buy after they outgrow their infant seat. It’s easily one of the best car seats currently available in the United States; let’s take a closer look at how and why that’s the case.

Graco Size4Me 65 – What’s the big deal?

The Graco Size4Me 65 sounds a bit like a Fisher Price toy, but functionality is what’s important, and in terms of functionality, this is one of the most impressive budget-minded seats on the market from one of the most established names in the field. It’s a convertible car seat, which means it can be used in several configurations, including as a rear-facing infant seat, a forward-facing seat, and of course, as a booster. It has a number of aliases (the Fit4Me, the My Size 65, and the Headwise 65 and Headwise 70), each of which are almost identical, and is designed to enable parents to rear-face their children longer on a smaller budget. Is it worth it? Read on to find out!

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Graco Size4Me 65 Limits for Weight and Height

Rear-facing: 5-40 pounds. Your child’s head should not reach past 1″ below the top of the headrest. There is no given height limit for the child besides the 1″ rule. The shell height is around 27.5″ tall, which means there’s a lot of room for growth before children will outgrow it by height.

Forward-facing: 20-65 pounds, and under 52″ in height. The tips of your child’s ears need to be below the top end of the head rest. Your child should be at least 1, and it’s recommended that s/he is at least 2. 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.

Keep in mind that the Graco Size4Me 70 and Headwise70 are essentially the same seat but give you 5 extra pounds of forward-facing goodness.

Dimensions of the Graco Size4Me 65

The seat is 18.5″ wide at its widest point and 23.5″ high. It is around 22″ long. The bottom harness height is 8″ and slightly less when the infant insert is present, while the top harness height is at 17.5″. It has a 7-year product life.

Using the Graco Size4Me 65

Something I like about the Graco Size4Me 65 is that it’s incredibly easy to adjust harness height. There are a number of seats that make this process ridiculous, usually by having you rethread harness straps like a tailor or uninstall the seat over and over again. The Size4Me does away with that nonsense with a Simply Safe Adjust system of harness adjustment that lets you simply squeeze a lever to move the harness up and down. This alone is worth the price of admission (which, as you’ll see below, is among the most reasonable on the ERF market). You can even adjust it from the front of the seat! It ranges from 7″ to close to 17″ in terms of the torso height when a child is sitting in the seat.

Something I’ve become more impressed about over the years are car seats that do well with smaller infants, as the best car seat is useless if your children can’t sit safely in it. The Size4Me is rated down to 4 pounds. I can verify that it works well with 7 pound newborns, but it might be a bit tricky with preemies; it’ll depend on the child. Keep in mind that a number of convertible car seats don’t work well with newborns, so this is something to be lauded in the Size4Me.

There’s also a lever in the front designed to make it easy for you to set the recline of the seat. This doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it’s a nice comfort. There’s one rear-facing setting and two forward-facing settings. If you need to make the adjustment, double check your installation afterward. I also like the inclusion of a ball level indicator to help you make sure you’re reclining the seat properly when rear-facing.

In general, the installation of the seat is pretty straightforward, and I didn’t have any trouble achieving a good fit. Keep in mind that it’s not the smallest convertible out there, but that’s part of the price you pay for having one that has such great height limits. It’s still shorter than a Diono, and not much wider than one, either.

Buy the Graco Size4Me 65 on Sale with Free Shipping at Amazon.

Why Buy the Graco Size4Me 65?

This is the meat and potatoes of this car seat. The Graco Size4Me 65 is one of several seats in the United States that allow you to rear-face a child for up to 40 pounds. This isn’t as good as it gets anymore, but it’s still decent. Every pound is precious, as the longer you rear-face, the safer your child is. In the US, parents tend to turn their children around into the line of fire at 1. In Sweden, this typically isn’t done until 4. Children in Sweden are far less likely to die in car crashes than children in the US. It makes that much of a difference. This alone is reason enough to buy the Size4Me 65.

Besides that, the real show stopper for the Size4Me 65 is that it has an amazing, amazing height limit. I measure it as even higher than those in the Foonf and Diono seats! Most children outgrow their seats by height instead of by weight, which sends parents scrambling to find alternative solutions as they nervously watch their children’s heads approaching the tops of their head rests. However, with the Size4Me, you’re almost guaranteed to run out of weight first, which means that you’re almost guaranteed to get 4 years of rear-facing goodness from this seat.

That is beautiful–especially considering the price of this seat. It’s a very democratic car seat by this measure.

The picture isn’t quite as optimistic when forward-facing, as there your children will almost certainly outgrow it by height before weight, but with 52″ of room, it’s likely you’ll get up to 60 pounds of use out of it, which is good. Only a few seats like the Dionos will do better here.

Years later, it’s still one of the most affordable ERF seats on the market

Let’s be honest: the Graco Size4Me 65 is not going to win any awards for uber-long RF weight among its fellow convertibles. However, it’s designed to fill a niche, and in that respect, it does so well. It’s a great seat for parents interested in rear-facing who don’t have the budget for the highest weight seats. It’s also a great seat for parents of tall, skinny kids, and it also works well if you don’t have a child who’s high in the weight percentiles, yet still want him or her to rear-face until kindergarten. It’s also reasonably skinny, so you will be able to fit three across, whether with this or with other car seats, in most vehicles that are mid-sized or larger.

The biggest strike against the Graco Size4Me 65 is the fact that there are seats that allow you to RF significantly longer by weight. I also wish it had more than a 7-year product life. However, if price and height flexibility are important to you, the Graco Size4Me 65 will give you both while still helping you ERF. This is a sleeper seat that shows you don’t need to break the bank in order to keep your child rear-facing for a good amount of time. In that sense, it’s the best seat I’ve reviewed.

I recommend the Graco Size4Me 65 wholeheartedly. You can buy the Graco Size4Me 65 in a range of colors here.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases. Have a question or want to discuss best practices? Send me an email at carcrashdetective [at] gmail [dot] com.

The Chicco KeyFit 30 is one of the most popular infant car seats available today in the United States, which is part of why I was eager to take a closer look at it. How easy is it to install? What kinds of features does it offer over a number of similar seats in its price range (e.g., the Britax B-Safe 35)? And of course, how good of a job does it do keeping kids safe? These are some of the questions I tried to answer in this review of the KeyFit 30.

2018 update: The KeyFit 30 continues to be one of my favorite infant seats on the market, because it’s reliable, affordable, easy to install, and narrow enough to fit 3 across in pretty much any vehicle. The weight and height limits remain the same, although fabric options have been updated slightly. Remember that the cheapest seats aren’t necessarily the best ones–the ones that make it easy to live the rest of your life while knowing your kids are safe–those are worth spending a bit more on. The KeyFit is one of those seats.

Chicco KeyFit 30 – What’s the big deal?

The Chicco KeyFit 30 isn’t the kind of seat I’d typically review, given my preference for convertibles and combination seats, but functionality is what’s important, and in terms of functionality, this is one of the most impressive seats on the market.

It’s an infant car seat, which means it can be used in one configuration: as a rear-facing infant seat. It does not forward face; for that, you’ll need a convertible.

It’s one of the newest infant seats from Chicco, and aims to improve child safety by increasing the odds parents have of correctly installing and using car seats from day one. Is it worth it? Read on to find out!

Chicco KeyFit 30 Limits for Weight and Height

Rear-facing: 4-30 pounds. Your child’s head should not reach past 1″ below the top of the main shell. There is also a 30″ height limit for the child.

Of course, as a good parent, you’re not going to stop at 30 lbs, since 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.

Buy the Chicco KeyFit 30 on Sale with Free Shipping at Amazon here.

Dimensions of the Chicco KeyFit 30

The seat is 17″ wide at its widest point and 22″ high. The seat weighs 9.6 pounds, which makes it the lightest seat I’ve reviewed so far. Of course, being an infant seat, it should be much lighter than a convertible.

Using the Chicco KeyFit 30

Chicco calls the Keyfit 30 the easiest infant car seat a parent can install, and goes as far as to call it the highest rated infant car seat throughout the United States. These are big claims to back up, but I’d say they’re pretty close to accurate. I was surprised myself until I took a look at the seat. What makes the Keyfit so awesome? It’s a seat that was clearly thought out well ahead of time, and that led to a good design and solid construction. Here’s what it’s like to use it.

The Keyfit 30 covers are machine washable (use the cold water cycle on delicate with a mild detergent, and line dry them). The seat can be detached from its base and attached to Chicco strollers, which makes it easy to transport your children while on the go. The harness adjuster is very, very smooth, which helps in tightening and loosening straps. The manual is available in English and Spanish and makes sense in both languages. You can achieve a good install with either the seat belt or with lower LATCH anchors. Don’t use both, of course. The seat may be installed with or without the base. I like the base because it makes it a snap (literally) to install and remove the seat, which is crucial for getting a newborn or young infant out of a vehicle or into one without waking him or her.

Something else I like about the Keyfit 30 is that it is preemie friendly. There are a lot of seats that require a lot of hoops such as blanket rolling to make work with premature infants, and any mother who has purchased, bought, and returned several car seats to and from the NICU in effort to find a seat that makes a good fit knows how thankless of a task that is. However, the Keyfit 30 fits preemies easily (as long as they weigh at least 4 pounds), which is a blessing.

Buy the Chicco KeyFit 30 on Sale with Free Shipping at Amazon here.

Why Buy the Chicco KeyFit 30?

The Chico KeyFit 30 is not designed to help you rear-face a child until the cows come home. What it does well is provide parents with a convenient and nearly fool-proof method of getting their child safely from the hospital and around for the first few months of life. After that, I’d recommend replacing it with a convertible seat with the highest RF limits you can find. In other words, look for these seats. Remember, every pound is precious, as the longer you rear-face, the safer your child is. In the US, parents tend to turn their children around into the line of fire at 1. In Sweden, this typically isn’t done until 4. Children in Sweden are far less likely to die in car crashes than children in the US. It makes that much of a difference.

If ERF is what’s most important, then you might wonder why I’d suggest a seat that doesn’t come anywhere close to the best ERF limits. That’s because infant seats aren’t designed to RF forever. They’re for convenience! A class A convertible like a Foonf weighs more than 30 pounds; add the 7 pounds of a newborn and there’s no way you’re going to take that seat and child anywhere if it’s all you have as a child seat.

In contrast, with a seat like the Keyfit 30, you buy it packaged with a stroller, such as with the Keyfit 30 Travel System, and use the seat and stroller to transport your child when walking, and move the seat with your newborn about without waking up your child. Later, as your child gains in weight, you’ll naturally stop using the infant seat and start using the stroller or a good baby carrier to transport him or her, and when s/he’s in the car, you’ll use a high quality convertible car seat, and then later a combination seat. That’s the easiest way to navigate the practicalities of weight, children, car seats, and transportation. Start with the infant seat and stroller, or infant seat and carrier, and transition to the stroller or carrier and convertible seat.

I recommend the Chicco Keyfit 30 wholeheartedly. You can buy the KeyFit 30 in a range of colors here.  Canadians can buy the KeyFit 30 by itself or with a range of travel systems here.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can  shop here for Canadian purchases. Have a question or want to discuss best practices? Join us in the forums!