With a 4 year old, 2 year old and a newborn weeks away, you can imagine how many different car seats we’ve used and I’ve installed in our cars.  Between our nanny, the grandparents and our cars alone, we are pushing 10+ car seats!

… SURELATCH.  Think about all the times you have to install/remove a car seat from a car.  I’ll be really thankful for the Symphony’s surelatch system, which makes it very simple and convenient to secure the car seat tightly to the car.  You don’t even have to manually tighten the latch strap – even my wife can install this! … Adjustable harness.  The adjustable harness system on the Symphony 65 is on a rail system, so it simply slides up/down and there is no need to re-thread the straps.  We have one other car seat that does this, the rest we need to re-thread, and I can’t begin to tell you what a convenience this feature affords.

…Buckles seem a bit too easy for younger kids who shouldn’t be unbuckling themselves mid-drive.  However, with the older kids, it’s nice that they can get themselves in/out of the car seat without any adult assistance. $199 is costly, but then again, most car seats are.  At least with the Symphony, you get a lot of PROS.

…I prefer infant car seats for carting a newborn around, mainly for the convenience of leaving the baby asleep in the car seat but for older babies, toddlers and preschoolers, the Symphony 65 is a great seat.  In a pinch, a newborn can sit rear facing in a symphony 65 as well.  Installation of the seat was a cinch and adjusting the seat for different ages has been simple.  I’m guessing that we’ll get a lot of use out of the Symphony 65 and a $199 investment in this convertible car seat would be a good one.