To cull the herd, we studied online customer reviews and coverage from other media outlets, including BabyCenter, BabyGearLab, The Car Seat Lady, Fatherly, and Mommyhood101. We interviewed nearly 20 graco car seat experts on car seat safety, policy, and installation. If you are expecting a smaller baby and want to start with a convertible seat, this is not the best car seat for a newborn on the tiny side.
In order to adjust the height of the straps on the Foonf as your child grows, you must slide them off the splitter plate (tucked behind a panel in the seat), thread them through a different slot, and then reattach them to the splitter plate. As long as your child is rear-facing, this can be done without fully uninstalling the seat, but it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do. To install the Foonf forward-facing with the seat belt alone, you route the lap portion of the belt through the forward-facing belt path and the shoulder portion of the belt through the forward-facing belt lock-off, and then buckle it in. To get it extra-snug, you pull on the belt while pressing down on the center of the seat, removing any extra slack. The seat has a no-rethread harness, so making height adjustments to the harness straps as your child grows is a quick and easy process—no dismantling and rethreading required.
We do still think that the backless booster mode is very bulky, and we don’t care for that mode of use, though it’s a perfectly safe option. Depending on your child’s weight, you may be able to skip that mode anyway and go straight from the high-back booster to the seat belt trainer. Like the Extend2Fit Convertible, the Foonf can accommodate rear-facing children up to 50 pounds and forward-facing kids up to 65 pounds or 49 inches.
We commissioned MGA Research, a lab in Burlington, Wisconsin, to conduct the tests, and we factored the results into our final recommendations. Most people don’t use an infant car seat for more than a year or a year and a half before switching to a convertible. But the click-in, click-out option during those early days, when the child is still light enough to be easily portable, is certainly convenient. Unlike most of the inserts found on other Graco convertible car seats, the inserts on this seat have a limit. The head and back support can only be used until the child is 20 pounds.
The fact that the cover is machine-washable helps on that front, and it’s unlikely that the lingering peanut butter stains we failed to vanquish would’ve been visible had our seat cover been black rather than light gray. In order to reposition the LATCH straps from a rear-facing to a forward-facing position, you must take the cover completely off the seat. If this seems overly onerous, that’s because it is—however, it’s not something you’re likely to do very often. We began this process by examining online customer reviews and existing media coverage from other media outlets, including BabyGearLab, Car Seats for the Littles, and The Car Seat Lady.
Our also-great pick, the Clek Foonf, reclines in the rear-facing position to create more space, and it has narrow, upright sides that help accommodate a larger rear-facing child. But the Boulevard’s flared, thick sides seem to provide less room for a child’s legs. And there also didn’t seem to be enough space for a larger child between the crotch buckle and where the seat back begins to slope upward. When my tall-for-his age son sat in the seat rear-facing at almost age three, his legs were scrunched up. At just 6.8 pounds, the inexpensive Cosco Scenera Next weighs far less than most other convertible car seats.
Then you attach the included straps via LATCH (see this video for a demonstration) to the vehicle’s anchors and close the lock-off (a lever that ratchets down the strap to remove the extra slack). Or, if you prefer to rely on your car’s seat belt (see this video for a demonstration) instead of the LATCH system, you thread the seat belt through the belt path, buckle it in, and close the lock-off. (Graco calls this lock-off mechanism the SnugLock, and we found that it works as advertised.) To uninstall the base, you lift the lock-off and either push the red buttons on the LATCH clips to release them or unbuckle the seat belt.
Head over to our YouTube Channel to see the review and installation how-to of the Graco Extend2Fit. This Graco earns an above-average score for ease of use but isn’t the easiest Graco we’ve tested. The HIC and chest clip sensors in the Extend2Fit were some of the lowest in the group in a testing situation where lower is better. If you are unable to register your child’s seat with the manufacturer, contact NHTSA at We are currently testing the Poplar and Poplar S and will update this guide soon with our findings. Whenever possible, we sought feedback about the seats from kid testers.
First of all, third-party car seat crash tests don’t actually give us meaningful data! Car seat manufacturers crash-test their products hundreds, even upwards of a thousand times. They crash test the finished product in every single installation configuration using every applicable-sized crash test dummy, not to mention a whole lot of testing at each stage of the development process too. So one or two crash tests completed by another organization just can’t give the same level of information! One or two crash tests aren’t going to represent the overall average performance of any car seat across its lifespan. Remember, the best car seat is the one that fits your child, vehicle, budget, and lifestyle and has the features important to you.