Graco Extend2Fit 3-in-1 W/Anti-Rebound Bar (USA)

The best car seat is the one that fits your child, vehicle, budget, and lifestyle and has the features important to you. The safest car seat is the one you can install correctly and use properly on every ride! Let us know in the comment section what questions you have about this Graco Extend2Fit 3-in-1 car seat review.

Graco Extend2Fit 3-in-1 with Anti-Rebound Bar Car Seat Review (USA)

The original Graco Extend2Fit convertible car seat was one of the first with a 50-pound rear-facing limit! This updated version is even better than the original! It’s still one of the best convertible car seats for small cars, making it a great option for tall front-seat passengers, compact vehicles, or any situation with limited front-to-back space! The Graco Extend2Fit 3-in-1 with anti-rebound bar has an easier-to-tighten harness, an anti-rebound bar, and a Rapid Remove cover. It also doesn’t have the under 40 pound forward-facing recline issue that the original Extend2Fit does.

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✅ Seat is good for you if:

✅ You want to rear face as long as possible.

The Graco Extend2Fit 3-in-1 rear-faces to the maximum pounds allowed on the US market – 50 pounds. The best practice is to rear-face as long as possible (think age 4+), and with the built-in-leg extension panel, your kiddo will have 5 extra inches of leg room. Curious why rear-facing is safest? Watch this!

✅ Your back seat space is very limited.

The Graco Extend2Fit 3-in-1 is one of the best convertible car seats for small cars. It is one of the most compact in front-to-back space!

Because the seat has numerous recline positions, it can get very upright, which lessens the footprint of the seat from front to back. If you have a tall driver or passenger or are just really tight on that legroom in the second or third row of your vehicle this seat is one of the most compact car seats.

🚩 Use Caution If:

🚩 You need to fit 3 people in one row of the vehicle.

For the majority of vehicles, this seat is too wide at 20″ to work in a 3 across configuration. Check out options that we like better here.

🚩You want to skip an infant seat.

We’ve found this seat fits an infant ok from 8-9 pounds. 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. The car seat harness has to be coming from below the shoulders when rear-facing, and a smaller baby will unlikely meet this requirement in this seat. Our list of favorite car seats for preemies can be found here.

️ Stand Out Features:

Anti-rebound Bar

This version of Graco Extend2Fit 3-in-1 has an anti-rebound bar (ARB), an added safety feature that can reduce the secondary movement of the car seat, called rebound, during a crash. When a crash occurs, the car seat will move forward, towards the front of the vehicle, and rotate downward. And as we all know from high school physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction — so after that initial movement, the car seat will rebound, or “bounce back” towards the backrest of the vehicle seat. The ARB minimizes this bounce-back effect, helping limit the car seat movement and your child inside it! ARBs may also limit the side-to-side rotation of the car seat in a side-impact collision. Overall, they’re a great feature on a rear-facing car seat!

️ It’s very compact rear-facing.

This seat has 3 recline options. Once the seat is in the most upright recline position, it takes up very little space front to back. This makes it one of the better convertible car seats for small cars or for front-seat passengers who are very tall.

️ Has an optional leg panel for extra leg room in rear-facing mode only.

The leg panel has multiple settings and can give up to 5″ of extra leg room for a rear-facing child. This is optional and does not have to be used if you have a smaller vehicle or very tall passengers. This panel can never be used in forward-facing mode.

Rapid Remove Cover

When you want to wash the Graco Extend2fit car seat cover, it’s really easy to do because of its Rapid Remove cover that velcros off easily. This cover also allows you to easily access the belt path, so you can use the Inside Out Trick to get a tight installation!

⚠️ Quirks to be Aware Of:

⚠️The cupholders are required.

Once they’re clicked into place correctly, they can’t easily be removed! They must always be attached when the car seat is in use.

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✈️ Airplane Use

The Graco Extend2Fit 3-in-1 is an FAA-approved car seat. While it’s not the lightest car seat, nor is it the heaviest, so you certainly can travel with it. Just get a travel cart to maneuver through the airport! Because it can be very compact in rear-facing mode, it will fit in that direction on most airplane seats. It is wide, so you’ll need to put the airplane armrests up to fit! For help with all things airplane travel and car seats, check out our Wheels Up Course and private Facebook group.

SITS Bottom Line

As long as you don’t need 3 across, this will be a good option for most people. It’s great to keep even the highest percentile kiddos rear-facing as long as possible. It can be quite compact front to back as well.

Other Versions of this seat:

• Graco Extend2Fit 3-in-1*
• Graco Extend2Fit 2-in-1 (Review | Rear-Facing Install | Forward-Facing Install)
• Graco Premier 4Ever DLX Extend2Fit SnugLock
• Graco Premier 4Ever DLX Extend2Fit with Anti-Rebound Bar

*A SITS recommended seat. Recommended seats are in our Buying Kits because they have ranked high on our vehicle, child, ease of use, and features scale.

Compare Car Seats

Looking to compare car seats and narrow down the best car seat for your family? The Convertible Car Seat Buying Kit walks you through our 7Cs of selection, then on to an interactive quiz, and finally, a recommended car seat list is generated just for you! If you are overwhelmed and sick of spending hours researching and reading car seat reviews like this one, the Buying Kit will guide you to Safe in the Seat’s recommended car seats for you in under 30 minutes!

The Graco Extend2Fit 3-in-1 with Anti-rebound Bar was featured on this Amazon Live – watch for the standout features we love and more convertible seats we recommend.

A note about crash-tests

How does the Graco Extend2Fit 3-in-1 with anti-rebound bar perform in crash tests? 

Well, that’s a great question. We know it passes the strict federally required testing for all car seats sold in the United States. But we don’t know exactly how it performs. That data isn’t released by any official sources in the US — not by car seat manufacturers, not by government agencies like NHTSA, not anywhere! 

There are a few third-party websites that claim to offer objective crash test data that compares car seats. But we at Safe in the Seat ignore that data for a few big reasons. 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.

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