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 Safety 1st Comfort Ride car seat review.

Safety 1st Comfort Ride Car Seat Review (USA)

The Safety 1st Comfort Ride is one of the most inexpensive seats that has a no-rethread harness! It can harness average-sized children until around five years of age, and it also has high back and backless booster modes. It’s also very lightweight, so it could be a good option for parents who travel frequently. We did have some issues with the child fit in the backless booster mode; see below.

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✅ Seat is good for you if:

✅ A younger child needs the convertible car seat you have, but the child who was using it still needs a forward-facing harness.

If you have a child who is currently forward-facing in a convertible seat and have a younger child who needs a convertible seat, it usually makes the most sense to pass down the convertible car seat to the younger child and purchase the older child a forward-facing-only seat. This seat can be good for that situation since it still has a harness mode.

✅ Your child is no longer rear-facing, and you want a seat that will last them until they fit into the adult seat belt.

Maybe the rear-facing convertible seat you have been using is expired, has been in a crash, or you just hate it, and you want to buy a new seat to use forward-facing. If you fall into one of those categories, this may be the seat for you! It doesn’t make sense to buy another convertible seat that has a rear-facing mode because you won’t be using that anymore. This seat will start as a forward-facing harness and then later turn into a high back and then a backless booster.

✅ Your child is below the 50th percentile for height.

The highest harness height is only 16.5″ tall, while many other seats in this category have harness heights that are above 18″. The harness height is critical because when forward-facing, the straps have to be even with or just above the shoulder. Long-torsoed kids will outgrow this seat fast, but if you have a child who is below the 50th percentile in height, this will likely be adequate to get them to a safe booster age. The highest belt guide position (that will be used in high back booster mode to route the vehicle’s shoulder belt through) on this seat is only 18.5″, so it will last about 2 years longer than the harness mode.

✅ You travel often, and your child is already forward-facing.

If you are a parent who primarily uses rideshare services and/or taxis to get around but you don’t have the budget for a Wayb Pico, this may be the seat for you! It weighs 12.1 pounds, so it’s lighter than many other seats out on the market today. You can attach it to a travel cart like this one in order to easily transport it around the city while you go about your day.

🚩 Use Caution If:

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

Since this seat is only 17.75″ wide, it may work as one of the seats in a 3 across configuration in some vehicles. We have some other more narrow options here. We were able to fit it in a 3 across configuration in a 2012 Toyota Camry with an Evenflo LiteMax and a Chicco Myfit, as you can see above.

🚩You have a larger percentile child.

The highest harness height is only 16.5″ tall, so if you have a child with a long torso, this is probably not the best seat for you. This is because you need the harness to be coming from at or below their shoulders. Many other seats in this category have harness heights that are above 18″. The highest belt guide position on this seat is only 18.5″, so it’s not long-lasting in the high back booster mode, either.

🚩You plan to use this seat in backless booster mode at any point.

While we had no issues with child fit for the harness and high back booster modes, other than not being as long-lasting as other seats on the market, we did not find that the backless booster mode gave an acceptable belt fit on either of the kids that we tried.

The oldest child is 8.5 years old, 51″ and 45 pounds. As you can see in the picture on the left, the lap belt is far from where it should be (across the top of the thighs), and the shoulder belt is not in a good position either. The backless booster mode requires that you route the shoulder portion of the seat belt over the booster’s armrest, and there is no shoulder belt adjuster as well, so there is no way to fix any part of this seat belt in order to make the seat belt fit properly on this child. The 2nd child pictured is 6 years old, 45″, and 54 pounds. This child does not get a proper fit as well.

️ Stand Out Features:

Lightweight

This seat only weighs 12.1 pounds. In combination with its no-rethread harness, this makes it a great option for people who travel via airplane, ride shares, and/or taxis, as it’s easy to transport and use.

️ Inexpensive

This is one of very few forward-facing only seats that are under $100 at this time and the only one that has a no-rethread harness. As a seat that will last from age 2 to around 10, that’s great value for the price!

⚠️ Quirks to be Aware Of:

⚠️ Unusual belt routing in backless booster mode

The shoulder belt gets routed over the armrest instead of under it when you are using the seat in the backless mode. The high-back booster mode has the typical under-the-armrest routing.

⚠️ The harness is not stored on the seat for high back booster mode.

Make sure to put all of the parts into a large bag and label it so that you can reassemble it in the future!

⚠️ You cannot use the lower anchors in booster mode.

For the booster modes, you will need to teach the child to buckle in the seat when they are being dropped off to school or activities so that the booster will not be a projectile in a crash.

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✈️ Airplane Use

The Safety 1st Comfort Ride is an FAA-approved car seat. At 12.1 pounds, it is the lightest option available if you want a combination seat with a no-rethread harness. If traveling internationally, you will need a locking clip in order to do a seat belt installation. Contact the car seat manufacturer for a free locking clip. We have a video here of how to use a locking clip.

For help with all things airplane travel and car seats, check out our Wheels Up Course and private Facebook group.

SITS Bottom Line

If you have a child who is below the 50th percentile for both height and weight and you are looking for a forward-facing only seat that starts as a harnessed seat, this may be the seat for you! It’s fairly narrow, so that may work in some 3 across situations, and its lightweight design makes it ideal for traveling with as well. However, we cannot guarantee the proper fit of other children in backless mode. It is plausible that we simply encountered a situation where this backless booster did not align well with the proportions of our two models, but that seems unlikely considering their dissimilar sizes and proportions.

Other Versions of this seat:

• Safety 1st Boost & Go– has an added insert

*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 Forward-Facing and Booster 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!

We check every day for our recommended car seats on sale, and we have all the deals here for you. Shopping in Canada? Find today’s seat sales in Canada here.

What About Seats We Don’t Recommend?

Just like anyone, we have preferences! This goes for car seats, too. If we don’t recommend a car seat, it’s not because it’s unsafe for your little one. All car seats are safe if they’re installed and used properly, are not expired or damaged, and when they’re made and sold by a reputable manufacturer and/or retailer. Click here for our full list of car seats that we do not recommend.

A note about crash-tests

How does the Safety 1st Comfort Ride 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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