Safety 1st Crosstown Slim All-in-One Convertible Car Seat, City Storm

Affordable, Easy to Set up/Adjust, Quality
First time car seat owner. I bought it so I can pick up my little niece from daycare. Setup was easy, seemingly comfortable, good quality, and easy to adjust for the baby’s growth. My sister (her mother) has an expensive car seat which is not nearly as easy to adjust for growth. This one should be good for infants up through little kids. Baby loves the cupholders. Great deal!

Absolutely Terrible Car Seat
I bought this Safety 1st Crosstown Slim just for travel, and I seriously regret it. We normally use a Nuna Exec at home, which installs easily and feels super solid. This one is absolutely terrible. I was trying to install it rear facing, and it never gets tight, whether you use the LATCH system or the seat belt. The whole base tips forward no matter what you do.I spent over an hour trying to get it secure in our Jeep, and it never once felt safe. The recline setup makes things worse, and the instructions are basically useless.If you’re thinking about saving money with this seat, don’t. You’re much better off spending a few hundred more on a car seat that installs securely and actually feels safe.

I would say definitely worth it
Before this, I tried two other car seats that the reviews lied. The straps were not even close to long enough. The only dispute I have when ordering this one was not the seat itself, but the delivery was screwed up. Next day prime delivery took several phone calls a two weeks. But, after the seat finally came it strapped in and tighten nicely. I had no issues getting it in and out of the vehicle. In fact, my kid loves it so much i’m considering buying another one for our other vehicle since I have another baby on the way.

Insurmountable installation issues
We bought three of these for our toddlers to use on an airplane trip. I would NOT recommend them. Here are my main complaints:1. With the way the strap was designed for the LATCH system, there was no possible way to install these tightly enough in our minivan. It’s essentially a T-shaped strap and only one end is adjustable, so once you’ve tightened that side as far as it goes (to the limit of the vertical of the T shape), if the other end is still too loose, there’s nothing you can do about it. Terrible design.2. When the LATCH approach failed, we had to resort to the vehicle seatbelt method. Once again, there was no way to get these installed adequately tightly using this method. The instruction manual indicates you can use a rolled towel if necessary to maintain the proper recline level for rear-facing install, but IMO this should not be a necessity out of the box in a standard vehicle. The seat should be designed so it can be situated properly on its own, not require crutches to be added. Even when installed as tightly as humanly possible, these were still not nearly secure enough. We were stuck with them on our trip and I was frankly terrified the entire time because I knew they were too loose to be fully safe.3. THE CUP HOLDERS ARE AWFUL. If the above weren’t a problem, this would’ve been a minor annoyance, but as it was this just added insult to injury. They tout being removable as a positive feature, but in reality, they fall off CONSTANTLY. They only require a half-turn or so to detach, so if your kid even slightly twists their water bottle as they pull it out of the holder, it will loosen very quickly (and if you have a kid who likes to fiddle with stuff, forget about it). We were constantly having to reattach them, and lost one permanently somewhere between Phoenix and Chicago.4. The top portion of the seat that adjusts the strap/head rest height kind of wiggles side to side even when “locked in” to a position. Feels cheap and not sturdy. Also gets jammed easily and makes adjusting the height much harder than it should be.I had bought these on the recommendation of a popular car seat safety blog because they are lightweight and have higher rear-facing limits, but I would NOT recommend these to a single soul as they were far more trouble than they were worth and in my opinion are not safe. Hoping to be able to return.