SnugRide 32 Infant Car Seat review
The SnugRide Classic Connect 32 Infant Car Seat is one of Graco’s older top-selling models for an infant up to 32 pounds or 32 inches. I believe the thing’s been replaced by the SnugRide 35 as that’s pretty much all I see when looking for the thing.
Updated 2/12/14: While not officially recalled, the SnugRide and many many others are listed as eligible for a replacement buckle that does not stick. You can see details of the great Graco 2014 recall here.
SnugRide 32 Infant Car Seat problems
I’ll skip the longwinded review and get down to the nitty gritty. As a car seat, it’s a little too long for smaller vehicles. In Kim’s Honda Civic the passenger seat has to be pushed forward in order for the seat to fit properly, and setting it in the center of the back seat just doesn’t work very well as it forces you to lift baby+car seat at full arm extension.
Releasing the baby involves pulling a handle at the top of the car seat, and that’s usually pushed up against the seat in front if there’s been a passenger in the caar.
The pull strap to secure baby in gets hung up sometimes and you have to pull significantly harder than you should, and it it releases you’re suddenly pulling to hard on a very surprised baby.
The handle corners seem to stick out too far to work in most restaurant high chairs/car seat docks, so you end up wedging baby into a rigged position that never quite looks right or feels right. The rounded edges of the handle base do protect your knees somewhat from being bashed by the seat, but they’re bowed out just about an inch too wide to fit properly anywhere you care about sitting the baby.
However
I’m not going to attempt to speculate on why the thing was designed the way it was. All I now is that other car seats seem to travel better into restaurants, and I’ve never run into one that just felt this heavy before.
The armor of the thing may end up saving your child’s life, or it could end up giving you a hernia and adding a lot of cursing to your vocabulary based on infant car seats.
I’m going to have to give this an average rating for usability. You’ll need to check it out for if it fits your specific needs.
The SnugRide® Classic Connect™ 32 Infant Car Seat has a suggested retail price of $149.99
