Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

We have been using this seat for just shy of a year now for my 5-year old. It is one of seven seats that I have owned and used for my kiddos over the years, so I feel like I've built up enough hours to be able to pick out a good product when I see it. I had really expected more from this seat. :( First, the good - the Clicktight feature is A-MAZING. I love it. That feature has single-handedly saved me from buying yet another seat for a different car as the install is easy enough that I don't mind switching it between vehicles on a semi-recurring basis. Honestly I could foresee Clicktight ultimately replacing Latch altogether for forward-facing seats. I also thoroughly appreciate the max harness height, which is advertised as 20.5" but by my measurement on my seat is more like 20". Still, when you figure that most kids will outgrow this type of seat by height before weight (even my 95%+ little man), that is a majorly attractive feature - most other seats on the market max out at 18". Between that and the nice long 10-year expiration, Britax had my wallet falling open for this product. Enter the downfall - After installing this seat in my husband's car, which was a breeze, I thought I was all set. Then over the course of the first couple months or so there were several occasions when I'd go to get my son out of the car and find that his harness was way, way too loose. My husband commented that he was having trouble tightening the harness so I gave it a try myself and literally COULD NOT get it to tighten up. (I have a different seat in my car, so hadn't used this one myself yet). I'm talking full-body in the car with legs on the strap trying to pull it, with no success. We removed the seat and checked it out and didn't see anything amiss so reinstalled it and hoped it was just manufactured too stiff and would loosen up over time. My husband gave it extra force from them on to get the harness better tightened, but it continued to bother me as I worried about my son's safety anytime there wasn't someone with superhuman strength to put him in. I called Britax at one point and they told me they had "never heard of this before" and suggested that I change the recline setting or just leave the harness tightened when taking my son out of the seat. The recline angle was too severe to fit in our car, and the pre-tightened harness approach was a major PITA, so that went nowhere. Finally I set to searching on the internet and found that people have been complaining about this issue with these seats since at least 2013!! Here's the issue: The harness on this seat routes across two pieces of plastic on the back of the seat, each ridged on either side but with no backer plate. When you install the seat in many different vehicle types, the open channel gets pressed into the seat and the seat itself traps the harness straps in place, thus making it ridiculously difficult to pull. Two of our three cars had this problem - a Ford Focus and a Ford Fusion. If you are lucky enough to have a car with more of a concave rear seat, like our Dodge Magnum or cars with "captain's seats," you won't have this issue. You can literally see it from the side of the seat when installed. Just to confirm that this is what was happening, I bought a cheap $0.88 plastic cutting board at Walmart and stuck it between my car's seatback and the car seat to "unsquish" the open harness channels and voila, %#$@ thing worked like a charm! Bottom line: This Britax seat has a design flaw that they could have fixed for literally a few bucks at the factory by adding a backer plate, but instead for years they have continued to sell it without concern for the many families who I am sure have slack harnesses on their kid because they aren't able to get it to adjust correctly. I would probably be less miffed if their help line hadn't claimed ignorance, but it is still not OK. Don't buy this seat unless 1) you are confident you have a concave seatback in your car, or 2) you feel safe jamming a plastic board behind it to make it work.