The price is insane man. The best of the best car seat according to lots of reviews(Cybex Anoris-T) is "only" £599, your thing is significantly more and I don't see why it's any better.
Edit: sorry, let me rephrase that - not insane, just hard to justify.
I am always entertained by the extra amount people are willing to pay for the tiniest bit of risk reduction (or appearance thereof) for baby and kid related products.
For example, paying an extra $900 for a car seat, but then taking the kid on unnecessary car rides, which are magnitudes riskier than not taking the kid in a car. If you are willing to pay that much for such an immaterial decrease in risk, surely you should avoid taking the kid in a car unless absolutely necessary.
Although, I guess some of it is also showing what you can afford.
Our risk assessment is as emotional as is logical.
When it comes to driving specifically, my friends will buy a 50k SUV to feel safe, but will then buy cheapest plasticy tires or refuse to join me in advanced safety class.
That being said - kids are vulnerable, fragile, and don't make their own decisions. As a newish parent myself I 100% understand the extra pressure that puts to make the best possible decision for them.
I mean I know people who seem to get in an accident once in a while — sometimes completely their fault — and other people who have driven 20 years everywhere and clearly drive better and react quicker than anyone else I know.
So by all means, someone doing something or not doesn’t mean much.
And some of it is buying convenience. The peace of mind from knowing you have the safest seat allows risking more rides which frees up impromptu errand scheduling. Whether the math actually works out is orthogonal to the psychological effects.
It's about convenience. Refraining from taking certain car rides to reduce the risk is inconvenient. But for a wealthy customer, there is no difference between buying car seat A or B, but if A is $900 more and slightly safer, it's logical and just as convenient to choose it.
Ya - if I could afford this and didn't, and the kid died - I'd always wonder if the better seat would have saved them. I have a really good seat (this didn't exist), and also (probably equally...or more importantly?) a very highly rated car.
Safety is a great way to sell this product, though the price may limit who buys it.
What counts as an unnecessary car ride for you? If I'm going to the grocery store and there's someone else to watch my toddler, I don't need to take her with me, but I think the bit of stimulation of getting out of the house and seeing a new place, new experience, and new people has a benefit that outweighs the almost inconsequential odds of a major car accident as I drive there and back on roads with a speed limit of 35 MPH.
I used to know some of the Cybex people (it was a European company), and they congratulated us on beating their best safety scores at the time. Now Cybex is owned by an Asian conglomerate (Goodbaby).
The Kioma difference in materials quality and performance is both quantifiable and qualitative. We have to charge a price that covers our work in design and production costs. But I completely get it if the Kioma seat is too expensive for your preferences.
You can tell that guy's not a parent, haha. It's a shitload of money, but at least in this case I know that I'm getting value out of it. It's very easy to piss away a fortune on badly-made Chinese plastic trash in the world of baby accessories.
I find it really interesting that you reached that conclusion. Me and my wife spent what feels like an absolutely insane amount of money on a car seat, definitely more than any of our friends have spent(the beforementioned Anoris-T, because as far as I can tell it is the best seat you can buy) and the idea of spending $1000 on a car seat just doesn't fit in my head. It's just too much.
>> but at least in this case I know that I'm getting value out of it
I am a parent, and in my opinion, spending $1k on a car seat is completely unreasonable. (We bought ours used as part of a package deal with some other used baby stuff. It would have been nowhere near $1k when new.)
The thing about the baby market is that, because it’s driven by emotional decisions, there are buyers at every price point - and it isn’t even directly related to wealth. Some people get into debt trying to make this harsh world safer for their newborn, even though safety benefits taper off as the price increases.
For me, I picked the lower bound and my wife picked the upper bound on the price range we were looking at. She is frugal above all else, I am safety conscious above all else. We met in the middle and found one that suited.
It required some negotiation to begin with though, because her upper bound was lower than my lower bound - and was firmly in the “dodgy unbranded wholesale, sold on a website with an invalid SSL certificate, claiming to be UK based but registered to a Chinese address” territory.
When buying used car seats, remember to check the "use before" date that is marked on it. They only claim to achieve the designed strength/protection for a number of years. At least in Europe.
What is that based on other than them wanting to sell more seats? I'd imagine the materials don't erode, otherwise how safe can it even be in the first place?
So ours has a manufacture date and I know people look at it and if it's older than 3-4 years they won't buy it off you, but as far as I can see that advice isn't anywhere in the manual of the seat. Maybe some seats "expire" in some way, but it sounds like an urban myth.
Agreed, my only thought on the $1000 price tag was that I already have a seat that is well rated and don’t want to throw away or donate a perfectly good $800 car seat/stroller system.
Like cheap end car seats when we looked were in the 200-400 and nicer ones were in the 600-1200 range.
Just a note that the infant ones have a 5-year lifespan from date of manufacture. Not sure if it’s the nylon straps or the foam mechanical characteristics.
We were gifted a hand me down and I had to cut the straps and bag it.
We ended up handing down the two infant sized ones we got that were the same model.
Also any car seat involved in a collision needs to be disposed of.
I dislike waste but you don’t mess with car seats and helmets.
Is there a standard safety test for this stuff? When I did some research a couple of years ago (my daughter is 1.5 years old now) I found some test by an european institution that had the Axkid One+ on top, so I bought that one.
I have no experience whatsoever with baby carseats.
But I get so frustrated with garbage on the market, and the struggle to find decent quality goods. I've created my own where they don't exist (eg. current limiter for plugging in laptop power brick on a plane, untrasonic eyeglass cleaner and dryer, tongue-activated mouse button) which is hugely labour intensive. If I need your thing, your thing is as good as you say, and you can sell it to me for less than that costs me in time, materials and lost opportunity, then for me the math is simple.
Edit: sorry, let me rephrase that - not insane, just hard to justify.