It may seem like there are about a million and one different types of car seats out there, but it helps to group them into the four stages of your child’s growth. Newborns come home from the hospital and spend at least their first few months in an infant seat, then move up to a larger rear-facing child seat, then onto a forward facing car seat with full harness, and finally a booster seat. However, many companies have designed seats that work well for more than one of those stages, adjusting to accommodate the growth of your child, so one seat can be perfectly safe for many years of service.
We’ll cover each type eventually, but for this instalment we will be focusing on booster seats without harnesses and focus on simpler booster seats that rely on vehicles’ seatbelts to secure your kiddo. Even within the booster category, there are several different types of seats, from latching fixed-back seats to removable-back to compact, portable seats, so we looked for the best in each category. To learn more about booster seats, use the table of contents to navigate, but we’re going to start out with the list of best booster seats you can buy.