Graco 4Ever Extend2Fit 4-in-1 Car Seat Review

This is a sponsored post. I received the Graco 4Ever Extend2Fit 4-in-1 car seat at no cost to facilitate this post. All opinions are my own.

Your child will be in a car seat for a long time! But now there is a car seat you can use from the day your baby is born all the way up to a backless booster. The Graco 4Ever Extend2Fit 4-in-1 car seat is a rear facing, forward facing, high back booster and backless booster, all in one! That’s right, you can enjoy 10 years of use, from 4 – 120 lb with this one car seat! It’s one of the coolest pieces of baby gear on the market!

Today I’m going to give you my complete review of the Graco 4Ever Extend2Fit 4-in-1 car seat. Let me tell you about the great features of this seat!

Four Ways to Use It

As I mentioned above, there are 4 ways you can use this seat: rear-facing, forward-facing, highback booster, and backless booster.

Rear-Facing Infant Car Seat: As a rear-facing infant car seat, you can use this seat for children who weigh between 4-50 pounds. It is highly recommended that you rear-face your child until at least the age of 2, but ideally until they outgrown the weight or height limitations. Why? Because a small child is 5x’s safer when they are rear-facing. The high weight limit on this seat will allow you to rear-face your child for quite a long time.

One of the neatest features of this particular car seat from Graco is the Extend2Fit feature, which provides up to 5″ of extra legroom (there are 4 different extension lengths), allowing your child to ride rear-facing longer (in other words, safer), because his or her legs will be more comfortable. In the photo above, you can see my son (18 months) using this seat in rear-facing mode without Extend2Fit utilized. In the photo below you can see my daughter (3 years + 2 months) also rear-facing without Extend2Fit and then with the Extend2Fit extended as far as it will go.

Keep in mind that although this car seat can be used forward-facing at 22 pounds, if at all possible, it is safest to continue to rear-face your child until they reach 50 pounds or until they are too tall for this seat (your child’s head needs to remain at least 1 inch below the headrest adjustment handle).

Forward-Facing Car Seat: You can use the Graco 4Ever Extend2Fit 4-in-1 Car Seat as a forward-facing car seat (with a 5-point harness) once your child reaches 22 pounds until he or she weighs 65 pounds. This is the installation we use for our 5 year old son and 7 year old daughter.

Highback Booster Seat: As a highback booster, you can use this seat from 40-100 pounds. As I mentioned above, I keep my children in a 5-point harness for as long as possible, but I also wanted to take a photo to show you what this seat looks like used as a highback booster.

Backless Belt-Positioning Booster: This seat can be used as a backless belt-positioning booster seat for children weighing 40-120 pounds. Here is my daughter (age 7) in the backless belt-positioning booster:

Easy Adjustments

Sometimes adjusting a seat can prove to be quite a hassle. Not so with the Graco 4Ever Extend2Fit 4-in-1 car seat. For a proper fit, the Simply Safe Adjust™ Harness System and 10-position headrest lets you adjust the harness and headrest together, with no rethreading. To adjust the location of the straps (remember, you want them at or below the shoulder for rear-facing and at or above the shoulders for forward facing), simply squeeze the red handle at the top of the seat and slide the headrest up or down until you reach the desired position.

Adjusting the tightness of the straps is also easy to do, via a button and strap at the bottom of the seat. This makes it so easy to ensure the straps on your car seat fit comfortably and correctly every single time.

There are also 6 different recline positions that, again, are very easy to adjust. Have you ever installed a car seat only to realize you forgot to adjust the recline, consequently, you had to uninstall the whole thing and start all over again? With the Graco 4Ever Extend2Fit 4-in-1 car seat, you won’t need to do that because you can adjust the recline of the seat from either the front or the back of the seat.

Installation

The Graco 4Ever Extend2Fit 4-in-1 car seat can be installed via Graco’s InRight LATCH system or the seat belt. Installing with InRight LATCH took us a few minutes, but we were able to get a great, secure installation with this seat. There is a slit in the pad at the belt path. If using LATCH, tighten by pulling the strap through this slit to help tighten LATCH.

The easy-to-read level indicator helps eliminate rear-facing installation guesswork. The seat also features clear instructions (right ON the seat) which let you know which recline angles are acceptable for each type of installation and which installs are acceptable based on your child’s weight.

I can’t stress this enough: before you install this car seat or any other car seat, read the instructions! This is not one of those things you can skip. Each car seat has very specific directions for installation and it’s very important that you follow the directions. Failure to do so could result in the car seat not functioning correctly during a crash. If you have any questions at all, call your car seat manufacturer or get your car seat checked by a certified technician.

Comfort

Graco did a great job of adding some nice features to this seat, designed for your child’s comfort. Included with your purchase are shoulder strap covers and plush inserts for smaller-sized children. They also integrated two cup holders.

Ease of Use

One of the things I was concerned about with this seat was how hard it would be to remove the harness straps once the seat was adjusted for use as a booster. Thankfully, Graco integrated a harness storage compartment, which holds unused harness straps while in the belt positioning booster mode.

I was also concerned about how difficult it would be to transform this seat into a backless booster. While it takes a few minutes to remove the back of the seat, it really wasn’t a difficult process at all.

Another thing I love about this seat is that the seat cover is washable and easy to remove. You don’t even have to remove the harness straps to remove the cover! You never know when your baby might get sick in his or her car seat or have a diaper accident. Having a seat cover that can be cleaned easily is a big selling point for me!

My Overall Review

I am a very budget-conscious shopper, and I know many American families also need to stick to a tight budget. I love the fact that this seat can eliminate the need for you to purchase any additional seats for your child. If you purchase it to use beginning as a newborn, you will likely save money over the course of your child’s car seat years.

Although I’ve shown you above all 4 car seat configurations, I actually only use the first 2 currently, since all of my children still use a 5-point harness while in a vehicle.

I’m a big advocate for car seat safety and that means we rear-face our car seats for as long as possible. It’s so much safer! Having a rear-facing weight limit of 50 pounds and the addition of Extend2Fit means your child can rear face comfortably for a LONG time! We purchase car seats to keep our children safe and I love that this seat helps me to keep my children safer longer.

Additionally, the seat appears to be quite comfortable and is moderately easy enough to install. The ability to wash the seat cover easily and the 2 integrated cup holders are also features I really appreciate.

The biggest drawback I can see to this seat is the size. If you are a family like mine with multiple children in car seats, finding the trimmest car seat on the market is sometimes the 1st thing you have to look at. Because this seat is 19 inches wide, you would not be able to fit 3 seats across a vehicle. However, this is only going to pose a problem for families with a few young children.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with the Graco 4Ever Extend2Fit 4-in-1 car seat and think it’s one of the best car seats on the market right now. We’re currently using it rear-facing for my 18 month old son and he’s very happy in it.

See all of the available Graco 4Ever Extened2Fit 4-in-1 car seats by visiting the Graco website and you can also purchase this Graco 4Ever Extend2Fit 4-in-1 car seat exclusively at Babies”R”Us.

Want a second opinion on this seat? Check out Miranda’s review of the Graco 4Ever Extend2Fit 4-in-1 car seat – she’s a mom of 5!