Joovy Qool Stroller Review – The Stroller For One to Three Kids!

I received products from Joovy at no cost to facilitate my Joovy Qool stroller review, however, all opinions are my own. Amazon links are affiliate links and help support this site. 

Researching strollers? Trying to decide between the Joovy Qool Stroller and the City Select? Want to find out more about the new, updated Joovy Qool? If so, you’ve come to the right place! I have the most in-depth, detailed review of the Joovy Qool Stroller that you’ll find online!

I have reviewed quite a few strollers over the years and as a mom of 5, I know the features that moms need and want when choosing a stroller!

Joovy Qool Stroller Basic Overview

Qool History

The Joovy Qool Stroller was first released in 2013. It was available as a single rider stroller and also as a double stroller as the Joovy Too Qool or a triple rider stroller with the addition of the Joovy Too Qool Ride-on Board. This was a stroller I reviewed and used quite a bit myself. It was later discontinued and now Joovy has released a new, updated, better-than-ever version of the Qool. The updated Joovy Qool stroller addressed some of the complaints and feedback Joovy received about the first model and I’ll address all of those upgrades today.

NEW Joovy Qool Basics

Looking for the quick facts on this stroller? You’ll find them here! The new Joovy Qool stroller:

• The base model is a single stroller for one and is priced at $499.
• Can be used for 1-3 children with the addition of optional accessories.
  • No need to purchase a new stroller frame.
• Can be used as a travel system thanks to adapters for infant car seats from the following brands:
  • Graco
  • Chicco
  • Britax
  • BOB B-Safe
  • Maxi-Cosi
  • Cybex
  • Nuna
• Has a weight capacity of 135 pounds.
• Weighs approximately 36 pounds with 1 seat attached or approximately 47 pounds with both front and back seats attached.
• Seat fabric is removable and washable
• Offers over 50 different configurations with optional accessories and adapters!

Joovy Qool Optional Accessories and Add-Ons

The Joovy Qool has a ton of optional accessories and add-ons you can purchase to make your stroller exactly what you need it to be! This is really what sets this stroller apart! With over 50 different configurations, it’s easy to find the right configuration for your family… and change it up as your family and situations change! Here are some of the ones we’ve tried out:

Bassinet

The bassinet is the perfect accessory to use during baby’s first few months. It allows your baby to lie completely flat, meaning you can use this from birth on. The Joovy bassinet is super soft and plush! My youngest child is just over two months old. I’ve really enjoyed having the bassinet adapter when we take walks in our neighborhood.

The bassinet is lined with super soft fabric and that mattress on it is also thick and soft. It seems to be very comfortable for my baby.

Having twins? With the addition of the Qool Front Adapters, you can put two bassinet seats on this stroller!

Drawbacks to the bassinet: I’ve found that, depending on the position of the sun in the sky, sometimes the canopy does not block the sun from my baby’s eyes, even when fully extended. There’s an easy solution to that, and that’s using a muslin swaddle blanket draped over the top to keep the sun out, when needed. I do wish Joovy would make the canopy a little bit larger to help with that.

The other drawback I’ve noticed is that, with the bassinet in place in the upper position, I wasn’t able to position the 2nd seat in the lower position facing outward (it would, however, face inward – see photo below).

When using the stroller with the bassinet and the second seat facing inward, both my 2-year-old and 4-year-old had plenty of legroom sitting in that seat, they just couldn’t see out as well.

You can also put the bassinet on the front adapter position. When the bassinet is in the lower, front adapter position, you can put a standard seat on the upper adapter position and have it face forward. While the seat does fit in that position, it’s important to note that the bottom portion of the seat rests inside of the bassinet. There was still plenty of room for my baby in the bassinet with the seat resting inside of it because it only takes up the very back portion of the bassinet.

Infant Car Seat Adapters

Many parents like to have a travel system (meaning your infant car seat can attach safely to the stroller). With the addition of the Infant Car Seat Adapter, you can transform the Qool stroller into a travel system if you have a Graco, Chicco, Nuna, Maxi-Cosi, Britax, BOB B-safe or Cybex infant car seat. Here’s a photo of my Joovy Qool as a travel system with my Britax infant car seat.

Just like with the bassinet, when you add a second seat to the front adapter, it’s possible that, depending on the brand, you’ll need to have the seat facing the parent. With my Britax B-safe infant seat, the only way the second seat will fit is in the parent-facing mode.

Second Seat

This is pretty self-explanatory. It adds a second seat to your Joovy Qool stroller. You will need to purchase Qool Front Adapters in order to add a second seat to the stroller.

Bench Seat

The bench seat allows you to add a 2nd or 3rd child onto this stroller. This seat can only be used on the back of the stroller and does not have all of the features that a full seat would have, however, it’s definitely useful, especially for older kids. It’s super easy to attach/detach this seat. It also has a lap buckle to keep your child in his or her seat.

When not in use, the footrest folds up onto the seat so it’s out of the way.

Parent Organizer

Again, this accessory is pretty self-explanatory. Adding the parent organizer to the Joovy Qool gives you two cupholders for mom and dad, plus space to store the extra things you want easily accessible, like car keys, wallet, cell phone, etc. It’s also machine washable which is a huge plus!

Child Tray

If your little one likes to keep her drink with her at all times, the child’s tray is a must! There’s a place to keep a sippy cup, plus extra room for toys and/or snacks. You can also just remove one side to swing open – I love this feature!

Our Real World Testing for this Joovy Qool Stroller Review

Sometimes a stroller looks great in photos or even in person, but then when you are doing life and really using a stroller, you come to realize it’s not what you thought it would be. Before I share a stroller review on my site, I like to take it out and REALLY use it well so I can give you honest, real parenting feedback.

For this Joovy Qool stroller review, I thought, what better way to test it than a trip to the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington DC. This is one of our family’s favorite trips to make and one we do about once a year. We took this trip back when I was still pregnant with our 5th baby.

For our trip to the zoo with the Joovy Qool, I configured it with both a front and back seat plus the bench seat, knowing we would be doing a lot of walking and my older son (age 6) would inevitably get tired. I also attached the Joovy parent organizer, a child’s tray for my son (age 2), and the bumper bar for my older daughter (almost age 4). Non-Joovy accessories we used included the SoHo Diaper Bag and the Buggygear fan (both of which I highly recommend!)

Things We Love About The Joovy Qool

First, the storage on it was amazing! It was easy to access the basket when needed and it held so much! We took 6 water bottles with us plus a bag full of snacks for the kids to eat throughout the day. There was plenty of room for those in the basket (which can hold up to 25 pounds!). I also packed a diaper bag which could have fit in the basket as well, but I attached it to the handles for quick access.

The parent organizer made it easy for my husband and me to reach our drinks throughout the day and the tray was perfect for my younger son to store his snacks and water bottle.

As much as I loved the child tray for my son, I also liked having the bumper bar for my daughter. You can remove just one side and leave the other side attached, which made it easy for her to climb in and out of the seat. Because she’s older she didn’t really NEED the tray, however with as much as my son used his during the trip, I believe I’ll get a second tray for my daughter as well.

With the older version of the Too Qool, the front seat was higher than the rear seat. I am SO thankful that Joovy changed that with this stroller, and now the front seat sits lower. This allowed both children to see the animals easily and without obstruction. Not only that, but the bottom seat still sat high enough off of the ground for the child in that seat to see most things with ease.

At one point, we entered a building with exhibits that were a little bit higher. My (almost) 4-year-old daughter was walking around at that point and able to see well enough on her own, but my two-year-old kept asking to be picked up to see the animals. That’s no easy when you are 9 months pregnant! Instead, we quickly swapped his seat and put it on the higher, back position and moved my daughter’s seat to the front position. In a matter of seconds, he was able to see everything once again and was happy to continue riding in the stroller. This adjustment also made it even easier for my daughter to climb in/out of her seat.

I can’t tell you how valuable and time-saving this was! I love how easy it is to adjust the seat placements!

My newly 6-year-old rode on the bench seat for about half of the time we were at the zoo. Although I had the parent organizer attached, along with my larger diaper bag, he never once complained about not having enough room or not being comfortable on the back bench seat. He loved it in fact! It was so easy for him to get off/on and the footrest gave him a place to rest his feet without them dragging on the ground.

Now, I know many people would probably say that 6 years old is too old to be riding in a stroller. If that’s your opinion for your own child, that’s fine. For us, being able to have a place for older children to ride, when needed, has proved helpful on more than one occasion. It’s easier to keep them close in a large crowd of people when they are in the stroller. I also know that my husband and I were both exhausted by the end of a long day of walking, so it’s easy to see how a child with younger legs would get tired too! It also eliminates a little bit of the whine when we are out shopping for new clothes because he has a place to sit and rest with his younger siblings.

*A note — we’ve been planning a yard sale and as I pulled out this stroller the other day, my son (the 6-year-old) asked if we were selling it. When I said no he sighed with relief and said he loved it!*

Each seat, including the bench seat, has buckles to secure your children, but we only used those for our 2-year-old because the older children frequently got in/out of their seats.

Things We Didn’t Love About the Joovy Qool

I’m going to be honest from the start and tell you that there truly wasn’t very much we could find to complain about with this stroller. My husband is not shy to tell me about the features he dislikes and overall, we were both quite pleased with it.

With the older version of the Joovy Qool, he would frequently hit his foot on the ride-on board for our 3rd rider. However, with this updated version, he didn’t hit the bench seat at all.

Once you add up the weight of our 3 kids, plus the items we packed in the stroller, plus the weight of the stroller (the stroller itself was just under 50 pounds with both full-size seats and bench seat), it was quite heavy to push for an entire day at the zoo. Total weight being pushed was easily over 150 pounds. Short of designing a self-powered stroller, there’s not much you can do about that though. My husband was such a trooper and pushed that heavy stroller for miles! You are likely to complain about weight with any stroller that’s pushing 3 children. That’s just the reality.

Another drawback would be the price. It’s not the most affordable stroller on the market, however as the saying goes, “you get what you pay for.” Because it’s such a nice stroller, I imagine that the resale value down the road would help to make up for the initial cost quite a bit.

The only other complaint we have is in regards to transporting this stroller when collapsed. You can not collapse this stroller with both full-size seats attached (you can, however, leave the bench seat and one seat attached). This isn’t a big deal if you are just traveling to/from your vehicle, which is what we did at the zoo. However, if you take this stroller to Disney, for instance, and need to ride their trams/buses, needing to remove one seat means you have one extra thing you have to carry on/off. The stroller itself is already heavy/bulky, and this means that whoever is carrying the stroller will have both hands full.

I would love to see Joovy offer an additional accessory to make carrying the extra seat easier (maybe something so you can slip it on your back and wear it like a backpack).

The stroller also does not have a carry handle, so carrying it long distances, while folded, can be cumbersome. Again, I’d love to see some type of accessory option that allows you to add a handle to the folded stroller for easier transportation. Luckily for our family, my husband and I are most often together, meaning that I can watch our children while he has his hands full with the stroller, but I imagine a single mom would have a difficult time taking public transportation and using the Joovy Qool with 2 full-size seats.

Overall Thoughts on the Joovy Qool Stroller

After using the Joovy Qool stroller, I can confidently say that this is the one stroller to rule them all when you need a stroller to accommodate a number of children. I have been so impressed with this stroller and genuinely LOVE it. In fact, I have been actively purging out all of my other double and triple strollers because this one beats them all and I don’t see the need to keep any of the others. If you’re ready to buy the Joovy Qool stroller, you can get it with free prime shipping through Amazon.

Joovy hit a home run with the new Joovy Qool!