Top pick
This attractive booster is safe, easy to use, and comfortable. It’s a hit with caregivers and kids alike.
A version of the Chicco KidFit has been a Wirecutter pick in our guide to the best booster car seats since 2018—an impressive feat considering that our experts have evaluated more than 50 booster car seats in that span of time.
In my experience, I’ve found that its crown is well deserved.
The Chicco KidFit couldn’t be easier to set up, install, and remove. The whole thing is a breeze.
My kids love their boosters too.
“They’re easy to buckle,” my 8-year-old daughter says. “They’re cushiony, and not hard like rocks. And I like that they come in different colors.”
My 6-year-old-son praises the two cup holders built into the seat—he uses one for a water bottle and the other for treasure (read: garbage) storage.
The kids are happy. I’m happy.
I never thought I’d write these words. But here I go.
I love this car seat.
When we had our first child in 2015, we started with Wirecutter’s then-top pick infant car seat, and when she outgrew that, we moved on to the runner-up pick from Wirecutter’s guide to convertible car seats.
As my daughter approached her fifth birthday—and, critically, the 40-pound and 40-inch milestones that her pediatrician grandfather endorsed as the right time to safely transition to a booster—we all started getting excited. My daughter was so eager to transition to a big-kid booster that the booster seat we got her as a gift for her fifth birthday was her most anticipated present, and the one that she received with the most excitement.
The fact that she was a big girl who sat in a big-kid booster was, for months, a core part of her identity. Let me share this illustrative scene of my kids, then 5 and 2:
The kids are at soccer class. There’s a new coach, and he asks every kid their name and how old they are.
Miles: Miles. M. I. L. E. S.
Elle laughs.
Elle: I’m Elle, and I’m 5, and I have a booster seat.
I, too, was delighted for her to have a booster seat. No more contortionist-style stretching and threading of seat belts through unforgiving car seats. Everything was easy.
The LATCH (Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children) system on this booster is so simple: You click-attach two clamp-like anchors on the car seat to the metal rungs built into the seam of the car’s backseat. Critically, you can do that with a ton of slack in the car seat’s anchor lines, which means attaching takes five seconds and is beyond easy.
Once they’re attached, you can tighten them simply by pulling a strap at the front of the car seat.
You then thread the car’s seat belt through the shoulder-belt clip, which is essentially a little plastic slot attached to a simple strap (again, five seconds), and you’re all set.
It’s that easy.
Cleaning is a breeze, too: All the fabric, including on the armrests, comes off and is machine-washable, and the cup holders are removable and dishwasher-safe. It doesn’t require scientific analysis to say that because there are fewer deep crevices in this booster than in baby car seats, digging out Goldfish crumbs and snack wrappers from this seat is less of a challenge.
And when it’s time for the kids to buckle up, they simply pull the car’s seat belt across the booster (the belt strap goes under both armrests, the shoulder strap goes across the child and under the second armrest) and click in. It took a bit of learning, but now both my kids do it with pretty much no problem.
Here I should note that while Wirecutter recommends keeping the backs on these boosters, our family fairly quickly transitioned to taking the backs off (which is easy), and we’ve used them as backless boosters for years.
It is inarguably safer to use the backs, which offer more head and neck protection. But my kids prefer sitting in these boosters without the backs, and the boosters fit a bit better in the backseat of one of our two cars without the backs. They’re also way less bulky to use, and easier to move and store, as a result.
But again: It’s safer with the backs.
At this point, we have five—five!—of these booster seats. The kids each have their own set up in the backseats of our two cars. And we have an extra for when we’re carpooling with a friend.
I never stress about moving the car seats around anymore. Removing or installing any of them takes me less than a minute. One of my colleagues also says that this is the booster seat of choice for both of her sets of grandparents, who have praised the ease of installation for both the seat itself and the 5-year-old grandkids who can blissfully clip themselves in.
My kids? They’re happy—though my daughter is already looking foward to a life beyond boosters.
“We loved them when we got them,” she told me a couple of months before her ninth birthday. “But now I’m excited to not have a booster at all one day.”
This article was edited by Catherine Kast and Maxine Builder.
