Joie stages Review

Quick Summary: If you would prefer to have a car seat that covers different stages, then the Joie stages is a good option. It lasts your child the majority of their time in a car seat, and potentially means that your child will only ever need two different seats from birth up to 135 cm or 12 years old. Also great value for money if you use it seven years with the same child!

Things we love…

Multi-stage car seats are gaining in popularity thanks to their versatility and longevity. With the Joie stages, you could purchase the seat to use from birth and use rear-facing until 18kg or forward facing to 25kg, which is around 7 years old. After that, you would only need a high back booster to last their remainder of time in a car seat. We love that the seat offers the safety of rear-facing for such a long time!

Fitting the car seat in the car is done with the vehicle seat belt in all of the positions. The installations for Group 0+ and 1 are simple enough to do, it's just making sure that all slack is taken out when you pass through the red or blue guides. When rear-facing, there is also a blue locking clip included with the seat to use.

When you get to the Group 2 stage with your child, then the harness and buckle are stored away inside the seat itself. This is great for use with different children as means that you don't have to completely remove the harness, or run the risk of losing it! Then you use the vehicle's seat belt through the guides and over the child to secure.

The stages is a solid seat, thanks to the steel frame, which extends the life of the seat to ten years! It has plenty of padding everywhere though to keep the child very comfy and comes with a newborn insert that is used up to around 6 months or when they outgrow it. The two-piece insert can continue to be used whilst rearwards facing for as long as support is required.

There are several headrest positions to choose from, and the adjustment also moves the harness up at the same time. It's really easy to do this with the handle at the very top.

Things to look out for…

When fitting the Joie stages rear-facing, the seat belt does pass across the side of the seat, which could make it difficult when placing your child as you need to go over the top of it. When forward fitting, the gap to pass the belt through is quite snug, so adults with larger hands may struggle to get it through in one movement.

There is one recline position for rear-facing and three recline positions for forward facing. As the car seat is secured with the vehicle's seat belt into position, it is difficult to adjust the reclines once fitted, so is something you need to do first. If your child falls asleep in the car on a journey and you want to adjust, it's annoying that you can't do this then.

Our verdict…

If you would prefer to have a car seat that covers different stages, then the Joie stages is a good option. It lasts your child the majority of their time in a car seat, and potentially means that your child will only ever need two different seats from birth up to 135 cm or 12 years old. Also great value for money if you use it seven years with the same child!

As it's fitted with the vehicle seat belt, it's important to make sure the seat is always installed correctly, but it is easy enough once you know what you are doing. The seat is deep and comfortable for any child and has plentiful protection in the rounded headrest and side wings.

It's great that the seat has the ability to rear-face your child up to 18kg if you choose, and grows with them into a Group 2 high back booster.