Review: Maxi-Cosi Rubi Car Seat

Maxi Cosi UK on Facebook ran a competition in the summer for Reporters/Reviews for a their new product and asked for volunteers. Now in the past I have never been successful when applying for things so applied and thought one day my luck would change, Maybe I would be lucky enough to be successful in my quest to review the Maxi Cosi Rubi Car Seat?

A few weeks later i was contacted and told that i was successful!! well after doing the full blown victory dance round the kitchen my semi obsession with baby related paraphernalia would come in useful!

For any parent purchasing the basic items needed to carry out some degree of normality is a major purchase! Before I purchase any baby item I consider such things such as functionality, cost, safety and ease of use.

From the first fitting of this car seat I can easily say in my opinion that this seat is great, it takes mere minutes to fit and as I had tried many car seat previously the unique fitting of the seat using the standard car seat belt is great it holds tight and gives an amazingly tight unmovable fitting.

Previously in the past I had lots of issues with car seats not fitting correctly due to ‘buckle crunch’ and this had left me very anxious about this problem, however for a Vauxhall Zafira (sold as a family car) we couldn’t believe that we had this issue! In the end we bought the Maxi Cosi Priofix so we didn’t have to use the seat belt fitting at all.

While using the Rubi we were really pleased with the design of the seat and the fact that our son sat upright in the seat as others we had tried even in fully upright mode he seemed to be tilted so it was lovely to see him so upright it made it feel like he was more included in the car and not so separate.

Joshua loved the fact that he was sat higher than normal (playing with the sunshade drove me nuts though) he seemed to love sitting next to his 11 year old sister Beth and was sitting almost at the same head height. Although I have to say we have no idea as to what he was saying to her!

Joshua liked to sit with his hands on the sides of the seat as they are quite chunky and he used them as arm rests

Most car seats take a degree in engineering in order to thread and re-thread when adjusting the shoulder harnesses, however not so with the Rubi. The harness height was far easily  adjusted by tilting the headrest forward and wiggling until at the correct height  (The instructions were really good too!)

The harness straps moved freely and adjusted easily with no jamming or twisting which again was a bonus and made it awfully easy to use.

The tightening strap was a little bit annoying as grabbing hold of it to tighten it did come off from the 2 prongs on the button unit, either longer prongs could be used to rectify or an alternative like some of the other units that are on the other Maxi Cosi seats seem to stay on better (ie Priofix)

The recline function was excellent and as long that lap part of the seat belt is fitted correctly the recline is a smooth and easy making a it simple to use if your child has nodded off in the seat. Joshua has never really been a sleep in his car seat kind of dude however this seat cracked it as he nodded off several times which is a first in our car!

Although while Reporting on this seat we didn’t have the need to wash the seat covers I am a little bit of a tinkerer and I like to know everything I can about the products/items I use so I have had a play removing the covers and I have to say that instructions were very easy to follow and it was very easy to both remove and replace so again I think this is going to be very helpful in the future!  I also loved the plain material, some other products in the past have had a weave type material which within days has looked atrocious as Velcro from baby shoes catches and it pulls at the material so this flat material was excellent and still looks as good as new!

The harness holders are in my opinion are a waste of time, if you are using this seat with a smaller child the harness padding does get in the way and therefore makes them of no use, other Maxi Cosi seats have a bigger thicker version and I think these would be more beneficial than the current ones that are fitted.

For anyone with the need for 3 car seats in the back, we found that in our Zafira this should be a doddle with this seat as it sits very nicely within the allocated seat part and no chunky overhang. (but only if the other seats are also slim fitting too!)

The Rubi is quite light for such a large looking seat so anyone that needs to transfer a car seat regularly from car to car this won’t be a problem for you.

Value for money is excellent as this is a mid priced seat but still has lots of the quality you would expect from Maxi Cosi but with a more realistic price so bonus all round!.

The Rubi Loving Olivers