Joie Mint LATCH

The Joie Mint Latch is a carrier-only, baseless infant seat that may best serve the needs of those who frequently use cabs or ride shares, or who find it more convenient not to have a car seat base installed in the back seat, in order to accommodate additional passengers. The Mint Latch is lightweight at 9 pounds, making it easy to carry. Rigid LATCH connectors make lower anchor installations much easier, but caregivers should note that with this car seat, you’re limited to vehicle seating positions with dedicated lower anchors — meaning that positioning this seat in the rear center won’t work for most vehicles. The Joie Mint Latch offers a convenient lower anchor connector design that rotates the connectors out of the way for carrying, and you only need to rotate one side of the connectors for both sides to be adjusted. This seat allows you to position the carrier handle in any locked position for travel, but Joie recommends the fully-upright handle carry position while you’re on the road.

Consumer Reports has developed a unique crash test that offers consumers comparative performance information on which car seats could provide an additional margin of safety when compared with other models within the same ratings group that have been subjected to the same test protocol. Our Crash Protection Ratings are based on injury criteria measured on standardized child-size dummies, contact of the dummy’s head with the back of a simulated front seat and a car seat’s ability to remain intact during the course of testing. Consumer Reports’ new crash tests are not designed to check whether a seat complies with current federal car seat safety standards. Rather, the purpose of our new tests is to differentiate the seats’ performance on a scale that ranks the performance of tested seats ranging from “basic” to “best.” Our focus on providing an “extra margin” of safety, rather than on determining whether a seat is safe or not, is based on the fact that any car seat sold in the U.S. already must provide an essential level of safety under the government standards. The new test conditions were carefully designed to simulate the interior environment and forces encountered during a crash in contemporary vehicles. Changes from the way that convertible seats were rated previously include using a test bench that better simulates the vehicle seat design from a contemporary vehicle, with more representative cushion stiffness and seat geometry and incorporation of a “blocker” to simulate a front seatback. The new test also runs at a higher 35mph speed, with other representative dynamic characteristics that better simulate the behavior of contemporary vehicles during a crash.

The Joie Mint LATCH is part of the Car Seats test program at Consumer Reports. In our lab tests, Infant Car Seats models like the Mint LATCH are rated on multiple criteria, such as those listed below.

Maximum weight: The maximum weight of a child that a model will accommodate.

Ease of use: Includes the clarity of instructions, installing the seat, adjusting harness positions, placing a child in the seat, securing the harness, and removing the child.

Fit-to-vehicle LATCH: A rating of how easy it is to securely and correctly install each seat using the LATCH system in a variety of vehicles and how well the seats fit each vehicle once installed.