Ease of use: Overall, the Safety 1st Grow and Go Sprint was not very easy to use and lacked many convenient, caregiver-friendly features. It’s a fairly basic seat, but we found some unclear installation instructions in the manual. For example, the manual shows installation steps for seat belt installation and LATCH installation together, which can be confusing to caregivers. In addition, to route the seat belt properly, the harness needs to be raised up to allow access to the belt path, but this isn’t listed in the manual. The harness adjuster is not easy to use and requires significant effort to raise or lower the harness and headrest. We also had difficulty getting a secure fit with the seatbelt installation—it took a lot of physical effort. And the recline angle may be too upright for younger infants in some recline positions. A rolled-up towel was necessary to adjust the rear-facing recline in some vehicles, too.
Fit-to-vehicle LATCH: The Safety 1st Grow and Go Sprint scored moderately well for forward-facing LATCH installation in our fit-to-vehicle tests, but it scored lower for rear-facing LATCH installation. To route the LATCH strap, you’ll need to remove the cupholder and seat cover first, and it takes a good amount of physical effort to tighten the belt strap while pushing down on the seat.
Fit-to-vehicle Belt: The Safety 1st Grow and Go Sprint scored moderately well in our fit-to-vehicle tests for forward-facing seat belt installation, but it scored much lower for rear-facing seat belt installation. To route the seat belt strap, you’ll need to first raise the harness up to access the belt path. The rear-facing and forward-facing belt paths are routed through the car seat’s interior shell, which has sharp plastic edges that can easily scratch up the installer's hands. It takes a good amount of physical effort to tighten the belt strap while pushing down on the seat.
Booster fit: The Safety 1st Grow and Go Sprint cannot be installed flush against a vehicle's seat back, as required in the instructions, on many vehicle seats. Not a good choice for vehicles with non-removable headrests, as we needed to remove most vehicle headrests to use this booster seat.
Crash protection: In CR’s crash test protocol, the Safety 1st Grow and Go Sprint seat showed average performance and did not exhibit significant structural integrity issues.
Additional Information
Good to know: All child car seats sold in the United States are required to meet government safety standards.
About our testing: Consumer Reports’ child car seat tests are not designed to test compliance with federal standards. Rather, we evaluate car seat performance under conditions designed by our experts that go beyond the required federal safety standards.
Consumer Reports’ independent car seat crash test program has been carefully designed to simulate the forces encountered during a crash, while replicating some of the real-world factors that might impact a car seat’s performance. Our testing aims to determine which car seats could provide an extra level of safety when compared to other models in the same category.
Basic, Better, or Best: CR rates the child car seats we crash test on a scale of Basic, Better, and Best, based on the additional margin of safety they may provide. Read about how we test car seats to learn more about our crash test protocol.
