Safety 1st SlimRide

The Safety 1st SlimRide is an all-in-one car seat for children 5 to 100 lb. that transitions from harnessed mode to booster mode as your child grows. In CR’s tests, the Safety 1st SlimRide offers excellent crash protection, but it's fairly basic in terms of features. It does have an adjustable harness that doesn’t need to be rethreaded and an adjustable crotch strap to help find the right harness fit for your child. The seat is relatively lightweight for an all-in-one, and can be used with the LATCH system up to 45 lb. However, we found it somewhat difficult to get a secure installation in several different vehicles in our testing fleet. The SlimRide features only hook-on LATCH connectors and doesn’t include a belt tensioning device, and the belt paths are very narrow, making it difficult to route the seat belt or LATCH strap and pull them sufficiently to tighten. When and when not to use the accessory pads that come with the seat can vary depending on how you’re using it. That isn’t labeled on the seat, so it’s important to read the manual. 

This seat may be a good choice for: 

• Families who want to purchase an all-in-one car seat (as opposed to using an infant seat for the first year and then switching to a convertible seat) 
• Families who need to move their car seat between multiple cars

Ease of use: Overall, the Safety 1st SlimRide All-in-One is a fairly basic seat, lacking many caregiver-friendly features. It does have an adjustable harness (without rethreading) and an adjustable crotch strap, and the seat cover and pads can be removed for machine-washing or machine-drying. But getting the appropriate recline angle in rear-facing position requires the use of a rolled towel underneath the seat’s base, and even when the angle appears to be lined up with the recline level line label, it still may be too upright for an infant. 

Fit-to-vehicle LATCH: The Safety 1st SlimRide scored very well for forward-facing LATCH installation but didn’t perform as well for rear-facing LATCH. The LATCH strap belt path is narrow and difficult to use, even when removing the pads. 

Fit-to-vehicle Belt: The Safety 1st SlimRide scored moderately well for forward-facing seat belt installation but scored poorly in rear-facing mode. The narrow belt path proved difficult here, too, as mentioned above. 

Booster fit: The shoulder belt guide tends to position the shoulder belt towards the edge of the child's shoulder in our tests. We also found we needed to remove some vehicle headrests as they prevented the booster from sitting flush against the vehicle seat as required in the instructions.

Crash protection: In CR’s crash test protocol, the Safety 1st SlimRide seat performed very well 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.

The Safety 1st SlimRide is part of the Car Seats test program at Consumer Reports. In our lab tests, Harnessed Car Seat models like the SlimRide are rated on multiple criteria, such as those listed below.

Ease of use: Our judgment of how easy each seat is to use including the clarity of labels and instructions, adjustments of clips and buckles, the transition of the seat between modes and installation features such as LATCH connections, belt paths, top tethers and booster guides.

Forward facing fit-to-vehicle: A rating of how compatible, easy and secure a child car seat can be correctly installed in the forward-facing direction. This rating is a combination of the LATCH system and belt ratings that are available individually on the model page.

Rear facing fit-to-vehicle: A rating of how compatible, easy and secure a child car seat can be correctly installed in the rear-facing direction. This rating is a combination of LATCH system and belt ratings that are available individually on the model page.