BeSafe Stretch B Car Seat Review

I’ve been testing the BeSafe Stretch B Car Seat for over a year as part of the Natural Baby Shower Parent Approved Program (which runs regularly on the Natural Baby Shower Instagram account). Parents can test and review items available on the website; the item gets the “parent approved” badge. You can read the full reviews on the website (including mine) and feel more confident when making big purchases.

We received the BeSafe Stretch B Car Seat just before Arthur’s 2nd Birthday. Up until then we’d been squeezing him in his Infant Carrier (legally of course, but he was very much on the limit). It couldn’t have come at a better time for us as I’d been looking into car seats for a while. I’m a huge advocate of ERF and have read way too many facts on why rear facing is 5x safer. I knew I wanted to get a rear facing car seat for Arthur but I had no idea which out of the many available.

There are a few safe extended rear facing options that rear face until 18kg, such as the Joie Tilt/Steadi and Stages, or the Graco branded seats. Your cheapest extended rear facing option is less then £80. There are also options that rear face until 25kg such as the Axkid Minikid or the Britax Max Way. Then there are a couple top of the market options that rear face for much longer than that. This includes the BeSafe Stretch B Car Seat which will safely rear face up until 36kg, which is an average 7 year old, SEVEN. I was sold.

I was initially wary of getting a seat with tethers as I thought this would make fitting more difficult. Especially as we regularly move the car seat between various different cars. I needn’t have worried – fitting takes less than 5 minutes. Even less than that if you have spare tethers or tether points in the other vehicles. We’ve even managed to get it to fit in our Campervan… and Sam’s series 3 Landrover!

The tethering is easy. You just wrap the tethers around the seat rails on the seat in front, or fix to a tether point. You can have these fitted if your car doesn’t have them. The tethers built into the car seat then clip into these. The BeSafe Stretch is great for cars with shorter seatbelts too. You don’t need to wrap the seatbelt around the back of the seat. The car seat also has a support leg as well as the tethers.

I went for the Cloud Melange colour which is a dusky blue. I thought this was a bit different to the standard black or charcoal options. The BeSafe Stretch is around £500, which may seem a lot for a car seat, but you can’t put a price on safety. When you think it’ll last an average of 7 years (if not more), £70 a year really isn’t much to pay. It works out at less than £6 a month.

We’ve been using the car seat for over a year and we’ve not had one issue. We’ve not had one vehicle it won’t fit in (and we’ve tried it in many different cars). I know this is a car seat we are going to use for years and years. The bottom bracket extends to allow more leg room as your child grows. This will depend on the space you have in the car.

Another feature which I love is that the recline function works whilst it’s fitted in the car. This is the only ERF car seat that does this currently on the market and is ideal feature for newborns. I just wish I had the seat sooner. The magnets on the straps are handy when getting Arthur in and out of the car.

What Cars Does The BeSafe STRETCH b fIT iN?

So far we have tried the Be Safe Stretch in a Volkswagen Tiguan, Volkswagen Transporter, Volkswagen Classic Beetle (1973), Classic Landrover Series 3, Seat Ibiza, Range Rover and Volvo. I will be sure to update this list as we try the seat in different cars.