The 4 Best Infant Car Seats of 2025

The Graco Premier SnugRide SnugFit 35 XT featuring Load Leg Technology is the top-of-the-line version of our top pick. This seat has a few extra features, including a privacy drape and canopy window, plus a load leg, which can provide added safety and stability in a crash. We tested this seat in 2024, and while it was straightforward to install, just like our top pick, we were surprised by the price. For $420, it doesn’t have the high-end look and feel of the Uppababy Aria or Clek Liing, yet it costs close to the same price.

A new lineup of Britax infant seats — the Willow S, the Willow SC, and the Cypress — recently replaced the brand’s B-Safe seat. We tested the Willow S in 2024. The Willow and Cypress seats are fundamentally the same, but each model has an upgraded feature over the next — the Willow S is the base model, the Willow SC and the Cypress have a one-hand adjustable carry handle, and the Cypress has an upgraded canopy. Each of these seats features a European belt path and an anti-rebound base. However, installing the base is frustrating. These seats have a new ClickTight mechanism for installing with a seat belt or LATCH strap — you thread the belt or strap through the tightening mechanism, and then push on a center handle to flatten it and ratchet it down. While we love the ClickTight function on Britax’s convertible car seats, we found it difficult to use and tighten here, and even when we used full force to close the mechanism, the base still didn’t feel very secure.

The Clek Liingo is a no-base infant car seat. It is similar in look and feel to the Clek Liing, but since the Liingo omits a base, it also lacks a load leg, the added safety feature on the Liing. The Liingo is usually around $200 cheaper than the Liing. You can install the Liingo using either the vehicle’s seat belt (it has a European belt-path configuration) or a pair of LATCH hooks, which stow away in a compartment at the back of the seat. The Liingo’s LATCH hooks disappointed us because they aren’t the rigid LATCH like the Liing’s. Rather, they’re merely attached to a separate strap that goes through the top belt path; in our tests, installing the seat with them was not nearly as secure as using the European belt-path method. (And neither method was as secure or satisfying as installing the Liing seat with its base.) However, if you don’t own a car, or if you spend a lot of time in taxis, the Liingo might be worth considering for its portability (it weighs only 9 pounds, if you remove the detachable LATCH bin and newborn insert). And it has a significantly lower price compared with the Liing. If you’re choosing between the two for your primary infant seat, however, we believe that the Liing — and its base, which provides a better and more secure install — is worth the higher price.

The Uppababy Mesa V2 has a European belt path and the same easy-to-use self-ratcheting LATCH install system as our upgrade pick, the Uppababy Aria. It’s also compatible with Uppababy strollers. We tested both the original Uppababy Mesa and the Mesa V2 in 2022. However, we found the Aria’s lighter weight and load leg more desirable. The Mesa V3, which will have a weight limit of 30 pounds and be fully compliant with the new side-impact standards, will be released later in 2025, replacing the V2.

The Cybex Aton 2, which we tested in 2018, was the most difficult of the seats in that test group to click in and out of its base; it required placing different fingers on two release panels and then pushing in at the same time. We also found the Aton 2’s handle adjustment (which requires gripping the widest part of the handle) frustrating to maneuver. (We could feel the strain from all those attempted adjustments in our forearms and wrists.) The Aton 2’s standout feature is its steel load leg, an easy-to-install added safety feature that can help to absorb some of the initial impact of a crash and limit the subsequent motion. In February 2023, Cybex issued a recall of the Aton 2 and Cloud Q car seats made between June 6, 2017, and November 1, 2020, because the adjuster strap used to tighten the harness could fray. If you have one of these models, you can contact Cybex for a remedy kit.

The Cybex Aton G is a sort of “budget” version of the Aton 2 — it lacks a load leg and has a smaller canopy. The Aton G Swivel rotates toward you to load your baby in. We think this feature is especially unnecessary on an infant seat where the whole seat comes out anyway (it may be helpful in certain cases for convertible car seats, which can also accommodate infants). We have not tested the G or G Swivel. In February 2025, Cybex issued a voluntary recall on Aton G and Aton G Swivel seats made between February 20, 2023, and May 10, 2024, due to the possibility that the harness anchor pin can dislodge when the seat is not in use. If you own this seat, you can contact Cybex for a free product update kit, which will be available in April 2025, as well as information on how to use the seat while waiting for the remedy kit.

The Cybex Cloud T is a newer version of the Cybex Cloud Q, a high-end seat we tested in 2018 (the Cloud Q has since been discontinued). As with the Cloud Q, when you aren’t using the Cloud T in a car, the seat can fully recline. (Babies should not sleep for extended periods on anything other than a hard, flat surface.) A sensor on the chest clip monitors the baby for temperature and other safety concerns. And this seat comes with a load leg. However, the seat is larger than average and weighs 12 pounds — it’s more cumbersome than an infant seat should be. The Cloud G Lux is another seat in the lineup that has a load leg and SensorSafe chest clip. We have not tested it.

The Nuna infant seat lineup includes the Pipa Rx, Pipa Aire, and Pipa Aire Rx, all of which are easy-to-use, lightweight, and stylish car seats.

Nuna sells its seats with two different base options, both of which come with the added safety feature of a load leg, which can help to absorb some of the initial impact of a crash and reduce the amount that the infant seat moves. The more affordable of the two is called the Pipa-series base (yes, it’s super confusing that the base has the same name as the car seat itself), and it comes standard with the Pipa Aire. We tested the Pipa in 2021 and concluded that this base has a serious design flaw: It has rigid LATCH hooks that are designed to rotate for an easier fit, but the part of the base that rests against the vehicle seat back is too short. As a result, when you pull up on the bucket seat to disengage it from the base, that motion can cause the base to rotate up (as the LATCH connectors swivel) and the load leg to ratchet down, which causes the base’s angle to change. In a quiet situation, you might hear this happening and have an opportunity to fix it, but if you have a crying baby on your hands, it could go unnoticed. We’re concerned that the base can shift so easily under routine use, and we’re concerned how its tendency to swivel might translate to more rebound motion in a crash, since the whole seat could move upward toward the back of the seat. (This is the very effect that anti-rebound bases are meant to minimize.)

The other base option for the Nuna seats, called the Relx base, is better designed but also more expensive; like the Pipa base, it has a load leg and rotating rigid LATCH hooks. The Relx base comes with the Pipa Rx and the Pipa Aire Rx. The part of the Relx base that rests against the vehicle seat is high enough to keep the base securely in place. So even with the swiveling LATCH hooks, the base doesn’t rotate upward when you remove the bucket seat. (This design should also help keep it more secure in a crash.) If you’re interested in a Nuna infant seat, we suggest considering only models with the Relx base. But if you’re going to be spending close to $400 on a car seat, the Uppababy Aria, our upgrade pick, is a far better choice.

Nuna also recently added a travel car seat to its lineup, the Pipa Urbn. But you can buy the car seat only with one of its strollers, making the lowest-priced option $900 (at this writing) with its Trvl stroller. (The other options, the Triv Next stroller and the Mixx Next stroller, currently cost $1,380 and $1,580, respectively, with the Urbn.) The Urbn seems like a neat idea — it is baseless and instead uses a rigid LATCH to quickly hook onto a car’s anchors. We haven’t tried it because you can’t buy the seat by itself.

We tested the now discontinued Peg Perego Primo Viaggio 4-35 in 2018. Yet we haven’t tested the newer versions, including the Peg Perego Primo Viaggio Nido, which has a load leg, or the Peg Perego Primo Viaggio.

The Romer Juni is a new seat made by Britax; it looks like a higher-end version of the Willow S, the Willow SC, and the Cypress. A company representative noted, “Romer Juni and Britax Cypress infant car seats are built upon the same foundational car seat shell design, reflecting the engineering expertise and legacy of Britax, Romer’s parent company.” The representative also noted that the base installation mechanism of the seats is the same, except that the Juni base also has a load leg. We didn’t test the Romer Juni, but given how much we disliked the installation of the Willow S, we wouldn’t recommend the Juni.