CarGo Seat Review

Reviewed by Melody Floyde

I was very happy to be asked to review the CarGo Seat which is a travel booster seat and pull along suitcase in one for children. We have been planning to buy a similar product, for our youngest son, for a while now as he has finally outgrown his ride-on case and no longer needs a full car seat when we travel so he will need a booster seat in our hire car when we go on holiday to Spain this summer.

I’d never heard of the CarGo seat beforehand but have seen similar products on the market so was keen to try it out. From a bit of research, I could see that the CarGo seat was designed by a father who had hired booster seats for his children on family holidays and wasn’t happy with the safety or high cost of these, so designed his own which also doubles as a pull along case for children. It sounded great, and I really liked the fact that it was a pull-along case rather than a carry case as from experience my children are never very keen to carry anything themselves when we go on holiday!

When the CarGo seat arrived, my youngest son (aged 5) couldn’t wait to get it out of the packaging. We were sent a purple seat, which is lovely and bright and he was very happy about this (the CarGo seat also comes in green, pink and blue). It also came in really bright and colourful packaging which gave lots of information about the product and was very visually appealing.

The CarGo seat is a full size low-back booster seat for children who weigh between 22-36kg and are over 125cm tall so perfect for my five-year old. The CarGo seat itself measures approximately 395mm x 406mm x 148mm when closed, so it isn’t too big and bulky to store when not in use. It is small enough to fit into the overhead locker on an aeroplane, and I think it would also fit under the seat in front, although we haven’t been able to try this out yet. The arms of the booster seat are folded down when in “case mode” and are very easily pulled up by pressing the yellow buttons in the middle of each of the wheels to turn it into a seat. The case has a twistable yellow plastic clasp, which my son found very easy to use. Inside there is a fairly decent amount of space (10 litres) and my son could easily fit his tablet, headphones, cuddly toy and snacks in, with room to spare – so that ticks off all the travel essentials. There is also a long purple handle that easily folds out on the back of the CarGo seat, turning it into the all-important pull along case. My son loved pulling it around and he’s very excited about taking it to the airport with him when we go on holiday.

The CarGo seat came with very clear instructions on how to fit it into the car and I found this very easy to do. It literally took less than a minute to put it into our car which will be a real bonus when we get our hire car on holiday to make a quick escape from the airport. I was also reassured that it has been crash tested and meets European safety standards.

The CarGo also has a black material seat pad to make it a bit more comfortable to sit on, and this pad is very easy to remove if it needs cleaning as it is held on by velcro. As the CarGo is made entirely of plastic it will also be very easy to clean when it inevitably needs cleaning during and after our holiday.

Some more positive points are that the CarGo comes with a 12-month warranty, although I’m hoping it will last much longer than that. There is also the option to recycle it when you have finished with it by sending it back to CarGo to do this for you.

Overall, the CarGo seat has lots of positives, however I have to mention a couple of negatives that I found. Firstly, the wheels on our case didn’t seem to actually turn around unless they were on carpet, which would be a disadvantage at the airport as I’m concerned the bottom of the CarGo will be scraped – perhaps they need to be slightly bulkier to achieve this. The other negative for me was that, apart from the pull along handle, there is no other handle on the CarGo, so I’m not sure how we will manage to carry the CarGo seat at the airport if our son gets tired of pulling it along (which inevitably at some point he will!). I think a handle of some kind would be a really great addition to make it more parent-friendly. My only other slight concern was that the pull-along handle doesn’t seem very strong and is quite bendy so I’m hoping it withstands my son’s enthusiastic pulling and heavy cargo.

Overall, I do really like the CarGo seat and think it’s a great idea for young children. It is bright, colourful and most of all practical and we can’t wait to try it out fully on holiday.

Rating: 3.5/5

RRP: £49.99

This product can be purchased from the CarGo website here.