2018-09-24T18:00:00ZThe Insider Picks team writes about stuff we think you'll like. Business Insider has affiliate partnerships, so we get a share of the revenue from your purchase.
- The Mifold booster seat ($37) is compact enough to tuck away in any piece of luggage or even into the seat pocket of a car, yet it provides the same level of child safety as a booster 10 times its size.
- The Mifold booster seats are narrow enough to safely sit three children side-by-side in the back of even a smaller car.
- The booster is rated safe for use by children over the age of four and weighing anywhere from 40 through 100 pounds.
By the very nature of its functionality, a kid's booster seat has to be a bulky item. That's because the seat's very purpose is to elevate a child high enough off the seat so that the shoulder strap of the safety belt system passes along his or her chest. (Instead of across their faces, which is where most seat belts would rest with a body too large for a traditional car seat but far too small for the seatbelt as-is. And FYI, a seatbelt across the face? That ain't safe.)
Thus while critical for a child's safety, booster seats are a rather annoying fact of life. They're bulky, most are frustrating to install, and they add a layer of complication to traveling, whether you're hopping into a taxi to head across town, helping with a carpool trip home from school, or packing for a two-week trip overseas.
All that was the case, that is, until a guy named Jon Sumroy invented the Mifold Grab-and-Go Booster Seat. This is yet another of those inventions I and surely a million other parents wish had been our own idea. It's one of those: "Why didn't I think of that" products. Because, really, the concept behind the Mifold booster seat is so brilliant because it's so damn simple: Don't move the kid up, move the seatbelt down.
The Mifold changes the paradigm of the booster seat by not, in fact, boosting a youngster upward. Instead of a bulky seat raising a child's torso to accommodate the orientation of the shoulder strap, the Mifold uses a shoulder belt guide to hold the strap down at a perfect custom fit for the child in the seat. A pair of lap belt guides also move the lower strap forward, helping it lie flat across a child's upper thighs instead of higher up across their stomach.
The result is use of a car's existing seatbelt system thanks to a foldable, compact "booster" seat that is small enough and lightweight enough to travel anywhere with you.
A Mifold will easily fit in just about any backpack, messenger bag, large purse, or into the glovebox or seat back pocket of any car. You can pop one in place when you're loading the kid into a taxi (meaning an Uber, basically), into grandma's car, into a rental, or you can of course use your Mifold as the primary booster in your own vehicles. If you have multiple kids who need a booster seat, you might need to use a Mifold instead of a big, bulky traditional seat; they are narrow enough for three kids to use them side by side, restoring the back seat of your car to its full three-person capacity instead of edging out use of the middle seat as most car seats and boosters tend to.
I was impressed by the concept of the Mifold before I ever held on in my hand. Now that I'm an owner, I'm sold on the hardware.
Anything that keeps my (soon-to-be) five-year-old son safer is good by me; if it can do that without requiring us to check luggage when traveling or hold up traffic in the taxi line while installing it, it edges over into the great column.
And the fact that the Mifold costs less than $40? That's pretty great, too.
Buy a Mifold Grab-and-Go Booster Seat from Amazon for $37
You can purchase logo and accolade licensing to this story here.
Disclosure: Written and researched by the Insider Reviews team. We highlight products and services you might find interesting. If you buy them, we may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our partners. We may receive products free of charge from manufacturers to test. This does not drive our decision as to whether or not a product is featured or recommended. We operate independently from our advertising team. We welcome your feedback. Email us at reviews@businessinsider.com.
Read the original article on Insider Picks. Copyright 2018. Follow Insider Picks on Twitter.ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7o8HSoqWeq6Oeu7S1w56pZ5ufonyutcWoo51lk5a%2Fbq7OqKqtnaJiwKat02apnq6ZmsRutdJmoK1lo5azpnmRaWhxZWk%3D