Mommy F:

You will get the best info from certified car seat techs. You can find them at http://www.car-seat.org … membership is free and they will be pleased to help! they will question you for budget, info on the child, and your vehicle and will be able to fit you with something perfect!

other sites are really not reliable because you are getting advice from persons not trained in seats, and while their intentions i’m sure are excellent they may not be using the seat correctly or may be just basing a seat off *looks* rather than its genteel usage and quality.

I’m not a tech yet but am training to become one and while i don’t know what type of seat you’re in the market for here are a few that we urge most regularly for you to look at until you get joined to the group:
infant seats: protection onboard, chicco key fit
convertible seats: graco myride65, protection 1st complete air, sunshine kids, right fit premiere and britax is coming out with a new line next month.(these seats are fantastic to keep your child rfing as long as possible which is 5x safer and then will harness ffing when the time comes)
forward facing only seats: the frontier 85 and graco nautilus

hope this has helped! and hope to see you at car-seat.org!