Orbit Baby G5

The Orbit Baby G5+ is a rotating infant car seat, which allows you to rotate the seat toward the car door to make getting baby in and out of the car a bit easier. The downside is that, like most rotating car seats, this seat is very heavy and bulky.

The base features Orbit Baby’s Strong Arm tensioning mechanism, which is designed to help secure the seat’s base tightly to the vehicle seat, but in our evaluations we found that it takes many knob turns to really tighten the installation. We found the installation instructions contradictory, which can cause frustration and confusion. (The instructions say to keep the belts flat in the tensioning mechanism, but to also pull the shoulder belt tight, which wrinkles both the belts, so it’s hard to know what part of the directions to follow.)

Making adjustments as your baby grows could be tricky with this seat: The seat doesn’t recline, so a rolled towel is often needed to achieve a proper recline angle for babies. When it comes to making harness height adjustments, you may want to move the canopy out of the way for better access. Using the newborn insert is also a bit finicky on the Orbit Baby G5+. The instruction manual requires the crotch buckle to be in the innermost slot when using the newborn inserts, which makes the crotch buckle very short when used with the newborn insert.

Based on our ease-of-use and vehicle fit testing, we would not recommend carrier-only installations with the G5+. The carrier is too large for most seat belts to wrap around the shell and accomplish the preferred belt routing method. Using the common belt routing method for a carrier-only installation is difficult to route and get a secure installation.

Consumer Reports has developed a new crash test that offers consumers comparative performance information on which car seats could provide an additional margin of safety when compared with other models within the same ratings group that have been subjected to the same test protocol. Our Crash Protection Ratings are based on injury criteria measured on standardized child-size dummies, contact of the dummy’s head with the back of a simulated front seat and a car seat’s ability to remain intact during the course of testing. Consumer Reports’ new crash tests are not designed to check whether a seat complies with current federal car seat safety standards. Rather, the purpose of our new tests is to differentiate the seats’ performance on a scale that ranks the performance of tested seats ranging from “basic” to “best.” Our focus on providing an “extra margin” of safety, rather than on determining whether a seat is safe or not, is based on the fact that any car seat sold in the U.S. already must provide an essential level of safety under the government standards. The new test conditions were carefully designed to simulate the interior environment and forces encountered during a crash in contemporary vehicles. Changes from the way that convertible seats were rated previously include using a test bench that better simulates the vehicle seat design from a contemporary vehicle, with more representative cushion stiffness and seat geometry and incorporation of a “blocker” to simulate a front seatback. The new test also runs at a higher 35mph speed, with other representative dynamic characteristics that better simulate the behavior of contemporary vehicles during a crash.

The Orbit Baby G5 is part of the Car Seats test program at Consumer Reports. In our lab tests, Infant Car Seats models like the G5 are rated on multiple criteria, such as those listed below.

Maximum weight: The maximum weight of a child that a model will accommodate.

Ease of use: Includes the clarity of instructions, installing the seat, adjusting harness positions, placing a child in the seat, securing the harness, and removing the child.

Fit-to-vehicle LATCH: A rating of how easy it is to securely and correctly install each seat using the LATCH system in a variety of vehicles and how well the seats fit each vehicle once installed.