Axkid Connect –  Introduced at Kind & Jugend 2019.  Each year we are seeing more and more indicators combined into our car seats.  The latest trend is a pad that senses if your child  is in the car seat.  The thought is that parents should be reminded about their child in the back seat and never abandon the child by mistake.  Depending on brand the pad can also sense temperature of the child, how long the child has been in the car, provide all kinds of info on the car seat and also installation instructions.  All the information and possible warnings can be viewed in an app on your phone.

The focus on a pad comes mainly from Italy where a new law is in place requiring a device so that a child won’t be left alone in the car.  It’s ironic that this comes out of Italy where an unbelted grandma sitting with an infant in the lap is seen as adequate car seat safety. But we’ll discuss Italy and car seat safety another time.

Axkid, BeSafe and Maxi-Cosi all showed off their own sensor pad solution in Cologne this past weekend.  A bit unclear what the Maxi-Cosi pad was called but the others were Axkid Connect and BeSafe “Anti abandon device”  I think we can all agree that BeSafe needs to work on naming this products….. 

Axkid Connect has three main functions.  Alert through the app when a child is left alone in the car, alert when  child has been in the seat for too long and lastly it will show if the temperature is too high. Axkid had lots of focus on their Connect with a live demo showing the sensor and app in action.  The sensor will measure temperature of the child and warn if this gets too high.  If a parent leaves the car, with a child in the seat, a warning will sound after 10 meters. The warning can be deactivated  by one parent if another one is still in the car.  If the parent keeps on going more than 10 meter the alarm will be extremely annoying and cant be missed.  The app will also show an alert to remind a parent to take frequent breaks.  An alert will sound after one hour in an infant seat and two hours in a rear facing or booster seat.

When setting up the app select your Axkid seat and you will have instant access to all information about the seat including installation instructions and video.  Smart!  The pad will of course work equally well with any other car seat brand although it will lack seat specific details.  Axkid Connect seemed to work nicely and the app was clear and easy to understand.  Color will be black even though some of the demo units were grey.  Retail price will be around 90 Euros and arrival is December 2019.  Axkid Connect will be available for pre-order at CarSeat.se in November. 

Axkid has done a really nice job with the pad and app. Although the app and pad are stylish and easy to use one must also wonder if we aren’t pushing too much information at parents. With Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, calendar, emails, etc. there is lots of info to keep track of.  One must also ask the important question: If a parent needs an app to not forget a child the back seat, should that person really be a parent?