Road Test: From-birth buggies

This is a bruiser of a pushchair, the kind of baby buggy bought by first-time parents who want something that will last through the rest of the football team they’re planning to spawn. It’s built like a tank, and you certainly get the impression that it will serve several new occupants well.

However, that sturdiness and security comes at a price. It’s great for yomping across heathland or for cutting a swathe through the high street thong, but it’s much less fun when you’re trying to wrestle it onto the bus or into your car (and smaller cars needn’t even apply – it folds up willingly enough but it doesn’t seem to get much smaller). So long as you don’t need to fold it up and carry it too often, the Plasma 7 is easy to manoeuvre, with or without the front wheel locks, and the spring suspension system guarantees a smooth ride.

The seat is reversible so you can have baby facing you if you prefer – which is just as well, since the netting on the cover isn’t easy to see through. On the plus side, the design includes a crossbar at the front which is easy to grab for lifting up and down steps (dads in particular probably appreciate this).

Maclaren hasn’t gone out of its way on the style front with this rather plain-looking buggy, but it has focussed on making it practical and easy to use, which is much more useful to parents in the end.

The carry handle makes picking it up easy and it actually feels even lighter than it is. In use it’s easy to manoeuvre, in part due to the light weight, but it also manages the trick of feeling sturdy and reliable too.

It’s slim as well, making it easy to navigate through narrow doors and high street crowds, and we liked the comfortable handles, though there isn’t a great deal of extension for them.

The braking system felt a little weak – it stops perfectly well, but it may struggle after intense use through several occupants. The shopping basket however is large and secure and there’s a nice clear plastic viewing window for keeping an eye on baby.

Surprisingly, even though it folds easily, comes with a carry handle and is lightweight, it’s quite long when folded, so we found we had a bit of difficulty manoeuvring it into the boot of our compact but bijou Seat Ibiza.

Like the Maclaren, the Ziko is nice and light and proved to be the easiest in this test to fold and store, fitting into tight spots better than any of the others. It handles well on the road and its lockable wheels proved useful for handling.

The fabric feels classy (the £160 Ziko Frankie version uses more standard material) and we had the ‘Button Box’ flavour – a sort of mauve colour with pictures of buttons. Surprisingly, there’s no option for handle height adjustment, though the fact that the handles are fixed means that they feel particularly sturdy.

There’s no viewer in canopy to view baby while you’re out walking, which seemed like a bit of an oversight, not quite made up for by a pocket in the hood for storing milk bottles etc. And as with the Maclaren, the brake system doesn’t feel particularly sturdy, and you would expect it to suffer over time. The shopping basket however is of a reasonable size and feels secure.

The Loola has the look of a high tech baby machine, but for the most part, it gets the basics right. Like the I’coo, one of its great advantages is that the seat is reversible so you can have your baby facing you (probably preferable in the first few months when baby’s main point of interest will be you) or facing away (better when they’re older).

It’s not the most lightweight model here by a long chalk, but it’s reasonably easy to handle. Certainly easier to control on the street than it is to lift into the boot of the car – it feels like a dead weight and there’s no obvious place to lift it from when folded, which led to our fingers getting trapped in the spars more than once. The lack of a bar at the front makes it a bit tricky for friends (or kindly strangers) to help with stairs by lifting it from the front – they’re forced to hold one of the crossbars underneath, which isn’t that easy.

One problem that becomes apparent on the street is that it’s a bit too weighted towards the front, which makes it a bit tricky to life the front to get up kerbs or steps, though we found that we did get used to this after a while.