A little while ago we were contacted by Axkid and given the opportunity to review our choice of car seat from them. Since the Wolmax is the newest ERF seat from Axkid – I decided that this was the car seat to review! It hasn’t gotten enough media coverage – and with this review, I wish to change that for the better.

I have dubbed the Wolmax as Axkid’s “budget seat”. This means that it’s a very affordable seat and fits into a “budget” car seat category. You might look at its price and think “omg…what is she going on about?!” – but you see the car seat is far longer lasting than many other car seats on the market. So for the price you are looking at a car seat that will last most children from 9kg to approx 6 years old.

Axkid Wolmax Stats

Weight range: 9-25 kg
Lowest harness height:  33cm
Highest harness height: 43cm
Cabin space required: –
Wash: 30° hand wash cycle and hang to dry

PLUS TESTED
RRP: £225

Extras:
Axkid Wedge – Axkid Baby Insert – Extra tethers – Mirror
– Summer cover – Attachment loops

Axkid Wolmax First Impressions

After unboxing the seat we did a video of our first impression of the seat. In the video, Henry is trying out the seat and I go through the basics of the seat and what we like about it, what stands out about the seat and user-friendliness.

Please watch the video below:

Installation

Installation of the Wolmax is very simple. My husband decided to have a go at doing it without even reading the manual – which I do not recommend you EVER do. You should ALWAYS read the manual! I can’t stress that enough! BUT he wanted to see if it was “idiot proof” as he called it. And so he decided to do it. I filmed it all, friendly banter included hehe.

Please watch ERFdaddy installing the Wolmax:

In The Car

Lots Of Room

It’s sadly a common misconception that extended rear facing seats are hard to get in and out of. That it’s hard to put a child in the seat or that they can’t actually see anything when rear facing. Below Henry shows us just how simple this is. He is also able to perfectly see his dad at the end when he moves behind the car to test it.

The Axkid seats have low sides near the legs which make it easier for children to get in and out. It also offers quite a nice amount of leg room for older children. We have it installed with extra leg room.

However it’s still a nice and compact seat – so will fit in quite a large number of cars!

Crash  Testing

The Wolmax was crash tested this year by the German ADAC – but it has already passed the strict Swedish PLUS  test.

ADAC verdict on the crash test was:

• Low risk of injury in frontal crash
• Low risk of injury in side impact crash

And in the frontal crash test, it scored a whopping 1,6! Which is really good! 

You might wonder then why the overall verdict is so contradicting to the crash test results.  This is because ADAC and all the other consumer organisations do not separate the crash test score – from the all over ‘user-friendly’ score. And sadly extended rear-facing seats that are not Isofix – tend to do really badly in ‘user-friendliness’.

This is extremely annoying because the ADAC is still punishing the seat for being rear facing (ergo bad in their opinion), for having tether straps (which is a good thing really…as they have a serious purpose) and because they still seem to think that rear-facing children are unable to see out the window…sigh.

Luckily this might (hopefully?) soon be stopped because more and more people “at the top” are starting to take notice and realise how extremely unfair this is. Rear-facing car seats are, after all, the safest car seats on the market for children under the age of 4 (and yes over, but generally we say to RF as long as possible but to a minimum of 4 years old).

So that they all shine forward-facing car seats with recommendations and praise them to the rooftops just isn’t on. Not today. Not now that we have so much research published on how much safer it is to rear face children.

You can read Axkid’s statement that they published after the test results. And below is a quote from Kindersitzprofis.

Kindersitzprofis:
“ADAC criticizes the difficult installation, the risk of miss-operation, the increased space requirements, and a few other points that have to do with the handling of the seat. What’s wrong with this is the good security score: With a 1.6 in the dangerous frontal crash, the Wolmax is a very safe rear-facing children’s seat. Therefore, we continue to clarify, ask, analyze the results and hope to create awareness that the test winner is not automatically the seat in the test that best suits your child and your car and also optimally protects your offspring.” Sole source (translated in english):
https://www.kindersitzprofis.de/adac-kindersitztest-2017-fruehjahr/

Like my Facebook post above shows – rear-facing children have an excellent view out of the back window.

Closing Points

All in all, we are really happy with this car seat. Yes it doesn’t have the same bells and whistles as it’s bigger brother the Minikid, but it’s still a phenomenal car seat and it’s also as mentioned in the beginning – quite affordable. A car seat for £250 that lasts approx 6 years only costs the small sum of 80p per week! So it’s really really affordable if you look at it that way.

As I said in our ‘first impressions’ video, it doesn’t come with the automatically self-adjusting tether straps or a self-rising headrest that moves to the correct position when you tighten the harness – BUT these are not things that are necessary. And I feel that the Wolmax is not put down by not having these things.

I think instead that you should put the Wolmax in a slightly different box to the Minikid and Duofix (which we have), and say that it’s a more budget-friendly version of the Minikid.

We were sent this car seat by ‘Axkid’ for the purpose of this honest review.
All thoughts & opinions are our own!