graco

We have been testing out the new Evo Mini pushchair from Graco for the past month, as part of the Graco Ambassador competition.

This is a light weight and easy to fold single buggy. It’s been great for us, especially on days out as it’s so small to fit in the boot of the car, and easy and quick to fold and unfold.

As soon as we opened the box and put the buggy together, we were really impressed with it. Even my husband who is not really interested in prams commented that it did look really good quality and a great piece of kit. He was also very happy with how quick it was to put together, it only took a few minutes and didn’t take a lot of concentration to do. That was also a relief for me, as I still remember how much of a pain our double buggy was to put together.

It comes in two colours. Grenadine, which is shown above, is the colour we were sent. The other is a turquoisey shade called Latigo Bay which is also lovely. I really like the bright colours, it looks nice and cheerful – a big difference from my normal black and grey pushchair.

Onto the technical side of it, I have put the dimensions and weights here for you to see:

It really does feel very light weight, easy to pick up and lift and also feels very light when pushing so it is easy to steer and can be pushed easily with one hand.

The wheels are quite small and are plastic rather than being tires like my usual buggy, so I wondered how this would compare and whether it would be a problem. It was absolutely fine, as the buggy is very light it did not really need heavy tires for the steering and the ride felt very smooth and pleasant, unlike some of the cheaper umbrella single buggies I have tried which give you quite a rattly feeling as you push it along the pavement. The only time I had a bit of difficulty was with pushing it over gravel, but even that the buggy coped fairly well. Overall you really can tell it is well made and good quality.

The seat was very comfortable for my toddler. It has plenty of padding and he was very happy to sit there and also comfortable enough to sleep. We had to adjust the length of the straps quite a bit to accomodate him and once that was done, he was fine. It does recline to lie flat, but as my toddler is a bit older at 20 months, he doesn’t prefer to do that. It is easy to change the positions if you want to.

I was also really impressed with the size of the basket under neath the buggy. It does seem to be bigger than many I have seen. You can easily fit in all the children’s bags and coats with no problem. I managed to fit everything in that was needed for my three boys on days out, and it did not feel like a squash everything fitted in comfortably.

I really like the buggy and would recommend it for anyone looking for a good light weight single.

The next thing for me will be to try it out with a buggy board on the back and see how well that works.

If you fancy having one, you could try entering from this competition through the Gurgle website – here, or the Evo Mini can be bought exclusively from Mothercare. It costs £179.99 which is a reasonable price, having bought some of the very cheap umbrella strollers before I feel money is better spent getting a decent one like this as at least it will last and feels so much easier and more pleasant to push, gives you so much more storage space in the basket and just makes life easier.

I have put up another post here to share some of our pictures of days out with the Graco Evo Mini.