We have been testing the Graco Evo Mini for a week now, so I thought it would be a good time to share our first impressions & tell you what we’ve been up to so far.
Putting the Evo Mini together was an incredibly easy process; it comes almost fully intact, you simply click the wheels into place, and fasten three poppers to secure the basket. It comes with a simple & easy to understand instruction booklet outlining the effortless process. The dark orange “Grenadine” colour is really attractive & gender neutral.
The seat itself seems incredibly comfortable for a lightweight stroller, being very well padded. You can set it to recline at whatever angle you want, with a toggle system allowing it to be fully adjustable.
The rain cover goes on without difficulty, velcroing into place over the hood, with a single popper securing it around the front wheel. It covers the whole of the hood and back of the pushchair, meaning that both the child and the pushchair are well protected from the elements.
Folding & unfolding the Evo Mini is ridiculously trouble-free; it has a one handed folding system which is very simple to operate. To fold the pushchair, you simply place your hand over the middle of the handle, and then use your thumb to slide one button to the right and your fingers to pull the other into the handle. The whole frame then collapses onto itself, with the catch clicking automatically into place when you exert a little pressure on the folded frame. To unfold, you just unclip the catch and pull upwards on the handle, and the Evo Mini springs back into shape. Simple!
The pushchair arrived during Georgie’s afternoon nap, but she couldn’t wait to get into it when she woke up & discovered it sitting in the living room!
The Evo Mini is very easy to steer, even when the (huge!) basket is full and Georgie is sat in it, I could still drive it around with one hand most of the time.
It handled surprisingly well in the recent bad weather; I have been out & about a few times with it now and encountered snow, solid ice, and the evil that is slush. Locking the front wheel helped to keep the pushchair under control & made it significantly easier to push through the snow and slushy conditions.
We drove the stroller around the local supermarket on Saturday, with Lydia snoozing away happily in the lie flat position – her first ever ride in a pushchair! It handled incredibly well indoors, I could drive it with just a few fingers on the handle with our little baby girl inside.
Tuesday saw us heading to the local library for our weekly Rhythm & Rhyme session, just a short walk away. The pavements were incredibly icy, but the pushchair handled it beautifully – much better than I did… I almost ended up doing the splits halfway there! Our new stroller was duly admired by a few of the other mums and S’s mum even gave it a small test drive around the kids room.
On Wednesday I took both our girls into Birmingham City Centre on the train, babywearing Lydia in our wrap sling whilst Georgie rode in style in the Evo Mini. It was really easy to get on & off the train, and the compact size meant that it didn’t take up too much space once on board. Once in town the blissfully ice free pavements and smooth floor of the bullring shopping centre allowed me to get a real feel of how the pushchair handled in “normal conditions”, and I was very impressed.
We were in town all morning and Georgie was happy to be in the pushchair for several hours at a time (in between stopping for breakfast and lunch, of course!), so she definitely found it comfortable. The large basket meant that I had plenty of storage space for all of my shopping, which is a godsend when you have a train journey and a small trek ahead of you before you are safely home & can collapse on the sofa! I hate having to juggle a pushchair and shopping bags while trying to get on & off public transport, so being able to tuck them all away was great.
Yesterday we packed up the car and headed down to Cornwall to visit my parents for the Easter holidays. The compact stroller is brilliant to bring on trips like this; with two children and a box of Easter eggs to distribute we had a lot of luggage and needed all the boot space we could get! I’m looking forward to test driving the Evo Mini some more while we are down here.
As you can see, our overall first impressions of the Graco Evo Mini are very favourable indeed. Keep an eye on the blog to see how we get on with it over the coming weeks!
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