Phil&Teds Sport Buggy vs. Jane Powertwin

July 29th, 2007 by Jennifer

We're coming up on our due date, and have been shopping for double strollers for months now. We had narrowed it down to two strollers, the Phil&Teds Sport Buggy and the Jane Powertwin. Both strollers fit our requirements in several areas.

First, we wanted a tandem stroller, not a side by side. After a lot of research and interviews on the street (yes, we stopped random people on the street who had different types of strollers), we have determined that tandem strollers provide more maneuverability when the kids are different weights and sizes, whereas the side by side models are really better suited for twins. Add to the fact that we live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where stores have aisles too narrow to turn around in, much less push a side by side stroller in, and you quickly come to the determination that tandem is better suited to our lifestyle.

Second, we wanted a stroller that would be as compact and light as possible, because why push more weight than necessary? If you have a 25 pound toddler and a 10 pound baby, you're already talking about pushing 35 pounds. Some of the double strollers we looked at were 45 pounds! That would be 80 pounds to push down the street. What a workout!

We visited several stores and checked out their strollers, as well as observed different models on the street. We went to Buy Buy Baby, Babies R Us, and even Wal Mart while on vacation visiting relatives just to see what they had. In addition, we visited at least 5 different local retailers in Brooklyn and Manhattan. We considered low end strollers, such as the Kolcraft Contour and both of the Graco Duoglide and Quattro models. We considered higher end models like the Peg Perego Duette, the Phil&Teds Sport Buggy and the Jane Powertwin. We thought the Graco and the Kolcraft were too poorly made, with really crappy wheels and designed like heavy tanks. The Peg Perego, despite it's high end price tag, has the same shortcomings as the Graco and Kolcraft. We found that the Phil&Teds and the Jane were the most suitable given our criteria.

What we like about the Phil&Teds Sport Buggy is its compact design, its relative light weight and the availability of accessories to enhance its strollerability in the city. With the Phil&Teds Sport buggy, you can place a newborn in the bassinet and put a toddler in an add-on feature called the doubles kit. You don't have to use a car seat for the infant. If you insist, though, it works with the Graco Snugride or the Britax Companion with the help of an adapter kit. It has a lot of nice features, such as a swivel front wheel that can handle rough terrain or sidewalks (a necessity in New York City), an adjustable handlebar (perfect for parents of drastically different heights like us), and the doubles kit which fits within the frame of a single, albeit large, stroller. This last feature is key, in that it allows you to maintain a sense of control and maneuverability that we just didn't find with other competitor strollers.

What we didn't like about the Phil&Teds Sport Buggy is its one on top of the other setup for the kids. While it is necessary to maintain the key feature listed above, keeping the stroller maneuverable, but at the end of the day one child will get a really crappy view and less comfortable ride. At least it will be the infant, who won't know any better for a long time. Another downside is for moms or dads with short arms, like me. Even with the adjustable handlebar, with the doubles kit installed with the double seat in the rear, like you would use when the baby can sit up, my knees hit the doubles kit as I walk. I have watched other taller people push this stroller with no problems, but when I do it, my knees bang EVERY STEP. That was almost a breaking point for me. I am 5'3", and my husband is 6'3". He doesn't even come close to it interfering with his stride, and even women who are 5'5" seem to do just fine. I even posted a query on our neighborhood board to see if other moms experienced the same problem, and found that most did not, although some did unhelpfully suggest that I would change the way I walk behind it. Is that really ergonomic? The other downside is that the Phil&Teds Sport Buggy comes in really hideous and overused colors. They should take a look at Bugaboo, which makes some nice neutrals as well as some louder yet still attractive colors. With the Phil&Teds, you are stuck with depressingly dark colors or really LOUD colors like lime green, which I'm somehow still drawn to since I hate dark strollers. When you live in a neighborhood that has more Phil&Teds than a Dan Zanes concert, you begin to realize the advantage of getting the unpopular colors such as lime green or camo blue. Yet do you really want to look at lime every day? They could improve the color selection.

As for the Jane Powertwin, it has several features that make it competitive with the Phil&Teds Sport Buggy. For one, it also is on a similar 3 wheeled frame made with leightweight materials. The Phil&Teds weighs 28 pounds with the doubles kit, and the Jane weighs a little over 30. That's pretty close as far as weight is concerned. It is made of nice, durable fabric and comes in pleasant colors that are easy on the peepers. One advantage it has over the Phil&Teds Sport Buggy is that the children are in more of a stadium seating type of arrangement, with the rear child getting a less obstructed view. Another advantage is that like the Bugaboo, they are high up, so the parents don't have to bend over as much to fulfill the endless requests for sippy cups and snacks while on the go. The third thing that I believe makes the Jane a power player in the double stroller arena is that it folds up nicely and easily, so it can be stored in tight spaces and might even fit in the trunk of a car. Compared to the Phil&Teds, another advantage it realizes is that both children are away from the wheels. My daughter is a wheel magnet, always sticking her feet on top of the strollers wheels, and would certainly find the wheels on the Phil&Teds double seat an attractive nuisance, despite their recent well-deserved plastic cover addition. With the Jane, there is a cover that would prevent her from reaching the wheels even with her feet for a long time to come.

The Jane Powertwin is not without downsides, though. Most remarkably, the canopy is really short. This might work well for Spanish kids from shorter breeding stock, but her in the US we grow them big. I am certain the Jane would have captured more of the doubles market here had it only made the canopy taller. Another disadvantage is it feels a little unstable when you go over curbs. When you go down a curb in a stroller and roll the front wheel down first, it gets a bit wobbly. Maybe that is something for which you accommodate as you get used to the stroller, though. Another striking problem with the Jane is its inability to work with US brands of car seats. Apparently they haven't received approval on the Jane car seats here in the US, and they didn't have the foresight to design the stroller to accommodate seats that were approved in the US. Rather than quickly design an adapter, they have completely neglected to solve the problem to date, which makes it a less attractive option for those who are expecting a second baby.

At the end of the day, we settled on the Phil&Teds, and believe it or not, we're going to go with lime green, pictured here. I was in fact set on buying the Jane before the newest Phil&Teds came out, and we were procrastinating our purchase to view the new Phil&Teds when they made their appearance this month. Yet believe it or not, it wasn't a shiny new feature that converted me to the Phil&Teds camp, because overall I still prefer the Jane. Instead, it was learning that the two stores in our neighborhood and a surrounding neighborhood that had been carrying the Jane decided to discontinue carrying them. We asked the salesperson at Heights Kids, a Brooklyn Heights Boutique baby store, why they were going to stop selling the Jane, and he said they sold the Phil&Teds 30 to 1. It's not a price thing, because they are only about $50 apart in price when you account for the doubles kit. Rather, it is the short canopy on the Jane that does it for most people. My fear is that I'd buy the Jane, and when it came time to get it serviced, would be unable to get it fixed when I needed. If you are spending that kind of money on a stroller, it had darn sure better come with at least some assurance that next year someone will be around who can fix it should something major go wrong. That was the deal breaker for me. I am not sure Jane is ready to invade the US space, and apparently they are not doing a great job of salesmanship here. They need to get their act together and come more prepared for the market before I invest in one of their premium strollers, which is a shame. They almost had me.

Graco, infant, Jane, Kolcraft, Phil&Teds, stroller, toddler, Traveling with Toddler

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Phil&Teds Sport Buggy vs. Jane Powertwin

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