Three purchases decide how the first two years feel: the car seat, the stroller, and the carrier. Get them wrong and every outing is a fight.
They are also the three most oversold categories in baby gear, because they are bought early, bought anxiously, and bought by people who have never owned any of it.
The three decisions, and what actually settles each
The car seat is settled by fit, not by price. Every seat sold in the US meets the same federal standard. What separates them is whether yours goes in tightly in your particular car, and a correctly fitted budget seat protects better than a badly fitted expensive one. That is not a consolation, it is the single most important sentence on this page.
The stroller is settled by folded size. Nobody measures the trunk before buying. Everyone regrets it. A stroller that folds beautifully on a store floor and badly into your actual car has failed the only test that matters, and it fails it every day for three years.
The carrier is settled by torso length. yours, not the baby's. The same carrier fits one parent well and the other badly, which is why we fit every one on testers of different builds rather than reporting one person's experience as the verdict.
The thing nobody tells you about LATCH
Car seat anchors are rated for a combined 65 lb of seat plus child. A convertible seat weighs 20 to 34 lb on its own.
So you reach that ceiling somewhere around 35 lb of child: usually age four, and at that point you must stop using LATCH and install with the vehicle seatbelt instead. It is in every manual and almost no buying guide.
It is also why we score the belt install separately from the LATCH install. Most guides average them into one number, which hides exactly the thing you will need three years after the purchase.
Where to start
If you are buying before the birth, start with the infant car seat. It is the one item on this list you need on day one: every state requires a child restraint in the car, and most hospitals check that the baby goes home in one.