MyChild Pinto Review

The MyChild Pinto has received a lot of positive comments on pushchair forums for its good looks and styling. The Pinto has a look of the iCandy Peach about it but costs almost half the price. Being huge Peach fans, and with a huge shopping basket, we could not wait to have a good look at it. I have to say we weren’t disappointed as we discovered feature after feature which would normally be only found on high-end priced pushchairs.

The MyChild Pinto does indeed look very smart and stylish. We love the circle design down the side of the chassis. It is a nice attention to detail. The chassis feels solid, neat and fairly narrow. The Pinto opens easily. The seat unit is black and a good size. However it is the seat unit that gives away that this is not a high end product. The seat has little padding in it and the harness looks like an inexpensive one. But the harness is a good size, had 3 height positions, and did up easily on both my children (although at full extension) with winter coats on. Both children looked comfy in the seat unit. Our daughter is over 3, and is really too tall for the Pinto, but she could still get the hood over her head. However she really struggled with the footrest because it is fabric and flexible and it couldn’t take the weight of her feet. The footrest flexed inwards under her feet but she couldn’t reach the chassis to rest her feet instead. Our 17 month old looked very comfy in the seat, and to be honest, he is the child who used the Pinto in our every day real life trials.

The seat has three recline positions in both forwards and reverse modes. The footrest also has three positions which was useful our son because the seat unit is a bucket one and he needed his legs lifting up to be comfy. The seat recline is simple to do using buttons on either side if the seat unit. However it is a two handed operation. The foot rest also requires two hands to adjust the buttons on either side.

A swing away / removable bumper bar is included in the cost. Swing away bumper bars are very useful when you have an older toddler, so that you do not need to lift them very far to put them into the seat. A bumper bar is good to be able to hang toys or even a snack console onto.

The hood has a small visor on the front, but at the rear is cleverly hidden an extension piece behind a zip! This extends the hood quite considerably so that a child gets good shade when fully reclined. There is a peekaboo window which is held into place with magnetic closures. These are a small but good little touch, as ripping off velcro can be noisy when checking on a sleeping baby.

Removing the seat unit is a simple one handed release. There is a small silver button on the side of the seat which needs pushing in to release it. The seat easily pulls off and can be turned round on the chassis so that the child can face in the opposite direction. This silver button also releases the car seat and carrycot. This is such a useful feature to find on a pushchair. It made removing / reversing the seat simple. The seat unit also drops back into place really easily – there was no hunting around the try and find where the sockets were!

The foam covered handlebar extends to a huge height – I think it must be one of the tallest handlebars we have seen. Brilliant for taller parents. Extending the handlebar is a two handed operation – there are buttons located on top of the handlebars which need pushing in before pulling the handlebar out. But these were simple to do, even when walking along.

One of the huge selling points (well it grabbed my attention!!) of the Pinto is the huge shopping basket! It extends right under the seat unit. But more than that, the access is brilliant – the opening is huge. There is also a cover over the basket to protect your shopping from wind and rain which poppers down, plus inside there is a removable liner / bag which was be great for putting groceries in to carry into the house. The liner attaches using two velcro tabs and then folds over the edge of the basket. In reality you can probably get far more into the basket than the liner bag holds by stacking the front part of the basket first and then filling the liner. But the basket all round is genius – a huge basket, good opening, lid and removable liner! A shoppers dream!!! We managed to get lots in! The only negative is that basket access is restricted when the seat is parent facing. The lid does need room to lift up, but we simply lifted the footrest up to access the basket when parent facing.

The wheels are hard plastic. There are large wheels at the rear and smaller swivel wheels which lock into position if required. The Pinto is not an off road pushchair, but it pushed very well across our thick gravel, which leads us to believe it will cope well with your average park, bark chippings and rough footpaths.  It is very easy to manoeuvre around. At first I was a bit put off by the chunky fold button being situated in the centre of the handle because I like to push a pushchair one handed. I thought this would be a real issue for me, but it turned out not to be so, and I happily pushed the Pinto around one handed. The foam handle is comfortable to use. The Pinto isn’t the most responsive pushchair we have ever pushed, but it is does push and manoeuvre perfectly well, and I only know the difference because I am pushing different pushchairs day in and day out I certainly wouldn’t see this as a negative.

The My Child Pinto folds with the seat unit on, facing forwards. The fold is therefore a little on the chunky side, but there are few pushchairs of this size which do actually fold as one piece, so to find that the Pinto folds all together was fantastic. There are buttons marked 1 and 2 on the handlebar to start the fold off. So a slide of No 1, followed by squeezing No2 got me nowhere! I realised that the side of the chassis was locked, so managed to locate a slider (No 3) on the side which released the chassis to fold. So relatively speaking the fold isn’t the easiest, but believe me you get fast at it, and you do end up with a nice neat packaged pushchair instead of two parts. One trick we discovered is that the Pinto will more or less fold standing up, which has eliminated bending down for me. I simply tilted the pushchair back, folded it, the pushchair autolocked and then it could be easily lifted straight into the car from my hands rather than having to bend down and pick it up from the floor. A great feature!! As I have just said, the chassis also autolocks. Sadly the Pinto does not freestand when folded but it was easy to store on its side or base. Of course the seat unit could be removed to fold should you wish. Opening was easy – simply undo the autolock and flick the Pinto open.

The brake pedal is tiny but is situated at the side, so it is not difficult to locate. It is easy to flick on and off.

The MyChild Pinto comes with the footmuff and the raincover. The footmuff is fairly thin quilted fabric but the top zips off to leave a very useful liner.

The MyChild Pinto also comes with its own Group O+ infant car seat included in the price which really makes the Pinto a really great value travel system. This rear facing car seat has side impact protection with a 5 point one-pull adjustor. It fits using a standard 3 point car seat belt. There is a head hugger, chest pads and hood which are all removable. The base is curved to allow it to rock. There is no need for adaptors as the car seat simply drops into the sockets on the chassis.

There is a carrycot available to buy separately for the MyChild Pinto. Again this simply drops into the sockets on the chassis to make a smart looking pram.

All round, we really thought the MyChild Pinto was fantastic. It was great for both the parent to use and push, and for the child to sit comfortably. The Pinto has features such as the one handed seat remove and chassis detailing which are excellent to find in a pushchair of this price. We love the one piece fold. The basket is excellent and makes this a fantastic choice for any parent who needs to shop! On top of being an excellent pushchair, the addition of the car seat as part of the package, makes the Pinto amazing value for money. We would highly recommend the Pinto.

Note: There are several variants of the Pinto currently on the market. John Lewis have their own version of the MyChild Pinto on sale, and there is a variant done by Ladybird called the Winchester / New Brighton Travel System.

Many Thanks go to Kooltrade for the loan of the Pinto. It was much appreciated.