We have the meridian and it is great. We also love it for the AHR...DD was always very snug in the seat and no worries about excess neck/head movement. Looking at other friends car seats without the AHR and I definitely know we made the right decision. We got the manual and it has been absolutely fine and have had no thoughts of wishing we had gone the retractor...so there's another way to save a little bit of money..takes a few seconds to adjust the straps yourself. We have just purchased the SNS maxi rider AHR for DD as definitely can't go past the AHR feature. I would definitely go for it.