Peg Perego Book Plus Review

With a sticker that reads “Made in Italy,” Peg Perego puts forth an image of old-world quality. With a sturdy aluminum chassis and Soft Fabric Collection, Perego really attempted to make the Book Plus an all-around stroller. It has a fully reclining, reversible seat; a full coverage sun canopy that reaches all the way to the belly bar; a cozy foot muff that also aids in creating a bassinet environment; a huge, easy to access storage basket and a comfortable and easy to adjust parent handle. These nice features were, unfortunately, handicapped by the challenge of figuring out how all the features and functions work when the instructional documentation is difficult to interpret. Read on to find out more about our experience with this stroller.

Performance Comparison

Ease-of-Use

The Peg Perego Book Plus scored a 6 of 10 in overall Ease-of-Use during our testing. It is versatile with many nice features, including a quick-fold, a reversible seat that can be parent-facing or forward-facing, an adjustable handlebar with a wide height range of 31.5" to 42.5", and four recline positions. Including a position that is13 degrees, which is nearly flat and perfect for a newborn. As a travel system, it is compatible with the Primo Viaggio SIP 30-30 car seat and accepts the car seat directly onto chassis, without special hardware.

For storage, the seat can be removed and squished down. You can load the stroller in one or two parts. By removing the seat first, it divides the weight of this heavy stroller (24 lbs 10 oz) into two pieces, which we found to be an easier process.

Folding and unfolding the Book Plus is a better than average experience with their quick-folding mechanism. It is possible to manage both fold and unfold with one-hand once you get the hang of it. However there are some prerequisites, one must first get the stroller seat in its proper fully reclined position for it to fold. Secondly the handlebar must be in the right position for it to self-stand when folded. For a tall person using the stroller, this will mean that you will always need to adjust it down each time you want to fold it. It is also necessary to position the fold-lock to the correct spot, prior to folding, so it will engage properly. Needless to say, these preparations took awhile to get used to. You fold the Book Plus by squeezing two bars together at the base of the seat and lifting simultaneously. With this maneuver, the parent handle swings over the top and the stroller collapses.

Once folded, if you want to pull it behind you, the front swivel wheels really need to be locked. Otherwise the stroller swings and sways side to side and you may find yourself getting pulled into circles if the front wheels aren't locked.

This stroller is heavy, and quite frankly very bulky when folded with the seat attached. It took up the length of an SUV's trunk, varying between 37" (parent-facing) and 44" (forward-facing). Lying flat, it peaks about 16 inches off the ground and is 24 inches wide (with the cup holder attached). Fitting this stroller into a compact car trunk was tricky and left almost no room for groceries or other items.

You can unfold it with one hand, but the seat has to be repositioned, so we recommend using both hands to unfold it more quickly. There's an audible snap once the stroller has solidly returned to the open position.

The seat has ample padding over a firm backing, with an adjustable leg rest. The included foot muff creates a cozy, enclosed environment. We were quite surprised that the depth of the included seat (where the child's bottom goes) is only 8 inches deep. In our experience a deeper seat is better as evidenced by our 2 year old tester, who was almost sliding forward out of the seat. Even with the buckles comfortably tightened it seemed like this seat just wanted to tip him out. The accessory “Pratico Seat” that Peg Perego offers is a lighter weight seat that fits onto the Book's chassis to make the stroller more suitable for on-the-go travel. It has the same weight maximum as the Book's included seat of 45 lbs and does seem to be geared towards toddlers with its rotating t-bar which could function either as a footrest or belly bar. However, the “Pratico Seat” has a $130 price tag which would be added to a stroller that is already $500.

Speaking of the included child seat: besides the belly bar, there is not children's tray or cup holder, unless you purchase Peg's child tray as an accessory.

Extra Large Sun Canopy
This stroller has the largest sunshade of all the products we tested, reaching all the way from the back of the seat to up and over the belly bar. The only other sunshade that we tested in our review that is of a similar size to Book's is the Orbit Baby G2. In the Book's bassinet mode, you can completely conceal baby. The canopy's fabric is soft, but loose. Which creates a bit of a bulky mess. It tended to get in our way when reclining the seat if the canopy was completely folded back. The back half of the canopy can be removed by zipper to lessen the bulk and also provide ventilation, but then the canopy's fabric begins to “sag”. Overall though, we feel the benefit of a large sun shade outweighs the hassle of the extra material here. The vinyl peek-a-boo window has UVA-protection.

Very Large Storage Basket
The storage basket is very large and easy-to-access from all sides regardless of seat position.
We missed having a place to keep our smaller items like cell phone, sunglasses, and binky close at hand as the parent tray and child tray are not included. You can purchase their “borsa” (purse) which is meant to be hung from the Book Plus which has two hooks for hanging a purse or diaper bag from for easier access. The back bar of the storage basket is spring-loaded and folds down for easier access of items as well.

Although the stroller comes with a very light-weight “cup holder” that slides on to a peg which is on the side of the stroller, we found that this was only good for was a small water bottle. We even lost it a few times when it became completely detached during the fold-load process.

In a cafe, this stroller functions well due to its smaller footprint and higher seat, but falls short on its inadequate parent and child trays.

Maneuverability

This stroller scored a 6 of 10 in maneuverability. Fairly easy to handle on smooth, hard surfaces, it struggled off-road, but was not impossible. We felt that if its aluminum frame was tighter, it might be easier to maneuver. As is, we did experience some trouble maneuvering around obstacles and had difficulty backing the stroller out of them.

The Book Plus has 10.25" solid, rear wheels and solid, swiveling front wheels that are 6.75" with smooth turning and locking capabilities. Pushing and steering one-handed is easy. Uneven terrain was more difficult, even with the front wheel locked. It was hard to cross a 3" gap between stepping stones, and rolling over a 1.5" ledge was a no-go for us. When rolling down a 6" ledge we found that it tipped forward. This also means that it was especially challenging trying to maneuver up and down stairs, requiring considerable elbow grease. Indeed, the large wheels do help with going up stairs, but the frame flexes a lot. Which made us feel less in control during transitions.

Safety

The Book Plus scored a 6 of 10 in Safety. The sandal-friendly brakes, are easy to engage and disengage. A clever “one step” lever locks both rear wheels firmly.

Unfortunately, this stroller had a below average sideways tip over angle of 20.1 degrees. However, it had a very sturdy backwards tip over weight of 33 lbs 11 ounces.

Its 5-point harness is about average and without padding.

Quality/Durability

We were surprised at the Book's low Quality/Durability score of 5 of 10. Our initial impression was that the words “Made in Italy” would signify a product of high quality. Unfortunately, we were left disappointed.

On its exterior, the fabric immediately draws you in. It is nice and soft, but slouchy and saggy. The seat's neoprene foam material offers good padding and insulation and with the addition of the foot muff makes a cozy environ for Baby. As far as ease of cleaning the fabric, we're torn. While the neoprene repels liquids well, elbow grease and a good bit of scrubbing is necessary to clean mashed-in-foods.

When it came down to day-to-day use, the inner workings of this stroller did not impress us. We found the aluminum frame prone to flexing which made maneuvering the stroller more difficult. In addition, a little plastic peg (which is used to engage the front wheel swivel lock) fell out on one side, and is now regrettably M.I.A. Furthermore, we feel that the connection between the seat and chassis is wobbly.

Weight/Folded Size

The Book scored a 5 of 10 in Weight/Folded Size. It weighs 25 lbs 10 oz, has a large footprint, and a large fold.

Ease-of-Set-Up

This stroller took us 75 minutes to set up, exponentially longer than any other stroller we assembled in this round-up review. Not surprisingly, it had the worst documentation of any stroller in our review of 21. It is awesome that the instructional brochure is written in many different languages, but the organization of the material is poorly executed. For instance, thirty step-by-step instructions (which initially looked to be pre-assembly warnings) were discovered after we were well into assembly. We found ourselves again in a situation where the illustrations are at the beginning of the instructions, and the text is on another page. Very annoying to be constantly flipping back and forth, to say the least.

Best Application

This stroller works best when you are going for a walk from home, without having to travel in a car first. That said, it has many strong features that make getting around town with Baby quite comfortable - including its reclining seat (which does not have to be removed when folding), generous sunshade and large and easy-to-access storage basket.

Value

For its middle-of-the-road price (with regard to this review), this stroller is a decent value. However, it placed 16th out of 21 strollers with an overall score of 55/100. Doing average in terms of ease-of-use, maneuverability, safety, quality/durability, weight/folded size and abysmal in ease-of-set-up. Nonetheless, there are redeeming features such as a seat which provides a bassinet-like environment and is reversible, the handlebar has a wide adjustment, it has a quick fold feature, and a full coverage sunshade with peek-a-boo window. However, if you're looking for included extras (say, parent and child trays), the Peg Perego Book Plus does not deliver.

Conclusion

There are several other strollers with the same price point in this review that we would suggest you look at before making a buying decision: the BOB Revolution SE, the Bumbleride Indie, the Baby Jogger City Select, the Britax B-Ready and the Phil and Teds Navigator Buggy.

Video

The official Peg Perego overview video gives a good walk through of the various ways the Book Plus can be used, both with as a travel system with an infant car seat and as a stroller. Hint It's a far superior tool for setting up the stroller than their very confusing international instruction pamphlet.