Baby Jogger City Mini GT2 Double review

Side-by-side doubles are judged on two numbers and one action. The numbers are overall width, which decides whether it goes through your front door and down a supermarket aisle, and folded dimensions, which decide whether it goes in your trunk. The action is the fold, because you will be doing it one-handed while holding a child.

The City Mini line built its reputation on that fold, and it is the reason this stroller keeps getting recommended over doubles with better specifications elsewhere. Add all-terrain wheels that cope with broken pavement and curbs, independent seats that both recline, and you have a double that is genuinely usable rather than merely adequate.

The constraint is the one every side-by-side has: width. The published figure is in the table below, and you should measure your narrowest regular doorway before you get attached to it.

We have not crash-tested this product and we do not own one. What we did is read the manufacturer's own specification page and manual, record every figure against the page it came from, check the model against NHTSA's recall database, and confirm it is currently sold — all on the date shown in the table below. Then we assessed it against the five criteria we apply to every product on this site.

For a double, the criteria are the stroller criteria with two additions: seat equality, because a worse rear or second seat is a daily unfairness, and steering under a full load, because two heavy children change the physics. We read the published width and folded dimensions carefully, since those are what actually cause returns in this category, and checked whether the chassis accepts two infant car seats — the specification that decides whether it works for twins from birth.

We do not print a NHTSA star rating or an IIHS category for this model. NHTSA publishes an Ease-of-Use rating and IIHS publishes booster belt-fit ratings, but both block automated access to their databases, so we could not read a figure from the primary source. Reprinting an unverified safety number on a page a parent may rely on is not a risk worth taking, so we link the official lookup tool instead. The full method is on the methodology page.

Doubles produce more returns than any other stroller category, and it is almost always a measurement problem rather than a quality one. Ten minutes now:

1. 1.Your narrowest regular doorway. Front door, back door, the gate to the park, the shop you use most. This is the number that decides side-by-side versus tandem.
2. 2.Your lift, if you use one, measured with the stroller loaded rather than empty.
3. 3.Your trunk floor and opening, with whatever you normally carry still in it. A stroller that only fits an empty trunk does not fit.
4. 4.Turning space where you will actually use it — a side-by-side is wide in a tight turn even when it clears a straight doorway.

If the width does not work, the answer is a tandem, and the right type that fits beats the better type that does not. Our comparison of both is at best double strollers, and twin-specific requirements are at best travel systems for twins.

• Twins, or close-in-age siblings. Equal seats and balanced steering matter most when both children are the same size.
• Anyone who folds a stroller single-handed regularly — this is the stroller's headline feature and it is the right reason to choose it.
• Families walking on broken pavement, grass or curbs, where the all-terrain wheels earn their keep.

Who should not: anyone whose narrowest doorway defeats the width, who needs a tandem instead; families with a wide age gap, for whom a sit-and-stand is often better and cheaper; and anyone whose main need is a travel stroller, since a double is the wrong tool for that entirely.