My DD had a Quickie 2 wheelchair (which is different than a Quickie 2 Lite); her current manual wheelchair is a Quickie GP, which is lighter in weight.
The Quickie Zippie 2 is a children's chair, but the Quickie 2 and Quickie 2 Lite also come in width and depth sizes that would fit children. Both of them can have a growth kit that allows the wheelchair to be made wider and longer as the child grows with removing the cross bars and replacing them with a larger set. One of DD's wheelchairs did get 'grown' that way, but the pieces had gotten stuck together and the frame got bent when they tried to get it apart. The wheelchair still worked fine, but didn't fold quite square anymore.
I do know that the Quickie 2 Lite has a lot of adjustability, in terms of back angle and things. I'm not sure if the Zippie has those abilities or not; if it doesn't, that may be one of the reasons they are recommending the 2 Lite.
Both the Zippie 2 and the 2 Lite look like they fold the same way (side to side).
It looks to me like the 2 Lite possibly weighs less than the Zippie 2 does.
All of my daughter's manual wheelchairs have been Sunrise Medical (Quickie) wheelchairs of some type. We have found them to be nice wheelchairs and they hold up well. They also fold quite easily; I can take DD's wheelchair almost totally apart for travel quite quickly.
A couple recommendations from me regarding tires:
Front tires (also called casters) - don't get pneumatic (airfilled) ones. They were recommended to us once because they are softer and will give a better ride. That is true, but they needed to be checked all the time for air and adding air was a real pain because the little nozzle for adding air was hard to access. And, one of the tire tubes developed a hole. It was very expensive for that tiny little tire tube. So, my recommendation would be to go for Polyurethane.
Rear Wheel - Spoke wheels (with those thin metal spokes like bikes have) are more expensive and also require more upkeep than mag wheels (the ones with wide plastic spokes). Wire spokes need to be checked for tightness periodically and can break. I'm not sure what the advantages to spoke wheels are, but in DD's last 3 manual wheelchairs, we opted for mag wheels because they are lighter.
DD has had airfilled tires for the back tires. As long as you get a size that is a standard bicycle size tire, you can actually get tire tubes fairly cheaply, by buying them in a bike department, rather than ordering them. You will still need to check the air pressure, but at least it's no harder than on a bike.
For DD's last 2 manual wheelchairs, we got pneumatic tires with airless inserts. These cost more than just plain pneumatic tires, but you never have to add air or worry about the tire tube.
along with all 5 kids
She's being silly. I took her post to read that the Quickie Zippie 2 was also reccommended.
