Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Having spent more than a year with this shaver, I've come to know it pretty well. Here's my take on it. This is clearly intended for people who shave either every day, or every other day. When it first arrived, it had been 3 days since my last shave, and this shaver tugged, yanked, and left me with a very patchy shave that I had to rescue with a manual razor. Not being able to use it while it's plugged-in is annoying. Back in 2005, I bout another Norelco for half the price of this one, and it could shave and charge simultaneously. On the topic of charging, I shave every other day, and an average charge lasts me about 2 weeks. An average shave takes me about 10 minutes, uses up about 10% of the battery, and the battery loses 1% charge per day that it sits idle. A full charge takes about an hour. They tell you to let the shaver run all the way down between charges, so I have to assume it must have a Nickel-based battery, rather than a Lithium-based battery. I find that this gives smoother results if used in the shower, and with shaving cream. I have very coarse, fast-growing facial hair. I can grow a full beard in a week. This shaver does give me smoother results than a safety razor. However, it requires a lot of work and multiple passes. Thankfully, you can really press this shaver into your skin without any irritation resulting, but unfortunately you kind of need to in order to get close and smooth. The shaver started asking me to replace the blades at almost exactly the 1 year mark. A cleaning fluid cartridge lasted me about 2 months, but you can clean it just as well in the sink. The cleaning cycle in the stand takes something like 3 hours, but I can clean it by hand in 30 seconds. Perhaps, most importantly, more expensive does not mean better. I learned this the hard way. My previous Norelco was half the price, and a better shaver. This one is slower, more delicate, more fiddly, and doesn't offer any real tangible advantages over the cheaper models I've used. It still gives a good shave, but you can get the same shave for less. The stand just takes up a lot of space and doesn't do anything terribly useful. The travel case looks nice, but this thing popped apart while traveling, and I had to figure out how to snap the case back together. Overall, it's good, but I'd say to get a cheaper model.