Crooks.net

This morning I shaved with my brand new shaver, a Braun Series 7 - 760cc Shaver. This was quite an event because I never dreamed I’d spend $200 on a shaver. Okay, that’s not entirely true. If you know me then you’ll probably think, “I can easily see him spending that much on a silly gadget,” and it’s true.

Why did I ever spend that much money on a shaver? It all started when I was watching one of those “how it’s made” shows on TV with the kids. This particular episode showed how electric shavers are made at the Braun plant in Germany. It started by showing how all the male employees shave every morning at the plant instead of at home, and they use all the new designs in lab rat fashion. Then they showed the latest design, the Series 7. The technology in this thing intrigued me, and it really did look like a pretty good shaver. I looked it up on Amazon, gulped at the huge price, dropped it on my wish list (which I primarily use as long-term memory) and forgot about it.

Except I didn’t forget about it. I kept going back to that Amazon page, looking at it and reading about it. But this wasn’t just silly drooling, I had a good reason. Unfortunately, I am allergic to many, many things, and this has the regrettable effect of making my skin frequently itch. For the last several months my face has gotten progressively more itchy after shaving with my Remington electric shaver. I would shave, take a shower, get out of the shower, and my face would be an itchy mess. Reading the reviews of this Braun Series 7 shaver, I saw that many of the comments referred to how gentle it was on the face. I was very intrigued by this, but still — $200?

Finally all the pieces came together. I was getting very tired of having an itchy face every day and Amazon offered a $50 Amazon gift certificate with the purchase of the shaver (an offer which has since expired). I pulled the trigger and felt guilty about spending so much, but hoped it would be at least somewhat worth it. Yesterday the shaver arrived.

I didn’t get to open the box until the end of the day, but I was eager to get it plugged in and charged for use this morning. I should have taken pictures of the unboxing — it was definitely packed like an expensive device. There really wasn’t a lot to the contents. There’s the charging/cleaning base, a cleaning cartridge, the shaver in a very nice travel shell, the power cord, and the instructions. I quickly flipped through the instructions to get it plugged in and charging and went to bed to read further.

What surprised me was how short the instructions are. Yeah, sure, it’s just a shaver, but typically with a high-priced electronic device you get pages and pages describing the wide variety of buttons and displays, and I expected no less for a fancy $200 shaver. I have read (and have nothing to back it up) that products produced for sale in America sell better when they have more buttons and displays (look at high-end dishwashers and washing machines), but in other countries the appeal is the opposite, with high-end devices expected to be smarter and thus easier to use.

This shaver comes with a fairly substantial charging/cleaning base. After shaving you simply drop it in the base and push the large button on the front.

The shaver itself has a big LCD display on the bottom that shows the charge remaining in the battery, how clean the shaver is, and when the blades need replacement. It monitors how dirty it is and communicates this information to the base. The base then picks the appropriate cleaning cycle, from economy to deep clean. Pushing the button on the base starts the cycle which takes 30 to 40 minutes, thoroughly cleaning and drying the shaver. The shaver actually runs a few times as part of this process (at least at the beginning of the cycle), so it’s not exactly silent, but not overly loud either. The shaver is also charged while in the base.

It’s certainly easy to do and saves me a few minutes in the morning. Getting the shaver perfectly clean appeals to my personality, and I don’t mind spending a few bucks on the cleaning cartridges every once in a while. They are supposed to last around 30 days each, but you could extend that easily by rinsing the shaver in the sink every other day instead of doing a cleaning cycle every day.

The cleaning cartridges are easily replaced by simply popping open the base, sliding the old one out, and sliding the new one in. The cap from the new one is used to cover the old one, which you then toss out. The base has a set of lights that reports on the current status as the current cartridge gets dirtier and eventually needs replaced.

As I mentioned, the shaver also came in a nice, hard travel case. The travel case is a form fitting hard-shell around the shaver and will provide it very safe protection. If you were to only travel for a few days you could simply take the fully charged shaver and throw it back in the base for cleaning and charging when you returned home. A charge is supposed to last something like 50 minutes total. For a longer trip, the cord that plugs into the base will also fit directly into the shaver so it can be charged that way. You can also easily clean the shaver under a stream of water so there’s no need to try to take the base with you.

On to the important question: How was my shave this morning? Very nice! The shaver is relatively quiet and seemed to shave fairly closely. I know from past experience over the years trying several different brands of electric shavers that it takes a couple of weeks for your beard and your technique to adjust to get the best shave. What I got this morning was pretty good for a first shave. But the most important part was that it totally lived up to the hype about it being gentle. I finished shaving, dropped it in the base, took my shower, and instead of having the usual face-on-fire feeling, my face felt perfectly fine. No itchiness whatsoever. For me, that makes the shaver worth every penny.

Highly recommended.