The Best Razor
We now delve into territory that’s wrought with
heated debate, personal bias, and other such enemies of researchers and
writers: Which is the best razor type.
It must be admitted that the information presented in this article is
not based on extensive testing by the Rightshave.com staff, as we
couldn’t even come close to being able to afford even a
quarter of the razors available on the market today. Each type of razor
was tested, but not all brands/models. However, countless
hours of research and the testing we performed have given us the
following, logical view of how to spend your hard earned cash.
Disposable Razors and House Brand Razors
Disposable razors, no matter what variety or brand, are seen as not being very kind to neither skin nor hair. These bad boys bottom out on the list of things trusted to cleanly and painlessly scrape a layer of hair and skin of one’s precious face or body. It’s nice that they’re cheap, and some people even find a single bladed razor more accurate when doing detail work (around sideburns, beards, etc.) but it’s merits are overshadowed by the fact that the workmanship of these razors just isn’t good enough to remove your hair without a high risk of irritating the skin.
The only time RightShave.com recommends a disposable razor is
when ingrown hairs (razor bumps) are a problem. A single-blade
disposable razor, can sometimes reduce the change of developing razor
bumps because it leaves the hair ever-so-slightly longer than a
multi-blade razor. It's worth trying if you've only been using
multi-blade razors.
By house brand razors, we mean ‘knock-off’ brands
of the more popular multi-blade razors. If it’s not Gillette
or Schick, it’s probably a house brand. While these are a
significant step up from disposables, there’s a reason
they’re cheaper. The bigger companies like Gillette and
Schick are the ones who are researching, innovating and putting out
products that they have tested. House brands try to copy their
successful products and make and sell them for a buck or two cheaper.
Simply put, it’s worth the extra buck to purchase a
well-known and trusted razor.
One of the Rightshave.com testers purchased a triple blade house brand
shaving system recently and was absolutely floored at how poorly
designed it was. Perhaps the blades themselves were fine, but the razor
head was spring-loaded in such a way that you had to apply a ridiculous
amount of pressure just to get the blades to touch the skin. Even
people with tough skin would almost certainly develop razor burn if
they shaved with this product.
Cartridge Razors
Cartridge razors, like the Gillette Mach 3 and Schick Extreme 3, and so on and so forth are a popular option. If you can tell when your blade is getting dull, and you really know exactly how to shave properly, these types will get some, but not all people, happily through life without any significant skin irritation. There's constant complaint by consumers regarding the price of the replacement cartridges, but right now there's not a whole lot a person can do to change that.
Dual Edged Safety Razors (DE Razors)
There’s big, big resurgence of these popping up in
the world of shaving. Along with authentic badger hair shaving brushes
– seriously. Why all the hype? Because traditional wetshaving
using a DE razor works really, really well… if you know how
to do it right.
Before anyone ever heard of a Gillette Fusion, people still shaved. Oh
yes, and they got along quite fine without our commercial aftershave
(etc.)
too. Wetshaving with a DE razor isn’t for everyone, but if
you’ve tried everything else with unsatisfactory results, be
sure to try this technique. There are several blogs and articles across
the internet detailing exactly how to do this. We at RightShave.com are
far from experts on traditional wetshaving, so we’re not even
going to try to do a write-up on the matter at the moment. Perhaps in
time.
A DE razor would look 'old fashioned' to pretty much anyone who's ever
been to the pharmacy and glanced at the flashy, plastic razors they
have there. Instead of using cartridges, they use individual razor
blades that you insert into the head of the product.
So there you have it. The best razor type is no longer a mystery.