Braun Series 7: The Electric Razor Evolves

I am not an elec­tric ra­zor guy. Since mov­ing from my dad's plug-in Wahl in 10th grade to dis­pos­ables and shav­ing cream, I've dis­missed electrics as un­able to de­liv­er a close, com­fort­able shave. I use an old Gillette dou­ble-edge safe­ty ra­zor with 20 cent Is­raeli Per­son­na blades right now, and I'm lov­ing the sim­plic­i­ty, con­trol, and close shave I get.

A month or two ago, how­ev­er, Braun con­tact­ed me and told me that they want­ed to send me their top of the line elec­tric shaver, the Braun Se­ries 7, to try out. I was ex­cit­ed to see where shavers have gone in the last ten years, and hey- I'm a suck­er for gad­gets.

First Im­pres­sions: So many blink­ing lights! From the LCD on the shaver it­self to the au­to­mat­ic clean­ing stand, it's easy to see the re­main­ing bat­tery charge, cur­rent shave in­ten­si­ty, and 'hygeine lev­el' (no idea how that's cal­cu­lat­ed). The ra­zor it­self feels very solid­ly built, and comes with a nice trav­el case and clean­ing brush.

The Shave: On a flat sur­face, the Se­ries 7 shaves re­al­ly well. It gave me a close shave on my cheeks, chin, and mous­tache with no tug­ging or ir­ri­ta­tion, and no deal­ing with shav­ing cream or ra­zor blades. An elec­tric shave will nev­er be quite as close as a good wet one with a blade, but it's per­fect­ly pass­able for work. If you don't like the com­plete­ly shaven look, the flip-out trim­mer does a good job of main­tain­ing a lit­tle stub­ble, though I wish it had an ad­justable length guide.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it fell flat when it came to the neck. I have a weird left-to-right grain un­der my jaw, com­pared to most guys' down­ward grain, and it's hard for any ra­zor with a flat face, elec­tric or oth­er­wise, to deal with the con­cave neck area and odd­ly con­toured Adam's ap­ple. It took me a while to get my ra­zor tech­nique down for this area, and it's even cre­at­ed is­sues for some pro­fes­sion­al bar­ber­shops. The Se­ries 7 didn't nick or scratch me, but it was al­so tough to get a sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly smooth shave.

Main­te­nance and Clean­ing: This is one of Braun's big talk­ing points for the Se­ries 7: the au­to-clean­ing charg­ing base. Sup­pos­ed­ly it tracks how dirty the foils get, and au­to­mat­i­cal­ly runs through them with a clean­ing so­lu­tion when they need it. I couldn't think of a par­tic­u­lar­ly sci­en­tif­ic test of this, but I can say that I have been us­ing the Se­ries 7 for about two months now, and it seems to run just as smooth­ly and clean­ly as the first day I bought it. Ev­ery now and then I hear a lit­tle whir and gur­gle from the base, and the LEDs do a lit­tle dance- I pre­sume that's the mag­i­cal tech­no-elves at work. For when you are on the go, you can al­so just run hot wa­ter through the foils to clean them.

Ver­dict: The Braun Se­ries 7 is a very good elec­tric ra­zor- maybe even the best. It hasn't con­vert­ed me from blades, but for some­one with the right skin and beard grain, it might just do that. I still use it as my go-to trav­el ra­zor, and it's al­so fan­tas­tic when I feel stub­bly and don't have time to show­er.