Its just a perfect shave..... (Gillette Mach3 Blades)

Member Name: merv

Product:	Gillette Mach3 Blades
Date:	19/01/03 (943 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very well designed, Smooth and comfortable shave, Nice feel about it

Disadvantages: Expensive cartridges

The village I grew up in boasted an old-fashioned corner shop, a newsagents, a pub, a railway station, a cobbler’s shop and a barbers. Not a hairdressers - a barbers, one which proudly exhibited a traditional red and white pole.

Barbers have a celebrated and very impressive history and in primitive times, they were the leading religious men of their tribes because people believed that good and bad spirits entered the body through your hair and that the bad spirits could only be driven out by someone cutting your hair. The barber was the main player who arranged all the marriages and baptized the children. In the Middle Ages, barbers were actually surgeons who practiced ‘bloodletting’ to cure disease. In fact, the predecessor of the barber’s pole was two spiral ribbons painted around the pole to represent two long bandages, one twisted around the arm before bleeding and the other used to bind it afterward.

The barber in our village had a job description, which no longer included bloodletting but he was still a prominent member of our society and he did a roaring trade in shaves. I can clearly recall the queues on Saturday Mornings for a short back and sides and a shave with a cobalt steel ‘cut throat’ razor which he sharpened on a stone called a hone and stroked up and down against linen on a leather strop.

He had a machine, which dispensed warm shaving cream and there were plenty of steaming hot towels, which he used to swathe his customer’s faces in after he’d finished the shave. I was too young to shave in those days but the whole process fascinated me.

I don’t suppose anybody goes to the barbers for a shave anymore, but I think I’ve found the modern day equivalent, the Gillette Mach3, the first triple-blade razor, which was first introduced in 1998 and which has become the world's leading razor. It is an incredible piece of technology.

The handle is er
gonomically designed and feels relatively heavy and good to hold with rubberized ‘boomerangs’ on the top and bottom for a good firm grip, which prevents slipping. The cartridges are attached by forward pivot for a much closer shave, but the main progress is in the design of the cartridge, which consists of three independently thinner edge suspended blades with individual spring loaded pivots. Each of the blades has patented hard coated steel comfort edges to give you the cleanest and smoothest shave you have ever experienced.

The whole razor has been designed to ensure you have a much closer, quicker and more comfortable shave in fewer strokes with less skin irritation particularly in the sensitive neck area, and it certainly achieves its aim. The ‘open cartridge architecture’ makes it easy to rinse and keep clean and there is a coloured strip on the top blade to indicate when the blade needs replacing.

Use this fantastic razor in conjunction with shaving oil and a good quality shaving gel and all you are missing is the steaming hot towels. The only down side is the price – the razors are currently on free offer from the Tesco web site (only one blade provided) but the cartridges are about £6.95 for eight, or not far short of £1 each! Each cartridge lasts me about five days the equivalent of 20p a shave, expensive when you compare it with other shaving systems or disposables but cheap when you think what people used to pay for a shave at the barbers.

I would definitely recommend it despite the price – one piece of modern design technology that can match the traditional.

Summary: