Go on! Feel my face! (Philishave Cool Skin HQ5620 Reflex Action Rechargeable Shaver)

Member Name: SpankMarvin

Product:	Philishave Cool Skin HQ5620 Reflex Action Rechargeable Shaver
Date:	06/07/01 (878 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Comfortable, Quick, No foam or new blades!

Disadvantages: Cleaning, The occassional escaping hair

Who wants to use one of those wet razors if it means that a fighter jet will fly through your window? After all, that?s what happens in the adverts, and they are always true to life. Anyway, I suppose I should start by explaining why I now prefer the Philishave which I got rather than those bloodthirsty manual devices.

I have always had quite sensitive skin, particularly in the facial area. Like quite a few men, I found wet shaving with a manual razor an experience which felt (and, horribly, sometimes looked) like I had taken sandpaper to my face in some masochistic fit of rage. My skin felt tight, hot and raw, and it was noticeable on my face, being worse the more frequently I tried to shave. As a result, in order to help take care of my skin, I only shaved every third or fourth day so that when I did come to shave, it wasn't quite so painful. Obviously, this has its disadvantages. Even at university, people would ask if I was growing a beard or if I was okay.

So, I tried one of these electric Philishaves with the Nivea pouches which squirt moisturiser onto the skin while you shave. At first, there was no difference ? if anything it was harder to shave than before, and just as sore. However, the blurb on the packaging told me to give the shaver two weeks for my skin to adjust, and by the end of this period my shaving was all but painless. I could shave my face without even wetting it, as health magazines and books reliably inform me that one of the major contributing factors of soreness when shaving is the fact that you wet your face as well as scrape away the moisture. I could then shave more often, and start to experiment slightly. My friends now ask me why I look like some strange hybrid of Beck and that bizarre man with the jewellery who does the Channel 4 racing commentary.

The shaver does seem somewhat pricey at first, but it really is worth it if you suffer from sensitive skin as I do. At the risk of sounding like
an advert, you will notice the difference before long. Also, taking into account the cost of replacement razors (which, particularly in the case of ?kinder? razor blades such as the one which sounds like Spillette Bach 3 are very expensive themselves) the shaver will soon pay for itself. Add to this the cost of shaving foam, and it pays itself off even quicker.

Only a couple of pains: If you are not careful and forget to charge the battery, you run the risk of only half shaving. Also, whereas with a manual razor you can just throw the thing away, you actually have to clean this one out thoroughly with a little brush, which is quite tough if, like me, you are quite lazy. Apart from that, they are great shavers, and my laziness is now the only reason for my not shaving for days on end.

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