Does the vibrating handle make a difference? With my very heavy tough beard, your damn straight it does. I have shaved with both my Mach 3 and Fusion with the vibrator turned off as an experiment. Much smother and closer with it on.
When I started shaving, my 5 o’clock shadow showed up about 9AM. When the track 2 came out I could keep it away till noon, 2 PM if I shaved twice (and scraped my skin raw). With the Mach 3 it was more like 2 PM, with my Fusion power, my 5 o’clock shadow shows up at 6 PM. Of all the electrics I have owned over the years (several Norlecos, and a Remington) none would shave as close as a blade. I don’t care what the ads say. None of htem would shave worth a damn on wet skin also.
Are the Fusion blades spendy? Damn straight, but they also last about 50% longer than my Mach 3 blades.
I’m with John T you can have my Fusion when your pry it from my cold dead hands.
I’m working on World Peace. If I could just get past the first step of being acknowledged as Supreme Dictator for life by the general population, the rest will fall into place.
The Gillette Retro! The shaving system that took Iwo Jima! Solid, stainless steel construction, and fresh, individual blades! A man’s shave that fits a man’s hand!..
The Gillette Retro! Stop raping the Earth with plastic “throw aways” that end up in some baby penguins nest! With, new! improved! eco-degradable blades of Earth-friendly steel-tungsten…
The Gillette Retro! Ever wake up in the morning and just want to end it all, but can’t saw through your artery with one of those plastic throwaways! Keep a fresh! sharp! set of blades handy for that all-important moment…
The Gillette Retro! Its Saturday night, you just scored an 8-ball of Peruvian Marching Powder, the supermodel is sitting on the couch, waiting for you to chop her a line and what have you got? A plastic throwaway Bic! Keep a fresh! sharp! set of blades on hand for…
I siad “screw you” to the planned obsolescence, disposable razoe, multi-blade arms race and I bought a straight razor.
The moment I laid it on my face, lightly touching my cheek below the sideburn, a line of blood appeared, turned into a stream and started rolling down my face. Then the shaving cream got into the cut, and it started to really hurt.
Now I use a pink bic that I take from the package my wife buys for her legs, use no cream, and you know what?
We’re Pitting the Fusion again? Checks watch. What next? Newfangled indoor plumbing? I bought the Mach3 when it was first sold. Then went to the Fusion soon after it was on the market. And I will not give it up. Give me 14 blades and that’ll keep me happy until I’m offered 21 blades.
Tell you what. Shave Friday morning, then don’t shave again until Monday morning. Come on back and tell us how that single blade is working out for you. If you can concentrate on typing through the pain. My beard isn’t particularly heavy, but 4 days of growth is 4 days of growth. A single blade would leave me pretty raw.
Scylla, I tried a straight razor just cuz I thought it was cool. I was able to get to the point where I could shave without slicing any blood vessels, but the time and hassle of sharpening the damn thing every day made me give it up. The Fusion is just too convenient and the quality of the shave is too good to use anything else.
Oh, and it’s doubly expensive for me. I made the mistake of letting my wife try a cartridge. Now it’s the only thing she uses as well. And she, um, likes the single blade “edger”.
<Schrrzzt> Uh, One Fifty Niner, you’re cleared for landing on runway TWO, that’s TWO, Tee Dubya Oh. Clear sailing ahead.<Schrrzzt>
How about lunch at the Y if you have a layover?
Yeah, I’m another person who’s wondering how many you people pitting the Fusion have actually tried shaving with it? It gives a great shave.
And the vibrating handle thing is an amazing improvement. Without it, it feels like the razor is scraping your face. With it, it feels like it glides through your stubble.
Personally, I don’t find it enough of an improvement over my M3 Power that I’m willing to spend extra for the blades, but I probably will occasionally just to change things up (I already have the handle, having tried out a sample pack.)
Here’s the thing that keeps razor companies spending hundreds of millions on R&D: patent law. Once a razor technoloogy goes out of patent, all the generic manufacturers jump on board and drive the price through the floor and eat into Gilette’s market share. The actual cost of manufacturing the razor and blades isn’t that high - it’s recouping the R&D cost. The generic companies don’t have that. So razor manufacturers are basically stuck in a loop in which they have to do real research to try to come up with a better razor they can patent, to hold market share when the old patents expire.
I believe the Trac II patent has expired, for example. If Gilette had not had another razor ready to go when that happened, they could have been crushed.
So the razor business is forced into an insane amount of effort and R&D to maintain their market. But is that a bad thing? So long as it results in the best shave in the world, and keeps improving, that might not be a bad deal. And I do believe that the shavers are better now than they were before.
Personal anecdote only: I started using one of those Mach 3 Turbo handles a few years ago, and found that it actually works significantly better than the non-moving kind. It cuts all the hair in just one pass, and there’s much less scraping than with a non-moving blade.
Since these 4- and 5- and 6-bladed monstrosities mean that the 3-bladed cartridges
will most likely be discontinued, I’ve got a 5-year supply stockpiled in the bathroom. Expect my Pit thread in 2011.
I only have a Mach3 cause I got a free razor and sample blades in the mail. That was years ago. I only shave about once a week, and the Mach3 handles a weeks’ growth pretty well. I’m too cheap to actually spend money on a new-fangled one though.
Y’know, shaving is soooo 2005. Get with the trends, people. Real men have hair growing on their face, and the rest of the world is just gonna have to deal with that fact.
I absentmindedly skipped shaving one week when I was unemployed back in 2001 and I’ve never gone back. Every couple of months run an electric trimmer and hack the growth down to half an inch. Luxury. Nothing is worse than having to scrape your face every morning when you’re half awake. Just stop shaving people! Don’t let The Man own you anymore!
The skin on the top of the head is thinner and much smoother than the face though, so you can’t get away with anything there. If you really need that baby-butt smoothness going on you’re never going to get better than honest to Og blades. And for me, if I shaved my head, nicks and scratches on my dome would freak me out a little (head injuries bleed!) so I’d want something that does an awesome job. In that case, I’d be with you on that point.
I suppose if you have tree stumps for stubble any bit of extra oomph to assist in the clear-cutting would help. My beard is … well, I suppose it’s pretty average, really, so my electric does very nicely. I still keep the Mach 3 handy for the finishing touches though; that fringe around the bottom of the neck is hell to get at with an electric.
I tried growing. It was … interesting. Itchy. Grungy-looking. I suppose I could have shaved certain bits and styled it a bit, but frankly the whole idea had gone a little stale and I longed for a nice clean-shaven face that I didn’t want to claw off.
I bought the Mach3 when it was first sold. Then went to the Fusion soon after it was on the market. And I will not give it up. Give me 14 blades and that’ll keep me happy until I’m offered 21 blades.
