“…annual cost of a daily shave at around $7.”
I wasn’t saying Astras were terrible; just that they’re not quite so good as the article author made it sound. If I had to give them a percentile ranking based on my opinion, they’d be somewhere in the 60th percentile range.
As far as I can tell, having been a longtime cartridge user who switched to a safety razor about 6-7 years ago (currently a Merkur 34C, but I have a collection of family vintage ones too), it seems to me that the real determinant for any cost differences is really how dull/long you’re willing to take the cartridge and/or how often you shave.
Safety razors are inarguably cheaper (like by 1/4-1/3, depending on what blades you compare), but the question is whether or not you actually save enough over the course of a year to really have it matter when compared to how you shave and how much you care.
For example, if you change your cartridge monthly and use the less-expensive cartridges, you’re probably looking at $25 a year in cartridges. Weekly changes of the most expensive blades (Feather) costs you about the same - ($5 per 10, so you’ll need 6 packs for a total of $30). But that’s for the very most expensive blades; the Astras mentioned in the article are more like $0.75 per 5, so 55 blades at that rate comes out to $8.25. 1/3 as much. Or if you want to look at weekly costs, it’s about 50 cents per week with the cheaper cartridges (Schick Hydro 5, for example), and it’s about 16 cents a week with the cheap double-edge blades.
But if $20 a year is a price well paid to not have to futz around with a razor and blade e every week, nor to worry about having the right technique, and your goal is to hack back the whiskers a couple times a week and go about your business, then there’'s not much reason to worry about it. If you’re someone who for whatever reason, puts a lot of concern into being clean-shaven, and does it daily, then a safety razor makes both practical and financial sense.
Line change… new line started with “daily shave at around $7”.
Ooops.
Even if the five saved minutes is true, it doesn’t “add up”. You still have the same 24 hours available next day that you had today. You’ll never have an extra 13 hours to do anything.
A few years back I bought a “Stick Schick” a razor with a handle that looks like a 4 speed manual transmission. Schick made them in the 70s. I got mine on eBay in the original packaging.
It uses replaceable Schick Injector blades, they come in a cartridge that has a “key” you insert into the razor and it pushes the old blade out as the new one goes in.
It might not be cheap or efficient, but at least it’s fun.
I started off with an injector. They are a pretty close thing to safety razors, at least, as long as you used the single-edge blades and not the fairly expensive doubles (which did clog easily, having no space between them for cleanout). Do they still make blades for those?
Yep, I buy mine on Amazon but have seen them at Walgreen’s also.
Same here, used them into the 1990s – and hell yes, twinjectors were a lousy idea, driven by trying to “me, too” the 1970s Gillette Trac II/Atra twin blade class. While at that, these also brought about a whole bunch of “generic” handle-compatible cartridges that were truly wretched.
FWIW the safety razor renaissance maybe (MAYBE) will help slow down the Gimmick Race in shaving and that will be good. But all the same I’ll stick to my lovely low effort Mach3. And my automatic transmission while at it 
I made the switch a few years ago. $25 safety razor, and blades dirt cheap on Amazon. I tried the Astra but nothing beats the Feather. The old fashioned shave cream and badger brush didn’t do it for me, so I switched to Dollar Shave Club for a while, but then I tried the safety razor again a few months ago, and discovered those Feather blades go perfect with modern shave gel. There is a learning curve but it’s not all that steep. I bought a big box of Feathers years ago and still have them, so my shaving expenses for years have been nothing more than shaving cream. I find the blades last two shaves (legs) so that’s 2 blades a month. Nothing cheaper, or closer, IMO.
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
I just checked pricing, you can still get 100 Feather Hi Stainless blades for $25 on Amazon. For me, shaving my legs weekly, that’s about 4 years of shaving. For men, I guess it depends on how long a given blade lasts on your face.
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
Yeah, and if frogs had wings they wouldn’t bump their ass a-hoppin’. 
You’re talking about one of the largest and most aggressively marketed product segments, the source of enormous profits for two or three megacorps (not to mention the handful of smaller conglomerates), against a hipster fad and a current viral push by Harry’s Shaving or whatever.
No chance. The makers almost certainly have the next three generations all ready to go, in turn, with a little tweak to fit each one to the era in which it will be released. And some goodly number of safety-razor converts will fall for the ads or the intro pricing or just intellectual weariness at being endlessly battered into newandbetter, and just pick up a pack of Mach73’s instead.
Trying to resist one product segment at a time compares nicely to the Charge of the Light Brigade. Noble, but.