The best men's grooming kits

The number on the front of the box is the wrong number

Twenty-three pieces. Eighteen pieces. Twelve pieces. Every manufacturer in this category competes on that figure, because a box with more things in it looks like better value on a shelf and photographs better in a gift guide.

It is close to meaningless. A "piece" can be a foil shaver head - a genuine second tool with its own cutting mechanism - or it can be a hollow plastic comb that sets a length you could have reached by turning a wheel. Kits count both the same way, and the gap between a 12-piece kit and a 23-piece kit is almost entirely the second kind.

What this page ranks on

The same four published figures the trimmer roundup uses, because a grooming kit is a trimmer with a box around it and the box does not change the arithmetic.

1. Published runtime. How long it runs on a charge. This is the figure that decides whether charging becomes a thing you think about, and every maker here publishes it.
2. Published charge time. How long to fill it, and whether there is a quick charge. Only one kit on this page publishes it, which is a genuine gap in the category.
3. Length range and settings. The shortest and longest the thing cuts, and how many stops there are between them. Settings matter more than range: a length you cannot return to exactly is a length you cannot repeat.
4. Whether it can be rinsed. A trimmer full of hair either goes under a tap or gets picked at with a brush forever.

Two things are deliberately not ranked. Piece count, for the reason above. And motor rating, because not one manufacturer in this category publishes one - the "powerful motor" on every box is an adjective with no number behind it, and we will not rank on an adjective.

The four kits, side by side

Every figure below is from the manufacturer's own page. Blank cells are genuinely not published rather than unknown to us, and there are more of them than there should be.

Read the table across rather than down and the pattern is immediate: piece count runs in the opposite direction to disclosure. The 23-piece kit publishes the best runtime and charge pair and tells you the least about its guards. The 12-piece kit publishes the finest length control of any of them and has the shortest battery.

The pick: Philips Multigroom 7000

A published 300 minutes of runtime from a published 60-minute charge, plus a five-minute quick charge that gives you one trim. It is the only kit here that publishes both halves of the battery question, and the runtime is roughly three times the Braun's.

It also carries a foil shaver head, which none of the others do. That is the difference between a kit that trims at several lengths and a kit that also takes something to the skin - and it is why this is the one that genuinely replaces more than one purchase. The 23-piece count is still a shelf number, but behind it there are five real heads.

The honest cons. Twenty-three pieces is twenty-three things to store and lose, and Philips does not publish a full length-setting list for every guard in one place, so the fine control is worse-documented than the Braun's. There is no published warranty figure. And a do-everything tool is rarely the best tool at any one of those things - if you only ever trim a beard, a stubble-specific trimmer will do that one job better. The full review is here.

The best-specified: Braun All-in-One 7440

Twelve pieces against the Philips' twenty-three, and it publishes more about them than anything else on this page. The Precision Wheel gives 40 length settings in 0.5 mm steps across 0.5 to 20 mm, which is the finest published length control in this ledger.

That matters more than it sounds. A setting you can return to exactly is the difference between a beard that looks the same next week and one that drifts a millimeter shorter every time - the same argument the guard guide makes about numbered combs. Braun also states 100% waterproof flatly, rather than the "showerproof" hedge most of this category uses, and publishes its contents list piece by piece, which almost nobody does.

The honest cons. The battery is the weakest here: 100 published minutes against the Philips' 300, and Braun publishes no charge time at all, so you cannot work out how long a flat battery costs you. The Gillette ProGlide razor in the box ties one piece of the kit to a proprietary cartridge you have to keep buying - useful if you already shave with cartridges, filler if you have moved to a safety razor. And "lifetime ultra sharp" is a marketing phrase, not a published blade interval.

The value pick: Philips Multigroom 5000

Eighteen pieces, a published 168 minutes of runtime, and 11 published length settings from 0.5 to 16 mm in 1 mm steps - which is a wider documented range than the 7000's 3-7 mm adjustable comb, in the model that costs less. Philips states the blades are self-sharpening and need no oil, and that the whole thing is washable under a tap.

It also publishes a 2-year warranty, which the 7000 does not. Buying the cheaper model and getting the documented warranty is an unusual way round, and it is a real point in its favor.

The honest cons. No foil shaver head, which is the one capability that makes the 7000 worth its premium. No published charge time. Eighteen pieces is still more guards than most people will ever fit, and "self-sharpening" has no published interval attached to it any more than Braun's "lifetime" does.

For coarse or dense hair: Wahl Aqua Blade

Not sold as a grooming kit in the gift-box sense, but it arrives with 16 guide combs and it out-publishes most of this page: 180 minutes of runtime from a 60-minute charge, a 0.2 to 25 mm cutting range - the widest in this ledger - fully waterproof, and a five-year warranty with a lifetime blade warranty behind it. That warranty pair is the strongest disclosure of any tool on this page.

The wide guard range is the reason to pick it if your hair is dense. The coarse-hair roundup covers why range and guard depth matter more than settings when the hair is thick.

The honest cons. Sixteen guide combs is a drawer's worth of plastic, and the model numbering across the 9899 family is genuinely confusing - variants differ in what is in the box, so check the contents against the model you are actually buying. It has no foil head and no nose-and-ear head, so it is a trimmer with combs rather than a head-to-toe kit.

The one we would not buy as a kit

The MANSCAPED Lawn Mower 5.0 Ultra is a good tool and it is our pick on the body groomer page. It is on this page to be ruled out as an all-in-one, because it is marketed alongside the kits above and it is not one.

Its published guard set is a 1.4 mm fixed head that does not come off, plus an adjustable comb from 2 to 12 mm. That is a groin and body specification, and a deliberate one - a fixed guard is the right call down there. But it means the tool cannot cut a haircut and is not designed to shape a beard. Buy it as your one grooming kit and you will be buying a second device within the month.

Three things on the box that mean nothing

• "Powerful motor." Not one manufacturer in this category publishes a motor rating, so there is nothing to compare. When a claim has no number behind it, it is a photograph of a claim.
• "Self-sharpening" and "lifetime" blades. Both appear on this page and neither comes with a published interval. Compare that with a single-purpose trimmer like the Braun XT5, which publishes six months - that is what a real disclosure looks like.
• Travel cases and charging stands. They inflate the piece count and they are the first things to end up in a drawer. Useful, occasionally. Never a reason to pick one kit over another.

Which one, in one line each

And the honest framing for the whole category: a grooming kit is a good purchase when it genuinely replaces three separate devices you would otherwise buy, and a poor one when it is a beard trimmer with fourteen guards you will never fit. Count the heads, read the runtime, and treat the number on the front of the box as packaging - which is what it is.

If what you are actually assembling is a whole routine rather than one device, The Routine works through the entire setup in order, and the beginner beard kit covers the four things a first beard needs.