The best foil shavers

What a foil actually is, and why it decides everything

A foil shaver is a row of blades oscillating side to side behind a perforated metal screen thinner than a sheet of paper. Hair pokes through a perforation, the blade underneath shears it off, and the screen is the only thing between a moving blade and your face.

Two consequences follow, and they are the whole page. First, a foil cuts in straight lines, which means it wants a flat surface and a beard that grows roughly one way. Second, the foil is a consumable. It thins with use, and a thinned foil is both a worse shave and a closer blade. That is why a published replacement interval is worth more here than almost any other figure.

What this page ranks on

1. Published cutting elements. How many things are cutting, and whether the maker says what each one does.
2. Published runtime and charge time. Runtime decides how often you think about charging; a quick-charge figure decides what happens when you forgot.
3. Published head replacement interval. The running cost. Two of the five products here publish one and three do not, which is the largest disclosure gap in this category.
4. Published waterproofing. Whether you can shave with lather and rinse the head under a tap.

Motor rating is deliberately not ranked, with one exception. Panasonic publishes a real figure - a 14,000 CPM linear motor - and that is rankable. Braun, Remington and Philips publish adjectives. We do not rank adjectives, so where a figure does not exist the row says so.

The four foil shavers, side by side

Read the head-interval column first. It is the only column that tells you what the thing costs to keep running, and three of four leave it blank.

The pick: Braun Series 9 PRO+

Five published cutting elements, each with a named job rather than a count on a box. Sixty minutes of Li-Ion runtime - the longest here - and a five-minute quick charge that gives a full shave, which is the feature you will actually use on the morning you forgot to dock it. Fully waterproof, so it works with lather.

What earns it the top spot is not the element count on its own. It is that Braun publishes an 18-month foil-and-cutter replacement interval, which makes it the only shaver on this page whose running cost you can work out before you own it.

The honest cons. The replacement cassettes are proprietary, so the price of that plannable running cost is entirely Braun's to set. The 18-month figure lives on Braun's parts pages rather than on the product specification, so it is easy to miss before you buy. And it is the most expensive way to remove hair in this ledger.

The fastest: Panasonic Arc5 ES-LV67

Five blades on a published 14,000 CPM linear motor, producing up to 70,000 cross-cuts a minute, a head that flexes in 16 directions, and a beard sensor taking 220 readings a second. That motor figure is the only real published motor number anywhere in this ledger, and on a dense beard it is what you feel.

It publishes both halves of the battery question too - 45 minutes from a 60-minute charge - which the Braun Series 7 does not.

The honest cons. No published head replacement interval, so its long-run cost is unknowable in advance. Fifteen minutes less runtime than the Braun. And no quick-charge figure, which matters more than the raw runtime on the morning you need it.

The value flagship: Braun Series 7

A 360-degree flexing head, AutoSense power adjustment that reads beard density, 50 minutes of runtime, the same five-minute charge as the Series 9, and full waterproofing. It gives up cutting elements to the Series 9 and keeps most of what makes a Braun a Braun.

The honest cons. Braun does not publish a cutting-element count for it, which is the exact figure this page ranks on - so it sits third on a disclosure gap as much as on performance. No published head interval either, which is a surprising omission given the Series 9 has one.

The budget pick: Remington F5 Power Series

Two flexing foils, an interceptor trimmer between them, a pop-up detail trimmer, and a published 60 minutes of cordless runtime - the same runtime as the Braun flagship, at a fraction of the outlay.

It is on this page because it is not a false economy. Two elements against five is a real difference and you will take more passes, but it publishes its runtime honestly and it does the job.

The honest cons. Two cutting elements means more passes, and more passes is what irritates skin - which is the mechanism. A 120-minute charge for that 60 minutes, against Braun's five-minute top-up. And Remington publishes no waterproof rating for it, so treat it as dry-only.

The one on this page that is not a foil shaver

The Philips OneBlade 360 turns up in every "best foil shaver" list on the internet and it is not one. It is a single oscillating blade that trims with a comb, edges without one, and takes stubble down close - and Philips is explicit that it does not shave bare.

That is not a criticism. It publishes 45 minutes of runtime and a 4-month blade replacement interval, which is a better disclosure than three of the four actual foil shavers here manage. But if you came looking for a skin-level finish, it will not give you one, and no amount of technique changes that.

The technique that matters more than the pick

• Dry, and with no pressure. A foil shaver is the opposite of a blade: pressing pushes the foil into skin and the blades follow it. Let the head sit.
• Against the grain, not with it. Also the opposite of a blade, and the single most common mistake people bring over from a razor.
• Short strokes, skin held taut. A foil cuts in straight lines, so give it a flat surface to work on.
• Rinse the head after every shave. Trapped stubble under a foil is what dulls it early, whatever interval the maker publishes. The cleaning routine is here.

None of that is optional, and all of it is free. The full method is worth reading before you blame a shaver for a result that was technique.