The best clippers for cutting kids' hair

The failure mode is the guard, not the motor

Cutting a child's hair is not a demanding cut. The hair is fine, the style is short, and the whole job is five or six minutes if the child cooperates. Almost nothing goes wrong because a clipper lacked power.

What goes wrong is the guard. You reach for what you think is a 4, it is a 2, and by the time you notice you have taken a strip out of the side of a child's head that will take three weeks to grow back - and produced a small person who will fight the clippers next time.

What to look for

1. Unambiguous guards. Color coding, big printed numbers, or a guide on the clipper body itself. Anything you can read in one second.
2. Guards included, and enough of them. A kit that covers the whole useful range beats a bare professional clipper plus a shopping trip.
3. Cordless, if possible. One less thing draped over a child.
4. Rinseable or easily brushed blades. Cleanup happens in a kitchen with a child losing patience.
5. Nothing that needs setting. An adjustable blade is a decision you do not want in this situation.

Published figures

The pick: Wahl Color Pro

The pitch is the whole product: every guard is color-coded to its length, and the same color guide is printed on the clipper body so you can check without hunting for a manual. Wahl also publishes self-sharpening precision blades and an adjustable taper lever.

For this job it is the right tool and it is the cheapest one here. Corded is a minor inconvenience when the cut takes six minutes, and there is no battery to be flat on the morning you decide the fringe has to go.

The honest cons. Corded only, so you are working around a cable. Wahl publishes no motor rating and no runtime figure because there is no battery. And a large kit of plastic guards needs somewhere to live or you will lose the one you use most.

If you also cut your own hair: Wahl Magic Clip

A published 100-minute lithium runtime, a stagger-tooth 2161 crunch blade, eight attachment combs, and Wahl publishes that it runs corded when the battery is flat. The taper lever lets you blend rather than step between guard lengths, which is what makes a child's short back and sides look cut rather than clipped.

The honest cons. It costs several times the Color Pro, the taper lever rewards practice you may not want to acquire on a child, and Wahl publishes no motor rating for it.

The small-and-simple option: Philips All-in-One 3000

Thirteen tools, self-sharpening steel blades, and rounded blade tips that Philips publishes as gentler trimming - which on a child is the specification worth having. It is a trimmer rather than a full clipper, which for fine children's hair is usually enough, and the small head suits small heads. A two-year warranty is published on registration.

The honest cons. Philips publishes almost nothing else about it: no runtime, no charge time, no battery type, and no cutting range in millimeters - only "different length settings", which on a page that ranks guard clarity is the worst possible omission. There is no published water rating either, so brush it out dry rather than rinsing it. This model replaced the MG3740, which published all of those figures.

How to actually do it

1. Dry hair, sitting still, in a room you can sweep. The kitchen beats the bathroom.
2. Start two guards longer than the target. Check, then go shorter if needed. This is the whole trick.
3. Back first, while patience lasts. It is the part they cannot see and the part that matters least to them.
4. Against the growth, in short strokes, lifting the clipper away at the end of each pass so there is no hard line.
5. Leave the top longer than you think. Fine hair looks far shorter cut than it does combed.
6. Brush and oil the blade afterwards, before the hair dries into it.

The crew cut guide is the closest thing to a step-by-step for the standard boy's haircut, and the guard sizes page is worth reading once before you start.