How we pick
Four axes, published weights, a stated consumption model, and an explicit list of the things we have not done. The point is that you can re-derive every score yourself.
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What we have not done
We have not tested any of it. We own none of it. There is no test bathroom, no drawer of razors, no lab and no panel. Nobody here is a barber, a dermatologist or a product tester, and no page on this site will ever say “in our testing”.
That is stated first because everything below only means something if it is true. A methodology page that opens with credentials and buries the limits is doing the opposite of what a methodology page is for.
What we do instead
- Compile published specifications. Currently 48 products, compiled 3 September 2026. Every field traces to a manufacturer page or a retailer listing that publishes the maker's figures, and every product write-up names and links its source.
- Write “not published” where nothing is published. We never infer a specification from a photograph, a competitor's article, or memory. An empty cell is information.
- Compute yield. Published pack size divided by a stated consumption assumption. This is the half of the cost arithmetic that needs no price, and it is the part nobody else in this category publishes.
- Score four axes and print the working for each one on the page.
- Name a skip. Every roundup names at least one product we would not buy, and why, in the context of that page's question.
The four axes, and their weights
| Axis | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of switching | 35% | How easy the switch is for somebody arriving from a cartridge razor, mapped from published attributes. The mapping is printed beside every score. |
| How long it lasts | 25% | How many shaves, lathers or applications the pack contains, from published size and a stated assumption. |
| Refill economics | 20% | Whether the refill is a commodity standard, a maker's monopoly, or absent entirely. |
| What the maker publishes | 20% | How many of the specifications a buyer would expect the manufacturer actually published. |
Ease of switching, the heaviest axis
It carries the most weight because of who this site is for: somebody leaving cartridge razors who wants the setup decided. For that reader, a razor that survives three weeks of bad technique is worth more than a better-made one that does not.
It is the only axis with an authored component, so it is the one to be most skeptical of. Every product's score is accompanied by the published attributes it was derived from - weight, head type, whether a blade is included, published length settings - printed on the page under “the working”. If you think a mapping is wrong, the inputs are right there.
How long it lasts
Published pack or container size divided by a stated consumption assumption, then compared against a horizon published per category. A 24-month supply of blades scores ten; a 12-month supply of soap scores ten. The horizons differ because a hundred blades is two years and a pot of moisturizer is weeks, and scoring them on one scale would say nothing except that blades come in bigger boxes.
Durable items - razors, brushes, shavers - are not scored on this axis at all, because their service life is an assumption rather than something a pack size tells us. The axis is dropped and the remaining weights re-normalize.
Refill economics
A commodity standard scores ten, nothing-to-refill scores eight, and proprietary scores four. That gap is the single largest long-run cost difference in shaving, and it is structural rather than marginal: a double-edge blade is made by factories in half a dozen countries competing on price, while an electric shaver's head fits one shaver and is priced by one company.
What the maker publishes
The proportion of a category's expected specifications that the manufacturer actually printed. It surprises people that this is scored at all, and it separates this field more than any performance claim does. Rockwell publishes six blade gaps to the thousandth of an inch; most of its competitors publish nothing about head geometry, which means their “mild” cannot be compared to anything.
Prices, and why the buttons say “Check price”
There is no live price feed on this build, so no price is shown anywhere and every buy button reads “Check price”. That is the correct behavior rather than a gap: a remembered price is worse than no price, because a reader acts on it.
The freshness gate is 48 hours. Amazon's terms want prices no older than about a day, and forty-eight gives one missed refresh before every number on the site vanishes rather than misleading anybody. Where no live price exists, the page says “Check price” and the cost arithmetic is left to a calculator you fill in.
The assumptions, in one place
- 5 shaves a week. The default every annual figure uses.
- 5 shaves per double-edge blade. An assumption, not a measurement. We have not tested blade life.
- 10 shaves per cartridge. Makers say “up to a month” with no shave count. Ten is ours.
- 1.5 g of soap per lather.
- 5,200 shaves of razor service life. Twenty years at the default frequency.
Every one of these is labeled as an assumption at the point of use, not only here, and every one is editable in the calculator. Presenting an assumption as a measurement is the specific failure this whole method exists to avoid.
What we do not put in our structured data
No Review node, no review rating and no aggregate rating, anywhere. A rating in structured data asserts a reviewer who used the product. Our score is arithmetic over published specifications, and dressing it up as a review rating would be a false claim about what we did as well as a structured-data policy risk.
The visible score on a page is ordinary content and stays that way. We also emit no LocalBusiness schema, because there is no premises and no service area, and no Product nodes, because a Product node without a real product image is worth nothing and product photography can only come from a retailer API we do not currently have credentials for.
Corrections
If a specification here is wrong, that is the most useful thing you can tell us and it goes to the top of the list. Corrections get a dated note on the page rather than a silent edit. The contact page is here, and the editorial policy sets out the refresh cadence and what we do when we get something wrong.