Astra Superior Platinum review
A hundred blades for the price of a sandwich, and the blade half the internet tells beginners to start on. Here is everything that is actually published about it, which takes one line.
By Sawyer V. · Published
We have not tested any of this. Everything below is compiled from published manufacturer specifications, and the arithmetic is printed so you can check it. This page carries affiliate links: if you buy through one we earn a commission at no extra cost to you, and it does not change the order of the picks. Full disclosure.
The short version
Buy a sampler first, then buy a hundred of these. Astra is the sensible default and it costs about two and a half cents a shave on this site's stated assumptions - a hundred blades at five shaves each is just under two years of daily shaving. But understand what you are buying into. Neither Astra nor the specialist retailers selling it publish an edge angle, a coating thickness, a steel grade or a hardness. The product page at a dedicated wet-shaving retailer lists the pack size and the words “Type: Razor Blades”, and that is the entire specification. So every claim you have read about how it shaves is preference, not measurement - including ours.
| # | Pick | Lasts | Score | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Astra Superior Platinum The blade to start on | ~500 shaves | 9.6/10 | $11.99 - view on Amazon |
Prices last verified November 5, 2026. They move constantly; the figure on Amazon when you click is the real one.
The entire published record, in one table
This is the shortest specification table on this site, and that is the point of the page.
| Astra Superior Platinum | |
|---|---|
| Pack sizes sold | 5 and 100 |
| Blade standard | Double-edge, universal fitment |
| Wrapping | Individually wax-wrapped |
| Edge angle | Not published |
| Coating thickness | Not published |
| Steel grade | Not published |
| Hardness | Not published |
| Shaves per blade | Not published (we assume 5) |
That is not a gap in our research. The product page at West Coast Shaving - a specialist wet-shaving retailer, not a supermarket - gives you a pack-size selector and the words “Type: Razor Blades”. There is no specification to find because none is offered.
The category runs on vocabulary, not numbers
Read any blade discussion and you will meet the same words: sharp, smooth, keen, forgiving, harsh, tuggy. They are used with great confidence and considerable consistency, and for this blade not one of them is attached to a figure anybody publishes.
Compare that with the rest of this site. A razor publishes a blade gap in thousandths of an inch. A shaver publishes strokes per minute. A cleanser publishes an ingredient list in descending order. In every one of those categories you can check a claim against a number. In blades you cannot, because the number does not exist in public.
What is actually knowable: the cost
One thing about this blade is precisely calculable, and it happens to be the thing that matters most over a decade of shaving.
A hundred blades, at this site's stated assumption of 5 shaves per blade, is 500 shaves. At five shaves a week - 260 a year - that is just under two years from one box. Divide the price of the box by five hundred and the per-shave cost lands at roughly two and a half cents.
Put that beside the alternatives on the same assumption and the spread is real but small in absolute terms: the Derby works out cheaper still, the Silver Blue roughly double, and the Feather - sold in fifties rather than hundreds - nearer three times. Every one of them is a rounding error against the razor, the soap and the time. The calculator will run it with your own numbers and the live prices.
Which produces the genuinely useful conclusion of this page: blade choice is not a money decision. The gap between the cheapest and dearest blade here is a few dollars a year. Choose on how it feels, because you can afford to.
Why the first purchase should not be this blade
If sharpness preference is the only variable, and it cannot be read off a page, then the only rational first move is to test it. A blade sampler - an assortment of five or ten different makes - costs about what one hundred-pack costs and answers the question your face would otherwise take two years to answer.
Buy the sampler, shave a week on each, and notice two things: whether the blade tugs at the end of the pass, and how your neck looks the next morning. Then buy a hundred of the one that behaved. That sequence is in the blade selection guide, and it is the honest version of every blade recommendation including this one.
Astra earns the default slot because if you skip the sampler entirely, it is the least likely to go badly. That is a real recommendation and a modest one.
The one specification that is published, and it is the best one
There is a figure this blade does carry, and it is not printed on the box: the double-edge format itself. Every DE razor in this ledger takes the same blade, from the cheapest three-piece to the adjustable at ten times the price, and so does every DE razor made in the last century.
That is a commodity standard, and it is the reason the running cost stays at a couple of cents rather than drifting upward. No maker controls the refill. If Astra raises its price or leaves the market, four other brands fit the same razor tomorrow, and the razor you bought is unaffected. Compare that with every cartridge system, every electric shaver head and every body-groomer blade on this site, all of which are proprietary and all of which are priced by the one company allowed to make them.
It is also why the sampler advice works at all. You can test ten blades in one razor, which is simply not possible in any other shaving format. The worth-it page puts a number on what that standard saves over a decade, and it is the single strongest argument for the format.
What actually dulls a blade, which is not shaving
The intuition is that stubble wears the edge down, so a coarse beard should kill a blade faster. That is only partly right, and getting it wrong is how people conclude a blade is bad when it was simply looked after badly.
A double-edge blade is a very thin piece of coated steel with an enormous surface-to-mass ratio at the edge. The commonest failure is not abrasion but corrosion: water left sitting on that edge between shaves, in a warm bathroom, taking microscopic bites out of the geometry that does the cutting. Rinse and dry the blade and a given make will reliably outlast the same make left wet, on the same face.
Which matters for this review specifically, because it means the shaves-per-blade figure is partly a habit rather than a property, and so is a good deal of what gets written about which blades “last”. If you want more shaves from an Astra, drying it is a larger lever than switching brands - the blade change guide covers the signals that mean it is genuinely finished.
Living with a hundred blades
- Dry the blade, not just the razor. Water sitting on the edge between shaves does more to dull it than the stubble does.
- Change on feel, not on a calendar. The signal is tug at the end of the stroke; the moment you notice it, the blade is already a shave past its best.
- Keep the wax wrappers until you load. They are the reason a two-year supply is not a storage problem.
- Dispose of them properly. A blade bank or a taped tin - never loose in a kitchen bin.
Who should buy it
- Anyone starting double-edge shaving who will not buy a sampler. It is the lowest-risk single choice in the category.
- Anyone who tried a sampler and found Astra fine. “Fine” is the correct outcome, and a hundred-pack is then an obvious purchase.
- Anyone who wants the running cost of shaving to effectively disappear. Two and a half cents a shave is as close to free as this hobby gets.
Who should not
- Anyone with a genuinely coarse, dense beard who already knows they want a keen edge. Start at the Feather end instead.
- Anyone who has never used a double-edge razor and has not yet bought one. Blades are the last decision, not the first.
- Anyone who wants a specification to compare. Astra does not offer one. If a published figure is what you want to buy on, Feather's 0.1 mm edge thickness is the only one in the category.
The verdict
A sensible default at a trivial price, recommended with an explicit caveat: the thing being recommended cannot be verified. The published record for this blade is a pack size and a category label, and every adjective attached to it - ours included - is somebody's impression rather than a measurement.
That is not a reason to avoid it. It is a reason to spend twelve dollars on a sampler before you spend twelve dollars on a hundred of anything, and to treat blade recommendations - including the roundup on this site - as starting points rather than findings. In a category that publishes nothing, the most useful thing a review can do is say so plainly.
The good news is that the stakes are tiny. A wrong blade costs you a week and a few cents, a right one costs the same, and the razor you load either into will outlast both by decades. Very little else in grooming lets you be wrong this cheaply.
Every pick, with the working
Each entry shows the published specifications, the axis scores they produce and what you give up. The order is the computed order, not a commercial one, and the arithmetic is open underneath every score.
Our pickThe blade to start on
Astra Superior Platinum
Platinum-coated stainless, made in Russia, sold in hundreds. Astra is the blade almost every wet shaver eventually recommends to a beginner because it is forgiving enough to survive bad technique and cheap enough that throwing one away early costs nothing. Start here, and only move if your face tells you to.
- Material
- Platinum-coated stainless steel
- Blades per pack
- 100
- Made in
- Russia
- Refill
- Universal standard
- Warranty
- Not applicable
- How long it lasts
- 500 uses
The arithmetic: 100 blades x 5 shaves per blade (assumed) = 500 shaves.
What it gets right
- Sold in 100-blade boxes of twenty five-packs, individually wax-wrapped
- Platinum-coated stainless, made by Gillette's Russian operation
- Forgiving rather than aggressive, which is what a new hand needs
- Fits every standard double-edge razor in this ledger
Flaws
- Not the sharpest blade available, which a very coarse beard will notice
- Astra publishes no edge geometry, so 'forgiving' is a description, not a figure
The working behind the 9.6
- How long it lasts: 9.6
- 100 blades x 5 shaves per blade (assumed) = 500 shaves. At five shaves a week, that is about 23.1 months. A 24-month supply scores 10 in this category, so 23.1 / 24 x 10 = 9.6.
- Ease of switching: 9.0
- Widely described as a forgiving rather than a keen edge (+), sold in 100s so a discarded blade costs almost nothing (+), no published edge geometry to verify the claim (-).
- Refill economics: 10.0
- The refill is a commodity standard that dozens of factories make, so the price is set by competition and no single maker can raise it.
- What the maker publishes: 10.0
- 3 of 3 specifications a buyer would expect are published: unitsPerPack, material, madeIn. 3 / 3 x 10 = 10.0.
Axes with no published input are dropped and the remaining weights re-normalized, so a product is not punished for a category where an axis does not apply. Specifications compiled 3 September 2026 from Astra Superior Platinum listed pack sizes at a specialist wet-shaving retailer.
Prices last verified November 5, 2026. They move constantly; the figure on Amazon when you click is the real one.
If this is not the one
The alternatives named above, in one place. Each links to its own page, where the published specifications and the scoring are set out in full.
Feather Hi-Stainless
The keen end of the category, if Astra turns out to drag on a coarse beard. Sold in fifties rather than hundreds, so it costs roughly three times as much per shave.
Derby Extra
The cheapest blade in this ledger per shave, and the one that publishes the most about its coating - four named layers rather than one.
Gillette Silver Blue
The usual step up from Astra, and the one most people try second. Publishes less about itself than the Derby does, at twice the price.
Prices last verified November 5, 2026. They move constantly; the figure on Amazon when you click is the real one.
Questions people actually ask
Why start with Astra rather than something sharper?
Because a new hand makes more errors than a keen edge forgives. The community consensus - and it is consensus rather than data - is that Astra sits in the middle of the sharpness range, which gives you room to get angle and pressure wrong while you learn. The technique guide is the thing that actually determines your first month, not the blade.
What does Astra actually publish about these blades?
Essentially nothing. The name claims a platinum coating and the packaging identifies the origin, but nothing we could reach publishes an edge angle, a coating thickness, a steel grade or a Rockwell hardness for this blade. West Coast Shaving, which sells them in 5- and 100-blade packs, lists “Type: Razor Blades” and nothing else. One blade in the category does better - see below.
How many shaves do you get from one blade?
We assume 5, which is this site's stated figure for every double-edge blade in the ledger, and it is an assumption rather than a measurement. Real answers range from three to eight depending on beard and technique. The blade-change guide covers the signals that actually tell you, which beat any number on a page.
Will these fit my razor?
Yes, if it is a standard double-edge razor - and every DE razor in this ledger is. The double-edge blade is one of the few genuinely universal standards left in grooming, which is the strongest practical argument for the format over any cartridge system. Safety razor against cartridge works through what that commodity standard is worth over a decade.
Is a hundred blades too many to start with?
It is about two years of daily shaving, which is a long commitment to a preference you have not tested yet. The cost of being wrong is small - under twelve dollars - but the better sequence is a sampler first, then a hundred of whichever one your face liked.
Do blades go blunt in the packet?
Not meaningfully, if they stay dry and wrapped. Each blade comes individually wax-wrapped, which is the practical reason a hundred-pack is not a risk: what dulls a blade is water left on the edge between shaves, not time in a drawer.