Gillette Mach3 Razor for Men, 1 Razor Handle + 2 Blade Refills

Still the best around
Short version: this is still the best razor out there. Buy it.Medium length version: I have tried all the Gillette gear up to their newest fanciest thing, I’ve used electrics including the top-of-line Panasonic and Braun, and I’ve used double-edge safety razors. I recommend the Mach3 and Mitchell’s Wool Fat Shaving Soap applied and face-lathered with a silvertip badger brush. Also, it turns out technique matters a ton, something I never knew until I started using the double-edge. Learn how to shave right and this tool will give you a killer shave every time.Really unnecessarily long version:Gillette sent me one of these for my 18th birthday, which is now half my life ago. It was their new thing at the time. I used it until they came out with the Fusion, then used that. I was never completely happy with either of those options; I have a tough beard and relatively sensitive skin, so I never got super close shaves and if I shaved two days in a row I got pretty fierce razor rash. So I pretty much only shaved every other day or less, which was OK until I got a job where I wanted to be clean shaven every day.My first response to that problem was to try electrics out. I actually tested a few different models and landed on the top of line Panasonic. It did what I wanted in terms of letting me shave every day without discomfort, but the shave wasn’t as close as the Gillette equipment. That was pretty much fine…if I had a date or an important meeting I’d shave with a blade that day, and otherwise it was good enough.Then one day in idle conversation, I remarked that I wasn’t completely satisfied with the quality of my shaving, and a coworker of mine told me I needed to switch things up. He suggested using a double-edge razor (the old-school safety razor with the actual blade instead of a cartridge) and shaving soap with a brush instead of foam or gel. He even loaned me a brush and a razor (a pretty baller Gillette from the 1960s, with adjustable pitch) to try it out.At first I had difficultly. But he shared some tips and tricks, and I read some stuff online about face lathering, paying attention to the grain of your beard, technique, etc. And I got pretty good. I bought my own brush and razor (actually a couple, but eventually settled on a Merkur “Sledgehammer Slant” which is basically the most aggressive safety razor on the market), tried a ton of different blades (settled on Feather) and soaps (settled on Mitchell’s Wool Fat at home, Harris & Co. shave stick while traveling), and basically geeked out on the whole thing. If this sounds like a lot of trouble to go to, well it was. But I was getting much better shaves than I ever had before, which made me pretty happy. It did take a bit longer to shave, and occasionally I’d nick myself worse than I would have with a cartridge, but overall I was quite pleased.For the last few years, however, I’ve been traveling quite a bit for work. You can’t take double-edge blades on an airplane in a carry-on. So I was checking a bag everywhere I went, even though typically I’d only be out for a few days. I didn’t really consider how much of a pain this was…it was just kind of habitual. Meanwhile, at some point somebody gave me a Harry’s cartridge razor for some reason. It just sat around for several months, but then I had a business trip coming up that was going to start with dinner the night I arrived, close enough to my landing time that I really didn’t want to have to wait around for a checked bag. So I tossed the Harry’s razor in my carryon and left my beloved slant-bar at home. I wasn’t really looking forward to it.And then I got a really great shave! I was a bit shocked, but there was no question, it was vastly better than I had ever gotten with a cartridge razor previously, and in fact about as good as I’d get with the double-edge on one of my best days. In retrospect, I think two things were happening: first, shaving soap and a brush really are way better than canned shaving cream, and second, I had learned all this technique when using the double-edge, which turned out to also be useful with the cartridge.In any case, I kept using the Harry’s razor for a little while, but it had a problem with clogging, so I jumped on Amazon and bought this Mach3 and also a Fusion5 ProShield. Both of them shave great. But I think the Mach3 does just a bit better, and also the blades are about half as expensive. Now that I know what I’m doing, I can knock a shave out in just a couple minutes, or I can take another few minutes and do a two-pass, really superlatively close shave. It’s really pretty fantastic, and I wish I’d have learned all that back when I was a teenager.So, the moral of this story is summed up in the medium length version: I’ve tried everything (except a true straight razor…maybe someday, but for now that’s too much trouble even for me), and the Mach3 is the best shaving tool available. If you aren’t getting good shaves with it, you’re probably doing it wrong. Go with the grain (more complicated than it sounds…my grain is different on each side of my face for example) for the first pass, and if you’re looking for that date-night smoothness lather up again and take another pass very gently against the grain. Some folks even take three passes, going 90 degrees across the grain in between the with and against passes. Depending on your beard, you might get shaves you find acceptable with regular shaving gel or whatnot; if you don’t, pick up a good brush and some soap. Google face-lathering, and in particular I recommend the “load and hydrate” method as the soap/water ratio matters more than you would think. Anyway the main point is that even though shaving seems like a simple thing that most of us have been doing for a long time and not thinking much about, it turns out there’s a lot of knowledge out there that can be quite helpful.I realize this story was ridiculously long. But I really hope somebody reads it and ends up getting killer shaves when they weren’t before. If you can’t already tell, I’m awfully happy about it.

A classic
I remember this razor creating the smoothest skin after every use , great razor

3>X
This is the sweet spot in razors in this price range. Three blades is the Goldilocks zone. Easy to get a nice shave and the cartridges last reasonably well. Been using them since they hit the market.

Helps me
Good gift and helps me with my shaving