If ever there were a year to experiment with possibly ill-advised facial hair, 2020 was it. Britain’s men were given free rein to grow and style their beards within the safety of their home – you can always turn off video on a Zoom call, after all.
But with the prospect of lockdowns becoming a thing of the past in 2021, it’s time to consider how to get your facial hair back in order. If you’ve become quite attached to your fuzz, you’ll need a beard trimmer and we’ve spent the past few months testing the best to make sure you don’t end up buying a dud.
If you’re thinking “a trimmer’s a trimmer”, you’re both right and wrong. While there’s not much difference to the finish you can expect with any of the models we tried, the overall experience in getting there – from how long it takes to how much battery life it has to how the settings are altered – can be dramatically different between products.
After our main choices, we’ll tell you about a couple of samples we tested which didn’t quite reach the required level for a recommendation.
The Best Beard Trimmers
Battery length 100min | Cutting lengths 0.5-20mm | Gradients 39 | Extras Contour edging head, detail trimmer head, hair clipping adapters, Gillette Fusion 5 ProGlide razor, travel pouch
Our pick of the bunch is this excellent all-rounder which comes with plenty of extras. Rather than making buyers juggle dozens of different-length heads, the Braun Beard Trimmer 7 comes with just two, which combine with the built-in dial to allow for 39 different lengths from 0.5mm to 20mm. It feels good and makes light work of even a dense lockdown beard.
As with most beard trimmers, it does struggle a little with the edges of one’s face, but the extras push it over the edge. Not only does it come with a detail trimmer head for fine-tuning your look and a mini foil shaver for extra-close cutting, but the company throws in a free Gillette Fusion 5 ProGlide razor for good measure. Incredible value.
Buy from Braun | £74.99 (currently reduced to £49.99)
Battery length 300min | Cutting lengths 0.4-25mm | Extras Foil shaver, nine hair and beard combs, travel pouch
In truth, there’s very little to choose between our Braun pick above and the Remington T Series here. Both give an excellent finish, and the T Series actually has superior build quality, aesthetics, cutting length options and battery life. The travel pouch is spacious and stylish, too.
But it’s a close second for a couple of reasons. First, we spent a fair amount of time emptying it of trapped hair, which isn’t great if you’re in a hurry. Second, while beard lengths of 1.5 to 5mm are dealt with by the adjustable dial built into a single head, Remington includes an extra nine hair and beard combs ranging in size from 1.5mm to 25mm for different lengths. You might appreciate the flexibility in theory, but these quickly fill up that spacious carry case without really adding anything for most people.
Still, it’s worth checking whether Amazon’s ever-shifting prices mean this is substantially cheaper when you’re thinking of buying, because that could put its nose in front.
Buy from Remington | £79.99
Battery length 50min | Cutting lengths 0.5-30mm | Gradients 59 | Extras Travel pouch
The Panasonic ER-GB86 certainly won’t win any beauty contests. It’s bulky and, compared with the other beard trimmers we tried, frankly a bit ugly. It’s also light on extras and has a tendency to trap hair underneath the heads, too.
But it’s not without its strengths. It provides an excellent finish, for starters, and the three heads have 59 cutting lengths between them, easily and precisely set by the rotating dial embedded into the middle of the shaver. This clear read-out provides peace of mind that the length you want will be uniform across the shave, and the dial itself offers enough resistance that you can be sure it won’t slip to the wrong length while in use.
Buy from Boots | £99.99 (currently reduced to £79.99)
Battery length 120min | Cutting lengths 0.5-12mm | Gradients 23 | Extras Hard fabric case
It’s the svelte, lightweight design that justifies this trimmer’s place in the list. While it offers limited customisation compared with the others here, there’s no need for extra attachments: the 23 cutting lengths from 0.5 to 12mm all come from the built-in head.
Performance is generally good, even on the tricky edges of the face, though it does take a couple of passes for thicker beards. Its real achilles heel, though, is the unorthodox head design: the borders either side of the blade make it a little tough to judge what you’re aiming at when undertaking precision trims. But if you’re just after a good, no-fuss, lightweight beard trimmer, then this is an easy recommendation. Especially as it’s often available for under £40.
Buy from BaByliss | £80 (currently reduced to £53.33)
See related
You can trust Coach We give honest reviews and recommendations based on in-depth knowledge and real-world experience. Find out more about how we review and recommend products.
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The Also Rans
The Wahl Aqua Blade Hair Trimmer has a lot going for it, including a very close shave and a quick charging feature that gives you three minutes’ use from 60 seconds spent by the plug socket. But it was guilty of some painful hair tugging, which none of the other samples had, making it a tough one to recommend – unless you actually like that kind of thing.
The Philips 9000 Prestige, on the other hand, didn’t put a foot wrong. In fact, it’s excellent, with incredible customisation letting you cut to one of 30 lengths from 0.4mm to 10mm with only one additional head. The problem is that it costs £120. By all means buy it if money is no object, but the performance gains are pretty marginal compared with its more affordable rivals. We were a hair’s breadth away from recommending it, but couldn’t shift the feeling that it doesn’t do enough to justify pushing the price into triple digits.
