My big stack of cartridge razor blades has just run out and I’d like to replace it with something less wastefull, and from what I hear a safety razor gives a better shave too.
From what I can see there’s no big difference beyond personal preferance on ergonomics, but are there any brands to avoid? Any well regarded? Can I just get anything? Anything I might not have thought about?
The first shaver I got was an electric, rotary one. Was okay, pulled a bit.
Later in life, I swtched to electric ones with a foil. Better about pulling, more-durable. I believe those are older. No idea why they moved away from those to rotaries.
Later in life, I switched to those cartridge razors, decided I preferred those. Smoother shave. No idea why they moved away from those.
Later in life, I just switched to a standard safety razor, uses standard old double-sided safety razor blades. No reason to pay for the cartridges, pulls less, seems that the blades last longer.
Every time I’ve moved to an older system, I’ve been happier with it than with the later system.
I don’t plan to ever move to a straight razor, but I gotta say that it’s one of the very few areas that I feel like newer has pretty consistently been worse. I kind of wish that I’d just started out with a double-sided safety razor from the get-go.
EDIT: I will add that I don’t really care that much about blades or specific razor or soap or aftershave. I’ve tried a number, been happy with everything I’ve used. However, I was not happy with a plastic-bristle shaving brush I got – the soap just slides off it easily, makes a mess. A boar brush I got doesn’t do that. Might be that they’ve figured out how to make plastic-bristle shaving brushes with a more-textured bristle surface or something, but I’d default to getting one made out of some type of actual hair.
My synthetic brush works fine (by Nom / Mühle) though I haven’t used a boar brush