The 2 Best Men’s Razors (for Any Face) for 2025

Gillette offers several specialty razors, including one that has the most expensive cartridges we’ve ever seen: The company’s newest shaving system is the five-blade Exfoliating Bar Razor, which features a large, rough insert just below the blade to help “remove dirt and debris before the blades pass.” Gillette claims this action means you can get a close shave in one pass. We found that this isn’t really the case, though the razor is easy and efficient to use, shaving as well as a five-blade Gillette Fusion5. The cartridges, which work only with the exfoliating handle, start at about $5 each, making them the most costly razor blades we’ve considered.

The Exfoliating Bar razor is part of the GilletteLabs collection, which also includes the very expensive Heated Razor. (We review it here.)

More affordable is the Gillette SkinGuard Razor, which uses two widely spaced blades on a Fusion-compatible chassis, reducing pulling and tugging that can result in ingrown hairs and razor bumps. It’s an effective and comfortable solution; although it’s pricier than a safety razor, which requires more skill, it’s an equally good way to avoid those problems. SkinGuard cartridges, priced about the same as standard Fusion refills, fit all Fusion handles (and vice versa).

Barbasol — the classic shaving cream brand — continues to offer its Ultra 6 Plus system manufactured by Dorco, a Korean company that makes razors and blades sold under several brand names. The Ultra 6 Plus is a nice razor with a hefty handle, but the cartridges are nearly identical to Dollar Shave Club’s, less available, and more expensive.

The Bic EasyRinse Anti-Clogging Men’s Disposable Razor offers four very widely spaced blades on a lightweight handle. The blades clear debris easily, but the broad profile makes the cartridge larger than a Fusion5 and cumbersome to maneuver.

Dollar Shave Club aimed to revolutionize the shaving world more than a decade ago when it launched (video) with a simple proposition: “Our Blades Are F***ing Great.” The real appeal of Dollar Shave Club was that its blades were cheap (as low as $1 per cartridge). Today, it sells two basic options, both loaded with stainless steel blades made in the company’s own factory in Israel. (Before 2021, its offerings were outsourced to Dorco.) Dollar Shave Club’s lineup now includes three cartridge types — one with two blades, one with four, and another with six — that fit handles available in various colors and styles (a special version of the four-blade cartridges for acne-prone skin is also available). The company has dialed down the aggressive upselling that previously made visiting its website an annoying experience. Cartridge prices currently range from about $1.20 to $2.50. We tried the new six-blade starter set, and our results ranged from neutral to negative. More testers reported irritation and redness with this model than with any of the other razors we tried. If you own one of Dollar Shave Club’s old handles, a customer service representative told us, “We have permanently discontinued the Heritage Series.” Since the old handles were made by Dorco, Dorco Pace cartridges should be compatible. Customer reviewers on Amazon have reported success mixing and matching.

The other would-be industry disrupter was Harry’s. The Harry’s advantage was that the company didn’t use rebranded razors from another major manufacturer. Instead, it bought a German razor blade factory, pairing a five-blade cartridge with good-looking handles. Although the Harry’s shave has some passionate fans, we’ve always found it to be problematic, mostly because of the way the cartridge is designed. Rather than clipping to a spring-loaded pivot, the way most modern razors do, the Harry’s cartridge attaches with a bendy pseudo-hinge that yields when you press it into your skin. Harry’s claims that this design produces an effect that, like “a paintbrush on a wet canvas … flexes to the contours of your face for precise control.” In fact, we found the opposite: The cartridge is overly labile, resulting in a sloppy shave. The trick to getting a top-level shave with Harry’s (and you can) is to use a very light touch, though this means more strokes. We’ve always loved the look of Harry’s Original handle (especially in orange), but we found the original version slippery. The company has since added grippy grooves to the handle while maintaining the Art Deco/Bakelite aesthetic.

Patriot Shave advertises itself as being “for the hard-working Men and Women who believe in the Traditional Values that Make America Great.” The first impressively hefty Freedom Forged handle with a four-blade cartridge we ordered arrived broken, but the company quickly sent us a replacement — throwing in a personal apology and a bar of soap. The shave was quite good overall, but at $2.25 apiece in the most economical pack (of 16), the direct-by-mail only, four-blade refills have a hard time competing with widely available Gillette Mach3 cartridges.

Shavemob is a similar shave-club-type vendor. Its six-blade Caveman cartridge looks similar to Barbasol’s Dorco-like Ultra 6 Plus, though the Shavemob handle is less hefty, and the blades are not compatible.

Schick’s cartridge line is an odd and interesting mix, with about eight different handles and blade types to choose from, and not all of them compatible with each other. The Hydro Stubble Eraser Razor is a great choice for people who don’t shave daily. The company’s flagship, the five-blade Hydro (available in sensitive, ultra-sensitive, and dry skin versions) drew mixed reactions from our testers, ranging from neutral to awful. “The thing ripped up my neck worse than anything I’ve ever used,” one tester noted of the Hydro razor.

One of Schick’s more bizarre entries is the Xtreme Bamboo Razor, which features a three-blade cartridge mounted to what the company calls a sustainable wooden handle. The flexy, flat handle is about the same size and thickness as a popsicle stick and would work far better as a holder for a quiescently frozen confection than a cutting instrument.

XMicro is a budget subscription/mail-order razor company that also sells Bluetooth earbuds. Its five-blade cartridge mates to a lightweight plastic handle we found to be far too flimsy.

Store-brand cartridge razors

With cartridge prices so high, it makes sense that shavers would seek bargains. The most common way to do this is to go with a store-brand Mach3-like cartridge, many of which have appeared as some of Gillette’s key patents hit their 20-year validity mark in 2019. You’ll find similar options in most pharmacies and big-box stores.

In 2024, we tried the Walgreens Men’s 3 Blade EasyFit Cartridges. They have a rough feel, noticeable from the first shave, and are clearly not as good as genuine Mach3 blades. They’re also not cheap. A pack of four is about $9.29, which comes out to $2.32 per cartridge. That’s less than a genuine Mach3 four-pack at Walgreens ($13) but not significantly less than the identical refill pack at Walmart ($12).

We also tested Amazon Basics razors in three- and five-blade versions. These are marketed under the MotionSphere brand and manufactured by Edgewell, which also owns Schick. MotionSphere refers to a pivoting ball that’s somewhat similar to Gillette’s Fusion ProShield system. The five-blade version is big and has tight blade spacing, making it hard to clear. The three-blade cartridge is odd, almost as big as the five-blade, but bunches its blades together at the center of the cartridge, with big gaps at the top and bottom, leaving the blades as closely spaced as five-blade versions. We also found the lubricating strips on both models to be excessively gooey. That said, the reviews on Amazon are pretty favorable for both models, and Amazon Basic’s refill cartridges can be a good deal, costing as little as $1.29 for the five-blade version and less than a dollar per cartridge for the triple-blade version.

Another Edgewell-built razor — similar to that of Amazon Basics but lacking the pivoting ball — is sold as Walmart’s five-blade Equate and looks identical to the Walgreens five-blade EasyFit. Both offered mediocre shaves at blade and handle prices that were not much cheaper than that of our picks.

We don’t recommend the sub-$1 Mach3-compatible replacement cartridges available on sites like AliExpress. (Some can be found for as little as a dollar for a four-pack, shipping included.) We ordered some at random, receiving a bulky parcel from abroad a few weeks later. Let’s just say that these blades would be perfect … for a wheel of pecorino. One brand that kept coming up on AliExpress was iGuetta, which offers a plastic Mach3-like handle with four-blade cartridges, usually priced at a dollar or two. On our test unit, a lubricating strip fell off during the first shave.

Specialty cartridge razors

The Feather F3 might be the best pure shave we’ve ever gotten from a cartridge razor. This triple-blade razor gives one of the smoothest, easiest shaves we’ve experienced. The blade is quite sharp, though, and takes a couple of days of break-in to reach optimal honing, something typical cartridge shavers may not be used to. The blades have tiny “waves” etched into them — miniature versions of the guard found on the Schick Hydro Stubble Eraser Razor we like — that are meant to position the blade at the optimal distance from the face. This works, but if you don’t know how to use it, you’ll press too hard and get a mediocre or uncomfortable shave.

But the bigger issue with this razor is the weird handle design. It resembles a hooded cobra. The “hood” is actually a gigantic hinge, which really looks like it is meant to be pressed and pivoted with your thumb, but isn’t (you’ll get a worse shave if you do — it’s the pressure from your face that operates the hinge). A break-in period and a learning curve, we admit, are antithetical to the whole idea of a cartridge system, but I’m strangely fascinated by this razor. Feather has a US storefront on Amazon and sells the handle and refills at prices similar to the Mach3 razor. Still, with our cartridge criteria centering around speed and safety, we can’t broadly recommend the F3.

Kai razor blades have a huge following. Its Axia five-blade cartridge system is available as an import, and though it is more traditional than the Feather F3, it also offers a more ordinary shave.

Most people who use safety razors are philosophically opposed to cartridge systems, or at least perturbed by them. The Penny Razor mates a single-blade, pivoting cartridge with a substantial guard (no lubricating strip) to a solid metal handle, and it’s primarily positioned as a travel razor for traditional shaving enthusiasts, since TSA won’t allow standard safety razors with blades in carry-on luggage. The Penny Razor is also fast, since it has a forgiving pivoting head, making it a good choice for people prone to razor bumps or with sensitive skin. And with cartridges costing less than 50¢, it’s a very affordable alternative to Gillette’s Skin Guard, though it is only available from a single source.

Gillette’s single-blade Guard Shaving Razor and triple-blade Guard 3 Shaving Razor are meant for the India market but can be found on Amazon, eBay, and at shaving enthusiast sites. Overseas, they’re designed to tempt shavers away from still-mainstream safety razors and into inexpensive cartridge systems (between 10¢ and 50¢ per cartridge). In the US, they’ve gained some favor among hobbyists who seek simplicity, and though not exorbitantly priced, they’re not the bargains they are in their country of origin.

This article was edited by Tracy Vence and Kalee Thompson.