The 3 Best Dog Nail Grinders of 2025
Top pick
This grinder offers a safe, affordable, quiet, and cordless way to trim your pooch’s nails.
The Dremel PawControl 7760-PGK is the best dog nail grinder because it’s fast enough to shorten nails quickly but still easy to control. We also like that it is rechargeable and quiet, and that it has swappable grinding tips. If you already own a compatible Dremel tool for other purposes, you can add the Dremel AT02-PGK Pet Grooming Attachment Kit, which comes with the same nail guard and grooming discs as the PawControl (but not the bands).
It has four speeds and enough power to do the job quickly. The PawControl features a variable-speed slide switch with four settings. In testing, we found that the first two speeds, at 8,000 rpm and 14,000 rpm, respectively, offered enough power to grind most dogs’ nails. Even the highest settings on other models we tested didn’t come close to the filing speed and power of the Dremel PawControl. Brianna Barksdale of The Bark Shoppe in Harlem agreed: “It definitely gets the job done,” she said, adding that she wouldn’t go past the number 2 setting unless the dog was large or had really thick nails, like a German shepherd. Note that Dremel’s owner manual recommends the PawControl’s lowest setting as the maximum pet-grooming speed to prevent heat buildup.
Thanks to the rechargeable battery, you can use it without any pesky wires. This rechargeable Dremel grinder comes with a USB cable and a power adapter that can recharge the tool in about three hours. We prefer a rechargeable dog nail grinder over models that use AA batteries, which you can never find in your junk drawer when you need them. This Dremel grinder is also well balanced for maneuverability compared with most of the other grinders we tested. And unlike grinders with sleek exteriors or tapered shapes, the PawControl has a grippy material on the plastic shell that makes it easy to hold and less likely to slip out of your hand while you’re using it.
It’s still quiet, despite having all that oomph under the hood. The Dremel PawControl is surprisingly quiet for such a sturdy. Its motor doesn’t create an unpleasant high-pitched whine on its recommended setting, and it’s quieter than our budget pick at both the lowest and highest settings. It comes with six bits: four sanding disks for novice groomers and two sanding bands for experienced groomers. Staff writer Evan Dent has been using the Dremel with his dog Winnie for three years. “I can’t say she loves it, but it’s much less stressful than the nail clippers, which were an automatic no-go,” he said.
Flaws but not dealbreakers
It can be confusing to set up. Out of the box, the Dremel PawControl 7760-PGK is slightly less user-friendly than other grinders. The collet on ours arrived locked shut with a sanding disk in place and a plastic clasp and paw guide over it, which prevented the insertion of a sanding band and bit. Without diving into the manual, it’s not clear how to open the tool or get going; even our professional groomer couldn’t figure out how to remove the plastic paw cap and clasp, which has interlocking nubs that you need to twist and turn in a mazelike manner to unlock. Reading the instructions easily remedies the problem, but the PawControl is not as intuitive a machine as our budget pick, the Casfuy 6-Speed Dog Nail Grinder, which you can use straight out of the box after charging it up.
