I’ve never been one to shave regularly, for various reasons I usually have some degree of facial hair. One reason for not shaving a lot is that my skin is very sensitive; if I shave everyday, my face gets red and sore after about 3 days. Because of this, I usually shave twice a week at the most. Another reason is I just don’t want to put the time into shaving every day so often I just let my facial hair grow and save myself the time. Finally, I don’t really have that much facial hair to begin with, so I can get away with not shaving for a week or so at a time and when I do let it grow longer than that I usually shave it into a goatee and it looks okay.

I’ve been using Gillette razors for many years, the last one I bought was a Fusion. It’s a great razor but there always comes the time when I need to buy new cartridges for it and I find myself being reluctant to shell out the cash for them. I can’t justify spending $20 for 3 or 4 cartridges, it just seems like too much.

Recently I decided to start shaving regularly so I started looking for a new razor, something that’s not only cheaper but somewhat equal in quality to the Gillette Fusion. I thought about buying those blue disposable razors that you see in every store that sells shaving supplies, but I wanted to look for something a little fancier first. I found a razor from a company called Exact, it had a triple blade razor, a stand and 2 extra cartridges for about $6, the cartridge refills are about $5 so I decided to buy it and try it out.

I lathered my face up with shaving cream and started using the razor. Immediately I thought it wasn’t going to be up to par as it glided over the cream and left some of it behind. I kept shaving my whole face and it wasn’t comfortable, the razor wasn’t cutting close and it seemed to grab onto the stubble which was a little painful. It missed some areas and around supper time that day I looked like I already had a full day’s growth or more, it didn’t give me a close shave at all.

Okay, this was a bust so I decided to try something else. Yesterday I found a razor made by Bic called Flex 4. They also have one called Flex 3, which has a triple blade, but I decided to go with the quadruple blade razor. This setup is a little different, it doesn’t have the interchangeable heads, it came as a pack of 3 disposable razors with a swivel head. Overall it costed $6.68 so it seemed like a good deal.

I’m about to go take a shower now and try it out, I’m hoping it works out for me. If not, I’ll continue my search and if worse comes to worse, I’ll go back to buying the Gillette Fusion cartridge refills. I plan on keeping it anyway because I like the precision blade on the back of the blade head, it really comes in handy for cropping my sideburns.

Wish me luck.