Review (5/5): Razor-Close Shave!!
For years I had been looking for an electric razor that would come close to being as good as a blade for shaving with no luck. About a year ago, my wife got me the Norelco Arcitec razor. This high end (and expensive) razor finally got me to switch. Now along comes the Cool Skin 8040X (at half the price).
The fact that it is a wet system intrigued me. It uses Nivea shaving conditioner, which is injected into the back of the razor. A nice no mess system ... a spout on the conditioner bottle fits in the razor and injects the conditioner. When shaving, you press a button and a few drops of gel comes up through the heads. You wet your skin, press the button, and shave. I found that I press the button about 8 times during shaving. This means I end up refilling the razor about once or twice a week (no big deal... take less than a minute). The razor also has a nice rubber grip that makes it easy to hold when its wet.
The razor comes with the charger, a cloth pouch, a sideburn trimmer attachment, head cover, and a trial size can of conditioner.
The charger is your standard wall unit that plugs into a plastic base. The razor sits in the base. Takes about 4 hours to completely charge. A green light in the handle flashes while charging and stays lit when fully charged. You should not leave it plugged in all of the time. When the razor needs to be charged, a red light comes on. While this is not as nice as the Arcitec's LED that shows the remaining time left on the battery, this razor is smaller (and a lot less expensive) and there probably isn't room for the display.
The pouch is a soft cloth and really doesn't offer much protection. I don't use it.
The sideburn trimmer is not built in to the razor. Instead, you pop off the blade assembly and snap this in it's place. I thought this would be a pain but its not. But even if it was, it would be worth it. It's so much better than the one built into the Arcitec. It's bigger and cuts better. By being bigger, the blades are further away from the body of the razor and easy to manipulate.
The head cover is a plastic cover to protect the blades; useful for traveling.
The conditioner goes along way (still some left after 2 weeks of use and this is a tiny can).
The most important thing is the shave. As I said before, the Arcitec made me switch from blades. This made me give up my beloved Arcitec. It really does shave as close as the Trac blades and shaving gel system I love to use.