Review (2/5): Norelco Quality Going Downhill
The Good
9170XLCC gives an excellent shave in about 5 minutes. It'll take about 2 weeks of daily use for your beard to adjust to the razor heads, but after that it's as close and clean as any blade shave.
The Bad:
1. It's cheaply made. Norelco has outsourced manufacturing & it shows. The frame holding the razor heads is plastic; every other Norelco I've owned (over 30 years) has been metal. The frame is supported by these weird plastic-bubble "shock absorbers" that will probably go in a year or two. The shaver has a junky, cheap feel to it. I have always gotten 5-6 years of use out of my past Norelcos; this one feels like it'll last about two years.
2. Cleaning tank is a marketing gimmick to sell $[...]/bottle cleaning solution. Way overkill. It does work OK, but the shaver gets just as clean if you rinse it under hot tap water (which you will have to do anyway because the cleaning solution leaves the razor heads coated with a slimy residue). You can pretty much throw it out after the free bottle of solution is used up.
3. I'm already on my second unit. The chip that controls the battery level indicator, recharging, etc. is flakey. The first one I had never could accurately display battery level even after 3 complete charge-discharge-recharge cycles. It'd show 15-20 minutes remaining, then just die in the middle of the shave; battery tapped out. Also, it would sometimes illuminate for no reason at all; had to turn on-off to clear it. If it happened during the night, the battery would be fully discharged by morning. So I returned it to Amazon.com (thx Amazon for great customer service!!!).
The second one that they sent to me recharges continuously when you use it with the cleaning tank -- it's not supposed to charge during the 55-minute cleaning cycle, but mine does. That means that you have to catch it about 5 minutes into the cycle, after it's done it's dunking in the tank, or it'll recharge completely after every shave (which the instructions tell you not to do because it shortens battery life). More reason to toss the cleaning unit. Ridiculous on a shaver this expensive that they'd ship junk to their customers before fixing these problems.
4. The travel case is worthless for protecting the shaver on the road. It's nothing but a zippered nylon sack. You'll have to put the shaver into something else if you pack it in checked luggage or it'll be a pile of parts when you unpack.
5. They don't include a stand so when you're done shaving you lay it on the bathroom countertop. I'm using the one from my old Norelco, but if you don't have one, storage between shaves is just setting it down somewhere.
Sad to see a fine old company like Norelco cheapening it's flagship product like this. I've been a customer for 30+ years, but next time I'm in the market for a shaver I will definitely comparison-shop the competition.
Two stars because it does give a good shave; the rest is a mess.