Braun Series 7- 790cc Pulsonic Shaver

The good:
- This shaver is relatively quiet.
- The cleaning/charging system is very nice.

The bad:
- The price ($186.00). With a high price comes high expectations.
- The shave. On my face, the shave is no better than the shave I got from my Remington MS 280 (about $40.00). It didn't seem like the "pulsonic" feature helped at all. On my neck, there were spots that I just could not get. I tried shaving in all sorts of directions, but I just could not get all of my neck closely shaved. Generally, it was good enough, but if I wanted to get a really close shave on my neck, I had to bust out the Remington. I saved the best for last: This shaver pulled my hairs. Talk about frustrating and painful. This thing won't be pulling my hairs anymore since I smashed it against the sink in frustration ... embarrassing, I know. But, at least I won't be using this shaver anymore.

I pulled the trigger on the $200 razor because I thought it would be much better than my last $80 razor. It is better, I'm just not sure its $120 better. I'm disappointed in it's tendency to miss a few longer whiskers after, say, not shaving over the weekend, and the trimmer location makes it hard to be accurate around the edge of my beard. The razor's "hygiene" indicator telling me the shaver needs "intensive cleaning" after 3 shaves strikes me as a shameless effort to sell cleaning fluid refills (of course nothing requires you to give it the intensive cleaning at that point). On the up side, I do think the razor does give a closer shave overall to any electric I've used in the past. Just not the stark improvement I expected for the price.

Outstanding item! Best shaver that I have EVER owned!
I can't say enough good things about this machine!
--Steve Gilbert
Denver

I wish I had read before I did. The shaver is not worth the money you spend if you have a tough beard. I do and I thought with the new "technology" promised, I would get a better shave than with my older electric shavers. I did not. Actually, my older Braun series 3 cuts closer and in much less time than this one does. The cleaning feature is very nice but not worth the extra $130 you spend on it from a lower series Braun.

The main reason I wrote this review is to warn people that if you buy it and have a poor experience like I did YOU CANNOT RETURN IT THROUGH AMAZON. Because this shaver comes with the cleaning fluid which is flamable, Amazon will not allow you to return it. You can return it to Braun within 60 days but you have to ship it to them in either GERMANY or AUSTRAILIA. The shipping charges are really high.

So just be warned before you purchase.

Just as with all new electric shavers my face took a little while to get "broke in" to the new razor. I hadn't shaved for about 6 weeks (trimmed only) after my other Braun (of 10 years duration) finally broke down. So the first time I used this new razor it got quite a workout. I wasn't too happy with the results of that shave of the next 2 or 3 but then I remembered (it had been 10 years ok?) that it took a while for my face and "beard" to get used to using an electric razor. After that initial break-in period it works great! Its a bit lighter than the previous Braun model but rests very easy in the hand, its not overweight and seems to be balanced well. The way the "foils" and head all move independently makes shaving a quite easy task. The cleaning "station" worked well once I figured it out. Also it uses the same cleaning fluid refills as my older model (I had like 6 of those reills still around). All in all I would recommend this to a friend for sure.