The Best Beard Trimmers for Showing Your Face
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A Beard Trimmer is a blessedly straightforward device that can have widely disparate results. Different beards require wildly different visions of the best beard trimmers, depending on hair type and style. And quality matters. Cheap blades don't save money if they die young. The last thing anybody needs in the morning is a dull or underpowered trimmer pushing your hair around instead of cutting it—or even worse, pulling your hair.
The shopping-aisle rainbow of trimmers advertising “professional precision” and “lifetime blades” without corresponding warranties can be daunting to sort through. We consulted barbers and hair pros, then we turned these blades to our very own faces. Our team includes multiple testers with different morning routines, with multiple versions and visions of beard. Whether you're aiming for rugged stubble, tight-detailed geometry, or the well-tended thatch of an elegant lumberjack, we have a pick for you.
For more grooming guides, check out the Best Creams and Tools for Removing Hair, the Best Hair Dryers, and the Best Hair Straighteners. For general mannitude, check out our Gifts for Manly Men.
Updated April 2025: We added the Peanut Li; retested the Philips OneBlade and Panasonic Multishape; updated device models; and reorganized, updated, and checked prices throughout.
| Up Next |
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| I'm currently testing the BabylissPro GoldFX+ and the Babyliss x Tomb45 trimmer with wireless charging mat, as well as multiple models from Wahl including the Wahl Magic Clip, Wahl Manscaper, and a retest of the Wahl Pro Skeleton. |
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A Guide to Trimmer Tech
Here's some help on choosing the right features for your facial fuzz.
- Ceramic versus steel blades: Ceramic blades can hold their sharpness better than steel, but the smaller teeth of premium beard trimmer blades tend to be made of stainless steel.
- Barrel control: Some beard trimmers have on-device twist controls. For an easier life, pick one with minimal attachments. But there can be a trade-off in accuracy and added unwieldiness. Such dials also add a failure point to the trimmer guard.
- Ni-MH versus Li-ion: Avoid trimmers with excessively long charge times and those that use old nickel-metal-hydride batteries. They don't hold their charge as long as lithium-ion.
- Waterproof? Beard trimming in the shower isn’t as precise a process as wet shaving, but a water-resistant design does let you wash your trimmer under the faucet with confidence.
- USB charging: It took far too long, but USB charging cables for beard trimmers have now become a fairly standard accessory, often in addition to proprietary charging ports. A major bonus for travel.
- Small versus larger teeth: Larger blade teeth can cut thick, dense hair, but smaller teeth allow for a closer, more precise cut. The latter is exemplified by the Philips OneBlade family.
- Wide versus narrow blade: Hair trimmers have wider blade surfaces than beard trimmers. The narrower style of beard trimmer provides greater control, with minimal time loss for those with shorter facial hair.
- Do blades need to be replaced? Use blade oil (often included) to avoid rusting, and blades should last for years. Trimmer-shaver hybrid Philips OneBlade will need more regular replacements, though.
- Vacuum? Some beard trimmers have a vacuum feature, to avoid getting hair trimmings everywhere. It's often a gimmick, but it's a gimmick for a reason: Beard trimmings are the worst. We'll be adding coverage of beard hair vacuums in future coverage.
How We Test
A beard grows about a millimeter every two or three days, depending on who you are—an eighth of an inch a week, on average. So testing beard trimmers can take a long time.
In general, we test each beard trimmer once a beard has grown out enough for a good trim—using at least two cutting lengths. Weight and balance matters, and so does the blade's ability to get to the awkward areas around the neck. We check the trimmer's ability to function as a shaver, whether for balding or on the neck.
Our testers check how well-made and easy to use any attachments are, and we verify manufacturer claims about battery life and power. We also check in with professional haircutters, especially to verify claims of durability and reliability among brands and models.
Tester Matthew Korfhage has coarse and angry hairs, with a seeming mind of their own. Tester Andrew Williams has a relatively full beard, with straight-growing stubble. We've tried to reflect any possible issues—struggling with thick bristles, for instance—in our reviews, so you can be sure of the best possible trim with the least amount of effort. And we might run a blade into a horsehair broom, to test a motor's power, and its likelihood of bogging down when faced with a thick, full beard.
- Photograph: Braun
Best Beard Trimmer Overall
Braun Series 9The beard trimming world is eternally locked in war between those who favor adjustable razor guards and those who cannot abide a click. But the Braun Series 9, in all its variations, goes places removable guards cannot: Its spinning adjustment wheel, which locks in place to soothe the paranoid trimmer, adjusts in 40 increments of half a millimeter.
The Series 9 is also a bit of a tank. It lasts three hours a charge, and it's waterproof, for those who shave in the shower to avoid the onerous task of cleaning trimmings, and the main Braun trimmer hits the Goldilocks ratio of agility and width of shaving head. There's also a detail trimmer for narrower details and a larger head for lineups. But especially, the Braun offers sharp blades that avoid dreaded hair tugging—blades it swears are “lifetime” sharp. Tester Andrew Williams, an avid fan of the Braun Series 9, has devoted his life to testing that claim.
- Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Best for Versatility
Philips Norelco Multigroom 7000, MG7750The Philips Norelco Multigroom finds a lot of ways to be useful while trimming a beard—and a lot of ways to be impressive. The baseline trimmer is buzzily high-rpm but still relatively quiet compared to most comparable trimmers, and it doesn't nick or pull when used without a guard. Attachments fit securely but are easily swapped. The metal body has good heft but not too much weight.
Guardless, the basic trimmer attachment on this Philips cuts admirably close. But the detail foil shaver gets even closer, with nary a pinch or a razor bump. Other guards promise utility for body shaving, haircutting, nose clipping, eyebrows, and sideburns—not all of which we've tested. And unlike the newer Multigroom 9000 with pretty much the same metal chassis, you can use the 7000 while plugged in or unplugged.
That said, you’ll rarely need to plug it in: We let this run longer than 5 hours before it started to lose juice. The downside to all this versatility is that the many guards are hard to keep sorted and are marked near-invisibly in small type, which creates a bit of a learning curve. Once you find your go-to guards: keep them separate, keep them safe.
- Photograph: Andrew Williams
Best for Precision Stubble
Philips OneBlade 360 ProA Philips OneBlade is like the Swiffer of the beard world, an agile little T-shaped detailer that's probably the lightest stubble trimmer I ever expect to like, weighing in at less than four ounces. At 63 decibels it's also quiet, registering at a sound level my phone demarcates as “chat with friends.” That's a sweet sentiment rarely applied to beard trimmers, but this OneBlade is indeed a friendly little thing.
It details like a little hero, seems constitutionally unable to cause nicks, and mows across your face admirably. But for that, it's not overly versatile: The guard's 12 settings top out at 9 millimeters, shorter than 3/8 of an inch. This device is made for speed, and for short-stubbled beards. But though it's fast, it also arrives with an admirable 120 minutes of life. It'll take you a month or more to use the blade for this length of time. But note that unlike many trimmers, the OneBlade's actual blades do need to be replaced two or three times a year if you use it regularly, at $25 a pop.
- Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Best Corded
Wahl Black Peanut Clipper/Trimmer“Get a Wahl Peanut. They last forever.” This advice came from a trusted neighborhood haircutter in South Philadelphia, a place where barbers are still repositories of important information. The next barber I consulted told me the same thing.
Why do barbers like it? The wee Peanut may look funny, but it doesn’t mess around. There are no doo-dads or eyebrow attachments: just four trimmer guards, from an eighth inch to a half inch. And the classic Peanut’s most revered and durable option still gets its juice through a wall socket.
But this pint-sized trimmer is fast, deft, and light. The rotary motor packs surprising punch, and it’ll trim, outline, and even detail like a champ. If you oil it at least twice a year, you'll likely have it for a long time. It’s a tiny corded tank with consistent power, best on shorter beards that won’t bog it down with bulk. If you use it to shave your neck without a guard, note that the Peanut doesn’t bite or nick but might pull on wispy wild hairs. While it’s an admirably close shave for a trimmer, foil shavers and blades are notably closer.
- Photograph: Matthew Korfhage
Best Cordless Version of a Classic
Wahl Peanut Li Beard TrimmerIt's thankless work updating a classic. Change too much, and the loyalists stage an uprising. Don't change enough, you can't capture a new generation who now expect more, new, better, or maybe even just pointlessly different. Wahl's previous cordless update to the classic Peanut didn't get quite as much love.
But this sleek, handsome sky-blue Peanut Li (7/10, WIRED Recommends) offers the same blades and guards beloved by generations of barbers, but with a whole lot more juice. The Li can rev up to a heady 7,000 rpms, making it nearly impossible to bog down even in a beard as thick as a horsehair broom. (I know this, bcause I used the Li on a horsehair broom.) And yet the Li got a whopping two and half hours of battery life on my testing after a mere 20 minute charge. This is a zippy, agile little trimmer. It weighs just four ounces, same as the original Peanut Whether it lasts like the classic remains to be seen.
- Photograph: Wahl
Best for Designer Beards
Wahl Pro Series High Visibility Skeleton Style TrimmerThe Wahl Pro Skeleton’s big selling point is the exposed ball-and-socket head design that lets you see more of your face (and less trimmer) in the mirror. Typically hidden behind a metal or plastic exoskeleton, Wahl has engineered this premium design well, and it feels great to use.
The outer casing is a blend of a grippy rubber and smoky semigloss metal. It's a pretty aggressive design, but the cutting style is thankfully rather more refined. The Wahl Pro Elite uses small tooth stainless steel blades for a finer, closer cut. It's not brilliant for thicker hair, but is appreciably multifunctional, with a small-but-useful foil shaver attachment and nose hair trimmer included alongside a whole set of plastic attachments for longer trimming.
Buying this premium design, however, is a bit like picking a manual espresso machine over a bean-to-cup coffee maker. It does a brilliant job, but you need to put the work in. There’s no bundled adjustable length head, for instance, so changing grades is a bit of a fiddle. Battery life lasted longer than the promised two hours, but charging is slow, taking the same time again. —Andrew Williams
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- Photograph: Andrew Williams
Best for Travel
Manscaped the Beard HedgerIf you've been on social media or downloaded a podcast lately, you will have heard about Manscaped. Their influencer game is strong, and while focus is often on their groin-taming Lawn Mower trimmer, I've been keeping it above the neck with the Beard Hedger. The standout feature here is that you can charge it via USB-C. It's wild this kind of convenience isn't repeated much elsewhere, and it's a major win for travel use.
The trimmer uses small- to midsize stainless steel teeth and a high RPM motor, which is great for shorter beards. A quick stubble trim is quick, easy, and cuts closer than most. Part of this is down to the fact that there's a bit of give to the plastic length guide, which is altered using a barrel control on the Beard Hedger's body. As a result, the more pressure you apply, the shorter cut you get. It's a happy accident, and none of the other trimmers have anything like this much flex.
The all-plastic, waterproof body is practical, despite looking like something from '90s Batman's utility belt. While you could call the design subtle, many may think it a little boring. —Andrew Williams
- Photograph: Andrew Williams
Easy Does It
Panasonic Wet and Dry ER-GB86This Panasonic Wet and Dry is a sensible buy for whose who want their beard trimmer to do its job quickly with as little fuss as possible. It includes three plastic guards that cover three length bands. There's 1 to 10 mm, 11 to 20 mm, and 21 to 30 mm, while guard-free it cuts down to 0.5 mm. To adjust the length, you twist the barrel controller on the body of the trimmer itself, which is brilliantly simple. There's a good chance you'll never need to change the guard, just snap between settings. There's little chance of accidentally altering the setting, unless you are truly careless. (Manscaped's system is similar, but Panasonic got there first and its system is better.)
This model sits toward the top of this series, using a more powerful motor and sharper blade set. It's also waterproof, which is great for cleaning. Panasonic doesn't recommend the ER-GB86 for hair cutting, but from our testing this may largely be down to the narrower blade width, as it effectively cuts through hair and the fewer number of guard teeth helps prevent clogging. At around $119, the Panasonic feels expensive given its rather underwhelming plastic build and 50-minute battery life, but it works well and can often be found discounted around holidays. —Andrew Williams
We Also Recommend
Panasonic Multishape for $80: We'd previously had this one among our top picks, and quite frankly its toothbrush and nose trimmer attachment are oddly terrific. Its versatility means it remains excellent as a travel kit. But the whole kit is also bulky, and so even in the travel bag it's unclear you're saving space for travel by bringing this big ol' thing along.
Wahl Stainless Steel Lithium for $73: This Wahl series has been around since 2011, and remains a beautifully sleek, almost art deco beard trimmer with more than two hours of life on its Lithium battery, if not quite as much as advertised. But there are also a lot of attachments to swap out, and a somewhat clumsy adjustable stubble trimmer that might require multiple passes.
Also Tested
Philips Norelco 9000 Series 9810 for $100: The Philips BT 9810 is a self-consciously styled luxury beard trimmer with hefty brushed metal, and a broad base that lets it stand up vertically, and an adjustable steel blade system for close trims up to 5 mm (about 3/16"), minutely adjustable for fades. Plastic guards serve beyond this length. That said, tester Andrew Williams found this metal blade system a bit hard on his skin for tight or stubbly shaves.
Braun Series 7 Manscaping Clippers for $100: This Braun is a fast-charging all-over body trimmer with a quiet motor and an “AutoSense” tech to modulate motor power to adapt to thicker/coarser hair. There's a wealth of attachments for hair, as well as a Gillette razor for shaves. But the Series 7's ratcheted beard adjustment system doesn't offer great control, noted tester Andrew Williams, and going very short requires attachments. Battery life is also not overly impressive.
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