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Whether you favor the Color Pro Plus’s all-plastic, color-coded guide combs over the Elite Pro’s stiffer, metal-plated, black plastic combs is ultimately a matter of preference. The Color Pro Plus is more playful-looking and slightly larger in the hand, and it has a different grip style. The Color Pro Plus tends to be sold out for longer periods than the Elite Pro, and it has historically suffered more price fluctuations. At this writing, the Color Pro Plus can again be reliably found in stock, for roughly half the cost of the Elite Pro set we recommend.
Other Hair Clippers I Tested
The combs are made of a rigid yet smooth plastic that doesn’t bend when pushed against a scalp. And thanks to a metal retaining clip on the back of the combs, they stay seated and straight on the blade better than any other set we tried. They also add great value, considering that a competitor’s replacement combs (of equal quality) cost about half the price of this entire clipper kit. In our testing, the taper lever on the clipper’s side didn’t slip from vibration (something we’ve experienced with other clippers).
How to Dye Your Hair at Home (Even Though You Probably Shouldn’t)
Some reviewers note that they’ve repurchased this kit once the clipper blades dulled, though many say that they did not perform the suggested upkeep (oiling the blades, sharpening them, and cleaning them out) between uses. The Color Pro Plus’s storage box is a little smaller than the Elite Pro’s, and it’s not quite as sturdy. If space is a deciding factor for you, this kit will take up less space overall than our top pick. And—more of a feature than a bug—several testers considered this clipper to be “toy-like” in design compared with the other options they tried. Although the Color Pro Plus’s housing is slightly larger than the Elite Pro’s, the Color Pro Plus weighs a touch less than our pick.
Best Professional Hair Clippers
In addition to being the most customizable grooming tool from beard to toe, this one also manages quite well for the head, according to Gutweniger’s testing. While the device doesn’t offer as many cutting options for hair clipping (since it cuts up to 7 mm in small intervals, but then jumps to 9 mm, 12 mm and 16 mm), what it lacks in length options it makes up for in customization. This includes the ease of fading hair around the ears with its two angled trimmer guards, as well as the ability to graduate in 1 mm increments with its fixed dial-adjusted guards.
Our pick: Wahl Elite Pro High Performance Hair Clipper Kit
The upper part of the housing isn’t hollow-feeling; it is made of rigid plastic, with texture for a secure grip. And this is the only clipper we considered with a Velcro wrap near the plug, to gather the cord and make storage tidier. By comparison, the Andis Headliner and Wahl Chrome Pro have lamp-wire-style cords. A taper lever is an advanced feature—a little doodad found on the side of a clipper that increases or decreases hair length more finely than you can get by switching combs or shifting the bottom blade forward or back. Ideally, when cutting hair you can adjust the lever with a finger, but it shouldn’t be loose enough that it slips due to a bump or vibration (otherwise you could end up with different hair lengths).
Also great: Remington Virtually Indestructible Haircut and Beard Trimmer
The easy-to-handle Remington Virtually Indestructible Haircut and Beard Trimmer is especially ideal for people who want to cut their own hair. This model is lightweight, has rubberized grips along the sides, and is truly palm-sized. As a result, it’s far easier than any other model we tested to maneuver and hold in a loose grip, even with fingertips (as is often required when you’re clipping your own hair). This clipper comes with eight rigid-plastic, quality guide combs that seat securely (though they have fewer tips, slightly sharper in feel, than our main pick’s combs do).
Budget pick: Wahl Color Pro Plus Haircutting Kit
If you plan to continue maintenance trims or shaves between professional cuts (or skip salons and barber shops entirely), it’s worth investing in a tool that you like to use and is easy to maintain. Don’t get too hung up on the marketing speak that brands use to sell how powerful their tools are. Things like “hairs cut per second” or “blade revolutions per minute” don’t really mean anything to most of us.
The 6 Best Hair Clippers, Tested And Reviewed By Grooming Experts
Separately, He and the staff at Techni Salon NY tried all the clippers we considered in 2020 and 2021 to compare them with their favorite tools and provide technical feedback to help us narrow down options for our at-home testers. Weight and product design are two contributing factors to a device’s navigability around your head, specifically when it comes to buzzing the backside of your hair. “It could be difficult to hold a heavier device correctly in the back, so it might be easier when it’s a lightweight device,” Gutweniger says. Here are two other devices that were well-reviewed around the web but that didn’t make the cut on this roster of winners.
While many brands sell guards that swap easily onto competitor devices, the Andis Master Cordless ... The primary complaint from Gutweniger is that they are noticeably louder than other clippers on this list. That’s not suggesting that they sound like a lawn mower, but if everything else is at a subtle hum, these ones are more of a proper buzz.
Speaking of fades, another positive for this tool is its pair of left and right-angled ear guards, which allow you to cleanly fade around the ears, just not from a bare shave. To find the best hair clippers, I researched the market and narrowed down to test eight ... Though this model lacks a taper lever for finessing a fade or blend, most of our testers didn’t miss it for at-home uses (none of our haircutting novices attempted to do their own fades). The Color Pro Plus also comes in a cordless version, though it has a different motor and includes four fewer guards.
The Andis ReVite manages great 360-navigability despite a slightly heavier weight than other tools ... Like the Elite Pro, the corded Color Pro Plus is covered by Wahl’s five-year warranty.
We found that some taper levers were too easy to move accidentally while cutting hair. But among pros with the technical capability, a taper lever is an essential element for blending and fading between different lengths of hair, especially on the side of the head. Unlike with beard trimmers, with hair clippers there aren’t a lot of good-quality traditional reviews available (though there is an unbelievable wealth of information, including reviews and clipper-technique tutorials, on YouTube). We also relied on input from guides published by Buzzcut Guide and Balding & Beards, and we consulted thousands of detailed customer reviews. The Wahl Color Pro Plus Haircutting Kit offers a clipping experience very similar to that of our pick; the key difference is in the design of the attachments. Color-coded, clearly labeled guards make it easier to find the right ones, eliminating time spent on clipping overall.
Instead, you need a device that doesn’t lose momentum as it cuts through thick patches of hair—and generous battery life is always a bonus. My top picks all finished with at least 75 minutes of cordless runtime (up to 17.5 hours, for the Philips Norelco Series 9000). Gutweniger doesn’t give much consideration to charge time, since all you need to remember is to charge a device the night before using it, and it should have enough juice to last you a month or three in cleanups. The Wahl Elite Pro High Performance Hair Clipper Kit met or exceeded the quality or performance of all the other models we considered in nearly every way. It has the most reliable and easy-to-use guide combs of any clipper we’ve tried; in our tests, this turned out to be a key differentiator between an okay hair clipper and a great one. The Wahl Elite Pro also features sturdy housing and a pro-grade power cord, a powerful yet quiet-enough motor, and a useful and rugged hard-plastic carry case.
Beard Trimmers 2024 - Forbes Vetted - Forbes
Beard Trimmers 2024 - Forbes Vetted.
Posted: Wed, 17 Apr 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]
They’ve been on the beauty beat for over a decade and buzzed their own and their partner’s hair at home, both before the pandemic and during it. Since 2010, they’ve covered at-home hair care—from buzz cuts to hair coloring—at Rookie and for publications including Teen Vogue and Allure. The Master Cordless is beloved by many barbers for its power, but you could consider it a luxury since it comes with a steep price tag, even without including clipper guards. You’ve got to buy those separately, which will add between around $10 and $30 and are often sold out. And while many brands sell guards that swap easily onto competitor devices, this one demands dedicated guards (making it all the more exclusive).
We also have picks both for novices and for those more experienced in cutting hair at home. And we recommend a smaller, quieter model that’s ideal for cutting your own or kids’ hair. Then I handed them off to my own trusted barber, Evelyn Gutweniger, who got acquainted with them for a couple weeks and applied her studied perspective to each tool (but with amateurs in mind). She cared mostly about details like reinforced guard heads and having a broad range of cutting intervals. She found some tools too heavy or unwieldy for solo use, or simply not up to snuff in terms of quality.
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