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Best Beard Trimmer Overall
Braun Series 9
Best for Precision Stubble
Philips OneBlade 360 Pro
Best for Designer Beards
Wahl Pro Series High Visibility Skeleton Style Trimmer
Best for Versatility
Panasonic Multishape
WITH EACH YEAR that passes, a beard sounds like a better idea. Forget fashion for a moment—a beard can help hide the destruction of a jawline, and distract people if you’re follicularly challenged up top. But whether your beard is a mitigator or a fashion statement, it’s a good idea to keep it in check with one of the best beard trimmers available.
WIRED has tested beard trimmers from all the top models to highlight the standouts at every budget. And in doing so we’ve compiled a list of all the things you need to think about when shopping for a beard trimmer in 2024.
Unlike many areas of beauty technology, beard trimmers are relatively simple devices. Yes, we’re sure someone is working on an “AI beard trimmer,” but mercifully that day is not today, and designs from respected brands including Panasonic, Braun, and Philips should serve you well for years. Cheap beard trimmers will prove a false economy, with blades that dull faster and disappointing battery life. And not every design will work well with every type of hair, style of beard, or even temperament of user.
Updated June 2024: We’ve added a new design from Philips, plus updates from Panasonic and social media favorite Manscaped.
For more grooming guides, check out the Best Creams and Tools for Removing Hair, the Best Hair Dryers and the Best Hair Straighteners.
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Photograph: Braun
Best Beard Trimmer Overall
Braun Series 9
Braun calls the Series 9 its professional-grade beard trimmer. While most barbers would likely turn their noses up at a battery-powered trimmer, it claim is not entirely spurious. The Series 9 has a neat front control dial that allows for quick and secure changes in the cut length. You’re unlikely to knock this dial out of place accidentally, but there’s also a second security measure. That switch below? It locks the dial in place. That’s a blessing for the paranoid beard chopper.
Braun also demonstrates much better standards in its accessories than those seen in the lower-end Series 7 All-in-One (below), which is bristling with add-ons. The main clipper attachment here is of excellent quality, and just about the ideal width for beards. It’s wide enough to cover half of the average face in a handful of strokes, and narrow enough to deal with tricky areas like your lip overhang.
There’s also a ProDetail head for very small areas and an extra large ProEdge head for folks who want a super-straight line across their cheek. This stuff is nothing out of the ordinary, but the quality of the key accessories is well above average. In all three heads, the entire top plate is a single piece of ProBlade metal whose teeth Braun claims are “lifetime” sharp. You’ll hear such claims repeated across brands, but we do have a sense that the Series 9 is laser-focused on beard trimming. Attachments that go longer, up to 20 mm, can even work for at-home haircuts. The Braun Series 9 also has a very long battery life, lasting two to three hours per charge.
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Photograph: Andrew Williams
Best for Precision Stubble
Philips OneBlade 360 Pro
A Philips OneBlade is a beard trimming rapier, making the competition look ungainly in comparison. This Pro model classes up the family with a part-metal grip and a digital display that shows the battery level as a percentage. It’s stylish, but feels a little unnecessary compared to the simple LED dots found on the excellent original.
It’s still the best OneBlade out there, though, with 120-minute battery life (double that of the basic model), and fast one-hour charging.
The same caveats apply across the OneBlade range. For sharp lines and getting a razor-like close shave across and down the neck, the Philips OneBlade 360 Pro is unbeatable. The small head is nimble, and its spring-loaded construction lets it conform to your contours unlike a regular beard trimmer.
And while it’s true that the heads need to be replaced more often than with a normal beard trimmer’s blade (Philips recommends four months), we’ve used the same one for occasional trims for far longer than that without issue.
However, it’s one of the few beard trimmers you might want to use as part of a tag team with … another beard trimmer. The Philips OneBlade 360 Pro does include an adjustable attachment that can cut at 14 lengths from grad 0.4 to 10, but it doesn’t feel entirely at home doing so, cutting with less confidence and consistency than a more conventional design.
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Photograph: Wahl
Best for Designer Beards
Wahl Pro Series High Visibility Skeleton Style Trimmer
The Wahl USA Pro’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.
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Photograph: Panasonic
Best for Versatility
Panasonic Multishape
Many beard trimmers come with stacks of accessories. You get nose trimmers, guards of different widths, and more plastic attachments than a Nintendo Wii. Swapping them around can feel like you’re breaking the trimmer apart. Panasonic has addressed his head-on in the Multishape.
It’s a modular trimmer that has you remove the entire top section of the body when changing the cut style. You can even choose what elements you want when you buy it. Available modules include an electric toothbrush, as well as more conventional options, like a shaver and a narrower head, a good idea if your beard upkeep involves more precise cuts. Just as important, it means you can replace the battery should it stop holding charges like it used to. Panasonic makes both NiMH and Li-On battery stick units, and the Li-On type is preferable, as it lasts longer off a charge—up to 90 minutes versus 60 minutes with the slightly cheaper battery.
It’s best if you really buy into the modular concept, though. While the soft-touch plastic of the battery handle is perfectly fine, it is not the most sophisticated or expensive-looking trimmer, though its actual cut is perfectly dependable. The rotary controller on the Multishape’s main attachment offers confident, fine-tune lengths of up to 30 mm when using the largest attachment. And Panasonic says its Japanese stainless steel blades will stay sharp for life.
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Photograph: Andrew Williams
Best for Style and Battery Life
Wahl Stainless Steel Lithium-Ion Cordless Beard Trimmer
The Wahl Stainless Steel Lithium series has been around since 2011, and remains one of the sleekest, best-looking beard trimmers available. As the same suggests, it has a stainless steel body as well as stainless steel blades.
It was also launched as a showcase for the now-ubiquitous lithium ion battery tech, and can still outlast its rivals. Wahl rates it at three and a half hours of runtime, while a charge takes just 60 minutes. I tested the numbers. It actually lasted two hours and 39 minutes, which is miles off the brand’s claims but still offers great stamina compared to most.
The Wahl Stainless Steel Lithium offers a timeless look at a great price, but can also feel a bit retro in use, especially as you need to swap out fiddly attachments. The trimmer includes a whole host of these, however, including a 10-setting adjustable beard and stubble trimmer, which cuts between 2 mm and 11 mm. It’s more fiddly and clumsy-feeling than a good barrel-adjustable trimmer, though.
I found it didn’t actually cut as close as the space suggests at each setting, and as a result, more runs across the face were needed for consistent results. Add that to a slightly wider T-style head, and the Wahl Stainless Steel Lithium doesn’t provide the greatest sense of control, particularly for those with shorter beards or stubble.
Its ability to stand up by itself (or in the included metal stand) does earn a fistful of convenience points, though, and also helps to avoid too much content with corrosion-causing water.
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Photograph: Andrew Williams
Best for Travelling
Manscaped The Beard Hedger
If 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.
It’s a good beard trimmer with close cutting (more below), but the standout feature here is that you can charge it using USB-C from your phone adapter or laptop. It’s wild this kind of convenience isn’t repeated much elsewhere. And it’s a major win for travel use.
Back to the trimmer. It 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, and while you could call the design subtle, many may think it a little boring, especially given the higher-than-average pricing.
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Photograph: Andrew Williams
Easy Does It
Panasonic Wet And Dry ER-GB86
This Panasonic 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. And there’s little chance of accidentally altering the setting unless you are truly careless. Manscaped uses a similar system, but Panasonic got there first, and uses a much more solid-feeling system.
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 can cut through hair most effectively, and the fewer number of guard teeth helps prevent clogging.
At around $119, the Panasonic feels expensive, especially given its rather underwhelming plastic build and 50-minute battery life, but it works well and can often be found discounted around holidays.
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Photograph: Philips
Luxury Styling
Philips Series 9000 Prestige BT 9810
The Philips BT 9810 is a self-consciously styled luxury beard trimmer. Where lots of similarly high-price models are made of plastic, because a soft touch or rubberized plastic is practical and has a nice texture, this one has a brushed metal outer. You’ll appreciate the Philips if you like the feel of a good stiff shaft in your hand. That’s right, this is also one of the most obviously phallic beard trimmers out there. Feeling virile yet?
Fun aside, the girthy shape lets the BT 9810 stand up by itself—handy for smaller bathrooms. And the hefty feel gives you a sense of having gotten your money’s worth. The way the subtle battery indicator phases in and out as you turn the trimmer off looks dead classy too. The substance of the higher-end design aspirations is found up top. Almost all trimmers use a plastic guard over metal trimmer elements for anything but the closest cut. The Philips BT 9810 has an adjustable steel blade system that takes you from 0.4 mm all the way to 5 mm. You only need the plastic attachment for lengths above that, up to 10 mm.
People with stubble-like beards need not worry about attachments. But I found the metal much harder on my skin than a plastic guard, and more likely to exfoliate my face than I want. Still, there’s real appeal if you want to max out on understated class.
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Photograph: Braun
Full-Body Maintenance
Braun Series 7 Multi Grooming Kit
This is a new design based on a trimmer we used for homebrew haircuts during the pandemic lockdowns. It’s a classic, similar in shape to the trimmer you might see at a barber’s. Braun’s Series 7 is a slightly more advanced model than the one we used until its battery would no longer hold a charge properly. It has a Li-On battery with relatively fast charging and a run time of up to 100 minutes.
The All-in-One pack includes a neat charging dock, and the motor is fairly quiet and uses Braun’s AutoSense tech. This isn’t something you’ll actually notice much in operation. It’s a behind-the-scenes feature that modulates the motor power to adapt to thicker/coarser hair. Comparisons to rivals that were more recently designed from the ground up show what a simple trimmer the Braun Series 7 All in One is, though. Instead of it using rotary length control, you simply pull the main beard attachment along a ratcheted track, making it more likely you’ll put the trimmer in the wrong setting or accidentally adjust it—despite a simple built-in locking system.
There’s not much fine-grain control over the length, and to go shorter than three millimetres you’ll need to use one of the many bundled attachments. It all gets a bit fiddly unless you keep your beard at a fairly consistent length across your entire face. The charge indicator is also basic, lacking a multi-LED view to alert you of anything other than that it’s about to run out. That said, the All-in-One pack, in particular, is designed for peak flexibility and does include attachments for hair, and a Gilette razor. Lockdown nostalgia aside, we also think the width of the Braun Series 7’s default head is ideal for everyday beard maintenance.
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Photograph: Babyliss
A Bargain for the Brits (UK only)
BaByliss MEN Japanese Steel
Babyliss was originally a French brand, and the BaByliss Men Japanese Steel Beard Trimmer is made in China. The Japanese labelling refers to the steel used in this Babyliss’ blades. It’s a high-carbon steel, made to be extra hard.
The trimmer’s standard head uses a rotary length control and takes you from one millimetre all the way up to 12 mm without additional comb attachments. You can also get a 0.5-mm cut by taking the comb guide off completely. The body on this BaByliss trimmer is notably slim, making it nimbler to handle. We’re also fans of the grippy honeycomb underside, which significantly reduces the chance of you dropping this trimmer onto your bathroom tiles. The bend two-thirds up its body improves the ergonomics of the shaving experience too.
Shape, grip, and ease of use don’t matter all that much if performance is poor, but this trimmer delivers reasonably well. It’s one of the most accurate trimmers for getting a uniform length across your whole beard, particularly at shorter lengths. However, this is not the obvious pick for those with a longer beard. If that’s you, look to more adaptable rivals, like the Braun Series 7.
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Photograph: Andrew Williams
A Guide to Beard Trimmer Tech
Choose the right features for your facial fuzz.
- Ceramic versus steel blades: Ceramic blades can hold onto their sharpness better than steel, but the smaller teeth of premium beard trimmer blades tend to be made of stainless steel.
- Barrel control: Want an easy life? Buy a beard trimmer with minimal attachments that can cut at multiple lengths using on-device twist controls.
- Ni-MH versus Li-ion: Avoid trimmers with excessively long charge times and those that use old Ni-MH batteries. They don’t hold their charge as long as Li-ion, which can be frustrating.
- Waterproof? Beard trimming in the shower isn’t as beneficial 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 you can finally get USB charging cables for beard trimmers, while Manscaped even uses a USB-C on the shell itself. 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. This is best exemplified by the Philips OneBlade family.
- Wide versus narrow blade: Hair trimmers have wider blades than beard trimmers. The narrower style provides greater control, with minimal time loss for those with shorter facial hair.
- Cheap versus expensive trimmers: Cheap beard trimmers will typically use worse quality blades than pricier ones, and poorer batteries. And some bundles attachments and accessories can be of very low quality.
- 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 models will need more regular replacing, though.
- Vacuum? Some beard trimmers have a vacuum feature, to avoid getting hair trimmings everywhere. In truth, it’s a bit of a gimmick.
