Table Of Content
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).
Budget pick: Wahl Color Pro Plus Haircutting Kit
As is true of blades, when it comes to motors, most home users wouldn’t notice much difference between types—other than their loudness. Magnetic motors, which all our picks have, are the most common and make a signature whap noise when turned on. One of our experts suggested that advances in magnetic motors are making pivot motors effectively obsolete. Compared with many of today’s household devices, hair clippers are decidedly low-tech. Arabelle Sicardi is a beauty writer and editor currently working on a nonfiction book, The House of Beauty, about the beauty industry.
A Top-Notch Multitasking Grooming Device
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.
Wahl Color Pro Cordless
If you’re mostly clipping your own hair, the smaller, lighter, and easier-to-maneuver Remington Virtually Indestructible Haircut and Beard Trimmer may be a better choice than our heavier picks. The Remington’s lightweight (7½ ounces), palm-sized housing—coupled with rubberized grips—is the most comfortable of any we tried. Our testers especially appreciated this clipper when they guided it along the back of their heads while looking in a mirror—that’s a tricky maneuver, especially when cutting along the hairline. This model is the best by far for smaller hands, and its mesh storage case takes up a minimal amount of room. But our experts agreed that for most home users, even a low-end blade will dutifully cut hair for years or even decades. All clippers have a pair of stainless or carbon steel (or, at the high end, ceramic) blades with teeth; the bottom blade is fixed, and the top blade is connected directly to the motor and oscillates side to side to cut hair.
Our pick: Wahl Elite Pro High Performance Hair Clipper Kit
Hair Clippers 2024 - Forbes Vetted - Forbes
Hair Clippers 2024 - Forbes Vetted.
Posted: Tue, 27 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
On top of that, this tool has a runtime that outpaces its charge time (130-minute endurance against a 90-minute charge). For the cost of an average haircut ($25 to $60 or so), three of our picks will easily handle the job for you. Clippers tend to last an extremely long time, so for not much outlay, you can have a useful device on hand for many, many years to come (one expert said he knows of barbers who have decades-old clippers in daily use at their shops). Since the pandemic hit in 2020, more and more people have been doing at-home hair maintenance—for themselves and others.
This model also has a thick but pliable 8-foot cord and a powerful—but exceptionally quiet—motor, making it a solid choice for cutting kids’ hair. Since there are plenty of terrific hair clippers out there, I homed in on some of the best options from top brands and started with cordless picks as a baseline, since that’s a major factor for home users. For roughly the cost of a professional haircut, you can buy a long-lasting tool to create and maintain your own short, buzzed, or shaved hairstyles at home. Its sharp steel blades easily slice through fine, thick, smooth, and coarse hair without slowing down or clogging. To regularly give haircuts at home, we’d reach first for the Wahl Elite Pro High Performance Hair Clipper Kit.
Sleek, Powerful Performance
A barbershop classic, the Fast Feed is a pro-grade tool that’s good for those who sport a close buzz or fade and need frequent touch-up trims. I’ve been a men’s grooming journalist for over a decade, covering the beat for titles like Forbes, GQ, Men’s Journal, Robb Report, Spy, Gear Patrol and more. I’ve grown my hair out past my shoulders a few times, and I’ve buzzed it all the way back down a hundred times. I’ve even had a hair transplant (in the name of research!) to have more of a canvas to work with up top.
How to Cut Your Own Hair (If You Absolutely Must)
Barber Eric Aleman cautioned in particular that should you ever drop a clipper, be sure to immediately inspect the blade for any bent or (especially) broken teeth. If the blade isn’t replaceable, recycle or toss the clipper, and be sure to cut the power cord to ensure that someone else who might find it doesn’t use it unknowingly. In our testing, the Wahl Color Pro Plus Haircutting Kit was a close contender to the Elite Pro. The biggest difference between them is that the Elite Pro’s guide combs are more durable.
At the end, we asked participants to pick the model they favored and would be most comfortable using themselves. This is one beautiful machine, with its magnetic guards and its digital display and 0.1 mm incremental trimmer adjustments. You’ll get dual beard trimming and hair clipping use from it, too, and you can take things all the way down to a zero gap if you need skin-tight cutting (be warned, that’s a task best done by the pros). The Wahl Elite Pro’s build quality is a noticeable step above that of most mid-tier models available in big-box stores.
He has been covering technology as a writer and editor since the days before mobile phones got smart. His work has been featured in various print and online publications, and on television. For the past decade, they have written about and tested beauty products for Teen Vogue, Allure, and other outlets. They’re currently working on a nonfiction book about the beauty industry, The House of Beauty, to be published by Norton.
Gutweniger, who often cuts with other Wahl devices, also raved about this one and trusted it enough to use regularly on her customers at the barbershop. She loves its sturdy guards, which don’t bend or bow as you move them around the head. And she isn’t bothered by its 12-hour charge time—which, to my frustration, extended to 15 or 16 hours before I realized that the charging light doesn’t ever turn off or change its color once complete. Instead, the 75-minute runtime is enough to keep heads buzzed for months on end, with a simple overnight re-up.
