The best beard trimmers should be the primary focus of any self-respecting beard owner. Your bathroom cabinet should be stacked with a top moisturiser, a beard comb, some beard oil to make it all shiny, and one of the best devices to keep it looking tidy. And while there are plenty of worthy contenders to grace your jaw, in our eyes, there's only one true champion of facial fuzz: Philips' Series 9000.
Sitting at the absolute peak of the mountain of beard-trimming gadgets, the powerful 9000 has all the precision of a well-practised samurai taking a finely-honed katana to your chin, cleaning away any untidiness with minimal effort from yourself, which is great if you're not so adept at keeping it trim. We've seen plenty of trimmers in our time, but having shaved with this particular model for a few weeks, we find it unlikely we'll be heading anywhere else.
If you're reading this article, you're probably hunting for a premium trimmer to help you master a sculpted beard, so read on to find out exactly what we think about Philips' top offering. While you're at it, why not check out our entire grooming collection; we have tested all the best electric shavers, best body hair trimmers and best hair clippers to help you expand your grooming collection and cultivate the ultimate Spartan beard.
Prestige by name
Calling your beard trimmer “prestige” is the ultimate stamp of confidence you need need to help make it absolutely clear you're making the right decision when buying this device. It's not called the Philips 9000 “pretty good”. It has prestige, which conjures up all the right thoughts of a premium, skin-kind shave, and thankfully, it delivers on that promise.
First up, it's a great-looking device, which is an unusual compliment for what is ostensibly going to be tucked away in your bathroom cabinet for most of its life. It's a weighty steel chassis that bears all the reassuring heft of something that's about to accompany you on your beard-growing journey. Sort of like the trimming equivalent of a patient, strong barber, ready to guide you into stubble nirvana.
This is a serious bit of kit that should be handled by a serious man. The older model featured a guiding laser that was absolutely not useful at all for helping you trim in straight lines, but Philips has done away with the gimmicks in favour of a powerful motor, useful attachments and precise blades for a solid shave.
The ergonomic design makes it a reasonably simple task to slice through beard hair without straining your wrist, and you won't have to contend with cables or plugs, as it's battery-powered. You get about an hour and 20 minutes of shaving time, which should be plenty for most bear-like beards, but even if you're rushing for time, you can get a full charge back in just under an hour charging. It's also fully waterproof, making shower-shaving an absolute dream and clean-up after much simpler.
Precision trimming
Predominantly focused on maintaining and tidying an existing beard, the Series 9000 has no equal for touching up whispy whiskers and overgrown neckbeards, with the option to adjust your cutting length on the fly with a handy rotating dial in the body that stretches the trim from a skin-close 0.4mm up to 5mm. Clip on the additional guiding comb and you can now stretch up to 10mm should you so desire, but it's in the intricate detailing that you'll find the best results.
Our beard is about 8mm in length and we found it much easier to keep the cheeks and jaw all at the same length with the included clipper head, but it was around the mouth and adjusting the line on the neck where the power was most obvious.
The built-in motor automatically increases or decreases the required power based on how thick your hair is, meaning you can clip through stubborn, thicker hair quickly before moving on the thinner hair that needs a precise shave.
As you should expect from a premium trimmer, you'll need to keep the blades sharp by regularly oiling and cleaning the blades, and while that can be a fortnightly nuisance, it's actually really easy with the Series 9000, as the whole blade head flips over to make it easier to clean out the gunk and ensure the blades get the proper TLC they deserve.
Previous iterations of the Philips 9000 had a beard-hair collecting compartment built into the device to make clean-up easier, catching all the stray bits that would otherwise smother your bathroom sink, and while we would have loved to see that included in this current version, the fact it's waterproof means you can wash away all the excess hair quickly.
Philips Series 9000 Beard Trimmer verdict
Truth is, this is one of the best beard trimmers we've used. There's not really another option we have tried that comes close to how easy this model is to use, nor have we yet found one that gives us the same level of confidence to quickly slice through our facial fuzz when we need it. The battery life is among the longest of any model we've seen, the sturdy build quality is a reassuring presence in your hand, and the blades are sharp and ready to deliver the results every time we used it.
It must be said that if you're rocking something significantly longer than our beard, there are probably better hair clippers or perhaps Braun's 7-in-1 trimmer that might be better suited to keeping things tidy, but for anything shorter than a chest-length wisdom beard, this is your best bet.
Philips Series 9000 beard trimmer is available for £104 from amazon.co.uk, philips.co.uk, johnlewis.com, boots.com & argos.co.uk
