Panasonic Arc 5 Palm Shaver Review: Japanese Steel

That stated, the efficiency remains to be admirable in comparison with most journey shavers, supplied you do not let your hair develop out too lengthy. Like quite a lot of foil shavers, the Arc 5 doesn’t like to chop hairs longer than a couple of millimeters. Shaving longer whiskers takes a large number of passes—and can virtually actually incur a couple of painful hair pulls. The Arc 5 is a neat, clear shaver for individuals who are already neat and clear.

The Arc 5 can also be very a lot not a element shaver. That is an attachment-free system that does what it does: It conforms itself broadly to a big floor space of your face and neck. In the event you’re somebody with a beard line, or tightly maintained geometry in your sideburns or mustache, this shaver will not serve you as a each day driver and not using a separate element trimmer.

Shell Recreation

However the shaver’s lack of sharp edges will also be advantage. The Arc 5 Palm is so broad-faced, so edgeless, so squishy in its shaving, that I really feel snug utilizing it within the bathe and not using a mirror. (In the event you’re the kind of one who retains a mirror within the bathe, no offense, however I do not perceive.) Heck, I feel I’d even really feel OK shaving whereas strolling.

However now we’re again full circle to why I nonetheless just like the white Arc 5 Palm, regardless of its slim use case and middling shave and excessive worth. I kinda simply get pleasure from the way it feels in my hand. Enjoyment is a vanishingly uncommon high quality amongst shavers.

{Photograph}: Matthew Korfhage

“Nagori,” the title of the brand new materials from Mitsui Chemical substances that gives Arc 5’s oddly natural texture, is the kind of phrase that individuals usually wish to name untranslatable. Nagori refers to a kind of instantaneous nostalgia, the type you would possibly really feel for a season because it passes or a meal’s remaining course. It derives from an previous Japanese phrase, “the stays of the waves,” referencing the shells and the tracks left behind when the tide goes again the place it got here from.

This materials’s title virtually actually derives from the ocean minerals that kind the premise of it. But it surely additionally describes the sensation I received once I pulled the shaver out of its packaging: an unplaceable nostalgia for an object that is proper right here in my hand. Over time, I do know, this sense will uninteresting. The Arc 5’s evenly granular seashell plastic will begin to appear identical to barely nicer plastic.

However for now, I used to be in a position to have a small emotional expertise with my journey shaver. Whether or not that feeling is price $300 is between you and your accountant.