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Aug 18, 2023

Manscaped's The Beard Hedger review: The ultimate main tamer for men

By Owen Gough You've all seen the YouTube adverts: Manscaped's body hair trimmers will take care of your sensitive bits with great care and attention. They even shave a kiwi fruit to show just how

By Owen Gough

You've all seen the YouTube adverts: Manscaped's body hair trimmers will take care of your sensitive bits with great care and attention. They even shave a kiwi fruit to show just how delicate the blades whisk around your meat and veg…if they happened to be a small fruit. But what we're really interested in is Manscaped's latest addition to the grooming roster: The Beard Hedger.

The men's shaving brand has a range of fun products named after garden equipment –see the Lawn Mower, Weed Whacker and the Tool Box for proof– but The Beard Hedger will have you pruning your facial fuzz with all the confidence of Monty Don with a pair of garden sheers.

Having tested many beard trimmers over the years, I'm always hunting for a model that combines versatility, power and, ultimately, a shave that has me stroking my jawline with gleeful pride. It's easy to let the mane slip into a wild, matted bush, but is The Beard Hedger the tool to elevate my grooming to the next level? After 3 weeks of trimming, I'm inclined to say it is.

The key message Manscaped appears to want to get across in its myriad of YouTube and podcast adverts is that your skin will be treated with kindness. I don't particularly suffer from sensitive skin when I shave, but my immediate reaction after I pressed the blades against my cheek to detail the edges of my beard was mild surprise. It barely felt like a rotating razor was anywhere near my face.

The 41mm blade line itself is coated titanium, angled up slightly from the main body for optimum precision, and has a surprisingly ergonomic design that's kind on the wrists. Without the attachment guiding comb the precision blade is sharp enough to eradicate unwanted bristles without scraping along your skin; it is reassuring, considering the powerful motor pushes the blade to 7,200 RPM. The end result is stubble-free cheeks, precisely-lined moustaches and expertly shaped sideburns, much like your neighbour's lovingly-crafted front lawn hedge.

The blades require no oil to deliver such results, but I'd recommend you give it a clean regularly to avoid gunk and detritus from ruining your next shave. The guiding comb is rather chunky, yet clips on and off quickly, allowing for sliced hair to trickle into the shower or sink without getting caught. It's fully waterproof so the choice is yours.

Just like GQ's favoured Philips Series 9000 Prestige trimmer, The Beard Hedger features a zoom wheel to minutely adjust the cutting length on the fly, too. It's a wonderfully simple solution to many beard trimmer issues that force you to rotate through several attachments to get your preferred lengths as you shave. There's up to 10mm of cutting length here, which is plenty for all but the mightiest of beards, and it increases across 20 increments so you can fine-tune your skin-fade to the half-millimetre.

Many of these features should be the sort of thing you should be expecting to see on a beard trimmer that costs around £100, but the quality of the build, the included travel case, and the reputation of the brand goes a long way to ensuring it's a valuable purchase for most men.

An oft overlooked aspect to beard trimming is just how long the device takes to get back up to full charge after you've had a few trims. In the most extreme cases, some can take several hours to top back up, which is far too long if you're hoping to secure a quick tidy up before a night out and you'd forgotten to plug it in. No such issues arise with The Beard Hedger, though, as it's one of the only models we've seen that's USB-C compatible, which is a not only a rapid way to get your juice back but a lot more versatile than a plug-in.

The battery itself lasts for roughly 60 minutes, which amounts to around a week's worth of trimming if you're taking your time. I've only had to top it up twice throughout our testing, for context, but each time I just plugged it into my USB-C port on my laptop while I worked so I could get straight into trimming once I was done.

So, does my face now resemble a finely-trimmed hedge from Hampton Court? Without pushing the metaphor much further, The Beard Hedger is a kingly trimmer for tidying up whiskers, shaping longer beards and keeping on top of the trimming process, thanks to the quick-cut blades, long-lasting battery and adjustable wheel.

Throw in the extra stuff like the USB-C charging, the travel case, and the reasonable price tag and The Beard Hedger quickly becomes one of the best options available.

Manscaped The Beard Hedger is available from £99 at amazon.co.uk & uk.manscaped.com