Jun 16, 2023 9:00 AM

Our 8 Favorite Beard Trimmers

These beard tools deliver a quality trim for all types of facial hair.

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Featured in this article

Closeup of a person cutting their beard with a beard trimmer

Braun Series 9 Beard Trimmer and attachments

Panasonic GB80 Beard Trimmer and attachments

Panasonic Multishape Trimmer with box and attachments

4 / 9

With each year that passes, a beard sounds like a better idea. Forget fashion. A beard can help hide the destruction of a jawline, a slow descent into neck wobble. And a beard can keep friends from saying you look like an egg with eyes drawn on, should time have its way with your starboard follicles. But whether a beard is a mitigator or a fashion statement, it’s a good idea to keep it in check.

All you need is a beard trimmer and at least, say, three minutes twice a week to keep the face garb looking fresh. In most cases, a hair trimmer with a full set of attachments will do this job well enough. But dedicated beard tools typically allow precise control over the contours of your beard and keep you from juggling too many plastic attachments. So what should you consider when shopping for a beard trimmer?

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: Madhourse/Getty Images
Things to Consider
All the trimmers we recommend here have quality blades and solid battery tech and are at least a decent value. Having used all of these, I can say the differentiating factor often comes down to this—how long is your beard? The right trimmer for a beard that is basically long stubble is not the same as one for someone with a beard so long they’ll probably just have to pull out the scissors.
At that longer end, you need a trimmer that looks more like a pair of hair clippers. A trimmer with a narrower cutting blade, and perhaps a slimmer body, is invariably going to be optimized for shorter hair length—or, in some cases, little more than designer stubble. However, we’ll cover all of this in our beard trimmer recommendations below.
Photograph: Braun
Best 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.
180 min/ 60 mins charge
$130 at Amazon
$100 at Braun

Photograph: Panasonic
Affordable All-Rounder
Panasonic ER-GB80
The best compliment we can pay the Panasonic ER-GB80 is that after using it, we were pleasantly surprised when we looked up its current pricing. It has a super-wide head, meaning you can cover your face in just a few strokes. The horizontal length dial allows for great control, at 0.5-mm increments, and ensures that if you cut at the wrong length, it’s all your fault.
A few years ago, you might have had to wait hours for a trimmer of this price to fully recharge, but nowadays it only takes an hour—just like the top models. That said, its 50-minute charge time is relatively low, and, sure enough, it uses Ni-MH battery tech rather than the more desirable— sometimes longer-lasting—Li-On style. The plastic shaver attachment is comfortable and has a semi-open design to help avoid clogs. It’s all sounding pretty good for the Panasonic ER-GB80, but it is only useful for basic trimming, not styling. With a wide cutting area, it does not feel like a high-precision shaver, particularly when tackling your upper lip area.
Sure, the Panasonic ER-GB80 has a classic flip-out narrower detail shaver—you simply push it out with a thumb. But it is not a replacement for a dedicated narrower head. Your ability to navigate with it is limited by its positioning, and as the main trimmer stays active, there’s a small chance you’ll end up buzzing an unwanted area while doing so. Still, for the online prices at the time of review, the Panasonic ER-GB80 is a bargain.
50 mins / 60 mins charge
$85 at Amazon
$76 at Best Buy
$95 at Walmart
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.
90 mins / 60 mins charge
$90 at Panasonic

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 might wish. Still, there’s real appeal if you want to max out on understated class.
120 mins / 60 mins charge
$99 at Amazon
$100 at Best Buy
$98 at Walmart
Photograph: Braun
Full-Body Maintenance
Braun Series 7
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 3 mm 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.
100 mins / 60 mins charge
$70 at Amazon

Photograph: Philips
Precise Stubble Styling Only
Philips OneBlade 360
Philips truly disrupted the beard maintenance market with the original OneBlade in 2016. A strange hybrid of beard trimmer and shaver, it was unlike anything else you might buy. The concept remains in the new OneBlade 360, but the blade now has suspension so its angle will move to adapt to the contours of your face. Philips’s OneBlade is not a great beard trimmer or shaver, but it is better at ultra-precise lines than anything else on the market. Using a OneBlade genuinely feels like wielding a paintbrush—if the canvas is … your face.
It’s capable of a very close cut for a trimmer and feels far more nimble than competing designs. You shouldn’t buy a Philips OneBlade 360 if you keep a longer beard, though. It includes a plastic tool with a tiny little adjustable barrel that changes the cut length between 1 mm and 5 mm, and the top-tier Face & Body pack adds a 3-mm all-round attachment. Anything longer than that and you’re out of luck. It’s also not great as a shaving blade, sometimes leaving red marks even with shaving cream.
We like this most as a finishing tool to clean up the perimeter of a beard, but we doubt that many people want multiple beard trimmers in their bathroom. There’s another thing to consider. Philips OneBlade trimmer heads do not last forever. They are rated for four months of use, after which you’ll find that they just don’t get as clean a shave as they used to. Replacements are not at all cheap either, at $22 for two blades.
60 mins/ 60 mins charge
$50 at Amazon
$50 at Best Buy
$50 at Target
Photograph: Remington
Best For Cutting Visibility [UK Only]
Remington T-Series Precision Trimmer
Plenty of so-called beard trimmers are simply all-purpose trimmers that can handle anything with the right attachment. Your head hair, your verdant unmentionables—whatever you like. The Remington T-Series Precision Trimmer is more clearly made for finely tuned beards. It has a longer neck than most and a “T”-shaped blade that lets you see the area more clearly when working with a small mirror. The three prime attachments are designed for fairly short facial hair too (up to 5 mm).
If you want to keep your designer stubble looking perfectly effortless, you could do far worse than a Remington T-Series Precision Trimmer. It can also trim up to 15 mm in length, but this involves the use of single-length plastic attachments, which gets old real quick. In use, this customization produced suitably accurate results. You’ll rarely feel like you need to apply additional force or go over the same patch again to get a desired outcome.
60 mins/ 4 hours charge
$75 at Boots

Photograph: Babyliss
Great Ergonomics [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 label 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 1 mm 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.
120 mins/ 2 hours charge
$90 at John Lewis