9 out of 9 people found this review helpful.
OK for the price, but...
Date of Review: Jan 1, 2009
The Bottom Line: Buy it, but be aware of its limitations
I had to retire my Remington 6MF1 because screens and replacement cutters are no longer available. This is a plug-in shaver I inherited from my father-in-law, and it's at least 20 years old.
There was no question that I was going to buy another Remington, and after a lot of bad experiences with rotary-cutter shavers, it had to be a dual-head micro screen job. Saw this MS 280 at Wal-Mart and decided to give it a try, even though I was taken aback by the fact that replacement cutter/screen kits for this $30 shaver are going to cost around $21.
The countoured shape is handy, without being hokey (unlike those rotaries where the cutters stick way up), and allows for both face and head shaving.
I love the way you can rinse the screen, and the cutters and motor part of the shaver seem easier to clean than most. The cleaning brush is a bit of a joke; the bristles seem to have been cut to length with some kind of thermal device, rather than sheared, so the tips of the bristles have little fused lumps on the end, which make it less than effective.
The two-position trimmer works as well as any I've found, although it's not great for tapering a mustache along its upper edge.
Some have criticized this shaver as noisy. I don't find it any noisier than other foil-type shavers I've used.
If you let your beard (or scalp) grow out for more than two days, it's pretty rough sledding to shave it with the MS 280. By contrast, my old Remington would take off a week's worth of stubble without a complaint, even if screen and cutters were pretty well worn.
Others have said this shaver cuts "too close." I don't find it to be quite close enough, but I've never gotten too-close a shave from an electric. Might be bad technique on my part.
The worst aggravation is that there's no low-battery indicator, and this shaver goes from fully functional to stone dead in a matter of 15 or 20 seconds, after which a recharge takes at least 12 hours.
For the money, it will be OK provided the screens don't need replacing too often. But it will never completely replace blade shaving for me.
