That mentioned, the efficiency remains to be admirable in comparison with most journey shavers, offered 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 number of millimeters. Shaving longer whiskers takes a large number of passes—and can virtually definitely incur a number 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. If you happen to’re somebody with a beard line, or tightly maintained geometry in your sideburns or mustache, this shaver will not serve you as a day by day driver and not using a separate element trimmer.
{Photograph}: Panasonic
Shell Recreation
However the shaver’s lack of sharp edges may also be advantage. The Arc 5 Palm is so broad-faced, so edgeless, so squishy in its shaving, that I really feel comfy utilizing it within the bathe and not using a mirror. (If you happen to’re the kind of one who retains a mirror within the bathe, no offense, however I do not perceive.) Heck, I feel I would 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 identify of the brand new materials from Mitsui Chemical compounds that gives Arc 5’s oddly natural texture, is the kind of phrase that individuals usually prefer to name untranslatable. Nagori refers to a kind of instantaneous nostalgia, the type you may really feel for a season because it passes or a meal’s remaining course. It derives from an outdated Japanese phrase, “the stays of the waves,” referencing the shells and the tracks left behind when the tide goes again the place it got here from.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 identify virtually definitely derives from the ocean minerals that type the premise of it. But it surely additionally describes the sensation I obtained after 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 boring. The Arc 5’s flippantly granular seashell plastic will begin to appear similar to barely nicer plastic.
However for now, I used to be capable of have a small emotional expertise with my journey shaver. Whether or not that feeling is value $300 is between you and your accountant.