As in many things: you get what you pay for.

I ordered these replacement blades instead of what I ordered last year because they were about 20% less expensive and seemed to have some good reviews. These have been in use roughly every other day for about a month and I have to say that they cut no better - and possibly even worse - than the year-old blades I replaced. Like the other blades I’ve bought, you can feel a difference between the first use or two and the subsequent cuts as the edge wears in. But the overall feel was vastly different - the first two cuts with the old blades seemed to be as close as a classic straight razor, while the first few uses with these felt more like getting plucked. After the wear-in period, the old blades cut pretty well, needing a couple of passes to get a truly clean cut (with the number of passes creeping up over the following months)...these seemed to immediately go to the year-old dullness level. The ultimate failure of these blades was evidenced by my shave this morning. The mirror was fogged up and I didn’t have a lot of time before heading off to work, so I made the usual three or four passes, emptied some cuttings out of the head of the shaver, and got on with the day. When I looked in the mirror while washing my hands at lunchtime, the face I saw looked like it hadn’t shaved at all that morning. After such a short time in service, that kind of performance is simply unacceptable.

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