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I have been shaving my head for probably 30 years, so I've learned a thing or two. I have tried many machines of all sorts, in the end I prefer regular old-school shaving blades, usually from Gillette.

A friend recently recommended the Freebird shaving machine, which I had seen pop up on social media all over the place. I ended up ordering. The shipping was a bit slow, took a surprising amount of time.

Two weeks later, I eventually got the machine which comes nicely stocked with a lot of accessories and can do trimming of the nose, ears, etc. All that is pretty nice, but I consider it secondary.

I will cut to the case, as to the device's performance for cutting hair: I was disappointed. Two main shortcomings:

1) I tried it first on my facial hair. I had 4-5 day long beard, and the Freebird struggled mightly. It started pulling and tugging at my hair, was unpleasant and I had to stop. Sadly, this is a common issue as the spinning blades cannot physically handle the stubble. It's not exclusive to the Freebird, but I was somehow imagining that with all the hype and after decades of research, it would do better that my old machines from 30 years ago. It did not. It was painful.

As a corollary, this picture they have on the homepage of the website where they show a guy shaving his full head of hair with the Freebird, hahahaha, that is absolutely ridiculous. It would take hours and many stops to clean up the machine and a lot of pain from tugging. It does NOT do that. And if he tried on his beard, which I feel the image suggests, that would be devastating and SO painful.




2) Turns out when you shave, all the hair goes inside the heads. And they fill out very quickly, of course, because they are tiny. And so, for my typical shaving every 3-4 days, I had to stop mid way and empty the shaving heads which is a messy, tedious and time-consuming process.

So, net, net, by the time I got done, I took longer than using foam and a regular shaving razor.

Also, the finish was not anywhere nearly as close as a real razor, that is another downside.

Now, I don't hate the Freebird, it's a fine machine. The battery lasts a long time, and if you use it frequently, say every other day, and have the discipline of constantly cleaning it, it works OK, it's an acceptable solution.

But, for me, it fell short of expectations. I would give it 3 out of 5 stars, being generous.






PS: After I wrote this review, I discovered that Freebird started charging my credit card without my permission, and sending me refill blades. Absolutely not needed because I've only used the machine maybe 4-5 times, I would expect the 5-blade head to last longer than that in any case. I tried to understand why they were doing this. I went into the website, and despite not having account and not having signed up for anything, sure enough, they had me listed as a "subscription". I immediately cancelled it. I looked for information and found a thread on reddit with people complaining about the same. Apparently, and deceptively, it's hidden in the terms and conditions when you make the initial purchase. Very sneaky, and borderline scam/fraud. No startup with deceptive practices like this will succeed long term. I cancelled immediately and will never buy from the again, and I will warm all my friends to stay away.