Panasonic’s Arc 5 Shaver Is Made of Japanese Steel and Sea Minerals—and Might Make You Nostalgic

That mentioned, the efficiency continues to be admirable in comparison with most journey shavers, supplied you do not let your hair develop out too lengthy. Like lots of foil shavers, the Arc 5 doesn’t like to chop hairs longer than just a few millimeters. Shaving longer whiskers takes an ideal quantity of passes—and will virtually actually incur just a few 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 gadget that does what it does: It conforms itself broadly to a big floor space of your face and neck. Should you’re somebody with a beard line, or tightly maintained geometry in your sideburns or mustache, this shaver will not serve you as a every day driver and not using a separate element trimmer.

(*5*){Photograph}: Panasonic

Shell Sport

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 snug utilizing it within the bathe and not using a mirror. (Should you’re the kind of one who retains a mirror within the bathe, no offense, however I do not perceive.) Heck, I believe I’d 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 value. I kinda simply take pleasure in the way it feels in my hand. Enjoyment is a vanishingly uncommon high quality amongst shavers.

(*5*){Photograph}: Matthew Korfhage

“Nagori,” the title of the brand new materials from Mitsui Chemical substances that gives Arc 5’s oddly natural texture, is the kind of phrase that folks usually wish to name untranslatable. Nagori refers to a form of instantaneous nostalgia, the sort you would possibly really feel for a season because it passes or a meal’s last course. It derives from an previous 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 title virtually actually derives from the ocean minerals that kind the premise of it. However it additionally describes the sensation I acquired once 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 uninteresting. The Arc 5’s flippantly granular seashell plastic will begin to appear identical 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 price $300 is between you and your accountant.