Philips Norelco Multigroom Series 9000 Review: A Trimmer That Does It All

LIKE MANY PEOPLE, during the pandemic I had to figure out how to cut my own hair. I tried many, many different clippers over the course of lockdown and the only one I found that combined at-home ease with professional-level results was the Philips Norelco Multigroom Series 9000. In fact, it was so good that I still use it to this day, though not as often on my head. That’s the beauty of the Multigroom, it’s designed to be not just a trimmer for your head, but a beard trimmer, detailer, body groomer, and more. It’s one of the few tools I’ve found that is truly a one-stop shop for body grooming of every sort.

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It’s a hefty, powerful device that can plow through thickets of hair, yet still be gentle enough on sensitive areas to make body grooming a breeze. And with an industry-leading variety of attachments (a whopping 21), you can customize your grooming experience down to the millimeter. While it looks and feels (not to mention delivers) like a professional trimmer, it’s easy to understand and use—the mark of a perfect home device.

So whether you’re a home haircutter, dedicated body groomer, beard aficionado, or some combination of them all, the Philips Norelco Multigroom Series 9000 is the perfect all-in-one-tool for you.

Right out of the box, you’ll first notice two things about the Philips Norelco Multigroom: the sleek, stainless steel casing and the heft. Unlike many other trimmers designed for home use, this one has weight to it, making it feel more like the professional clippers you see barbers using.

The stainless steel blades are housed at the top at an angle, but the rest of the device is sleek and simple, with only a power button visible on the casing. It’s clear that these clippers are all about function, not bogging down the design with extra stuff like LED screens. We will note that, because of the placement of the power button, it can be easy to accidentally turn the device off during use, but with some practice that risk decreases.

The brand does not disclose the exact speed or power of the motor, which for us is usually a red flag that it’s not powerful enough to call out. However, in this case, it’s power-packed. Because this clipper is designed to be used on the hair on your head as well as the rest of your body, it’s optimized for the thickest hair and the motor is clearly powerful enough to deliver a great haircut even if you have thick hair (I do, and I never had any issues with cutting power).

In some cases, you may need to be a little gentle on certain areas (like your groin or other sensitive areas on your body) since this clipper is more powerful than many of the other body-specific trimmers we’ve tried. However, that’s OK in our book since it’s easier to adjust your technique to be more gentle than the other way around.

While the features on the device itself are simple and straightforward, it’s all about the attachments. Since this trimmer is designed to be used for all of your trimming needs from head to toe, it comes with a plethora of attachments that are designed for nearly every possible trim job. For your head, there are five length combs ranging from two to 16 mm, two fade combs, and an extra wide blade you can switch out to cover more surface area. On the facial trimming front, you have an adjustable rotary dial comb for beard trimming, another adjustable comb for longer lengths, a nose hair trimmer, an eyebrow comb, a precision trimming blade, and a precision shaver.

Then, on top of all that, there are two length combs and a foil shaving head for body trimming. In total, you get 21 attachments offering nearly every length you could want for anywhere on your body. Changing them is easy—just snap on and off the trimmer blade—but keeping them organized can be a bit unwieldy (the included travel case helps but you still find yourself rooting around for the right comb a fair amount). There is no charging station, either, but the charging cord uses your standard USB wall adapter (though we would like it better if the device used USB-C charging instead of a proprietary cord).

It’s clear in the absence of extraneous features that the Philips Norelco Series 9000 is all about power and how well it cuts your hair—which it does better than most trimmers we’ve tried. For a haircut, it’s nearly as powerful as the professional-level clippers we’ve tried and definitely more powerful than pretty much every at-home trimmer we’ve test-driven.

Even when using the longer combs, we didn’t need to go back over the same areas multiple times (perhaps twice at most) in order to get an even cut. The same goes for beard trimming and body grooming, which we would expect since a clipper tends to need to be most powerful for the hair on your head versus other areas.

When grooming your body, that power can be a bit overwhelming at first. We were fine using it on areas like our chest, but once we went downstairs to our groin, we had to be a little more cautious. The self-sharpening stainless steel blades are gentle enough, but still run the risk of nicks and cuts a bit more than some devices that are designed specifically for sensitive areas.

With a bit of practice adjusting our technique, we were able to trim and shave those areas just fine and keeping the guards on, instead of putting the bare blades to skin, helped minimize the risk further. That said, we tend to use this device more as a hair clipper and beard trimmer than a groin shaver simply because it’s so powerful.

The attachments themselves, which are part of what makes this device so multipurpose are easy to use but a bit harder to understand. They are color-coded based on what area they are designed to be used on and the lengths are clearly displayed, but we still found ourselves spending a lot of time trying to find the right comb in what felt like a sea of attachments. While the combs are clearly designed for certain areas, we also found ourselves using them on other parts (like a head comb for our body) because we wanted a certain length that only one comb could provide.

The foil shaver attachment on the body is great in theory, but the hair needs to be trimmed essentially to the skin before using it. There are a few other extraneous attachments that we tended to not use, as well, like the eyebrow attachment and the nose hair trimmer. They both work fine, but in our testing and use of the Series 9000, we found that it’s better at cutting and trimming large areas of hair rather than tiny detail work for which we’d rather use smaller, more specific devices.

At a price of $89.96, the Philips Norelco Multigroom Series 9000 isn’t the most expensive trimmer out there, but it’s not the cheapest either. Honestly, for a device this powerful, easy to use, and multi-functional, we’d expect it to cost more. If you’re hoping to find one tool to take care of the lion’s share of your trimming and grooming needs or just want a powerful trimmer for your hair or beard, this is the best and most economical one we’ve found. Adjusted for cost per use, it’s well worth the investment upfront.

Like many other water-resistant trimmers, cleaning the Philips Norelco Series 9000 is easy. Turn it off and run it under the tap, simple as that. You can also pop off the blade (the same way you would if you were changing it) to clean under the casing, but since it’s a trimmer-style blade, it doesn’t tend to accumulate hair inside of it as much as an electric razor or foil shaver. Once you’ve cleaned it under running water effectively, just let it dry.

If you like tools that can take care of multiple aspects of your grooming routine or you just simply want the best at-home hair clipper (or beard trimmer), the Philips Norelco Multigroom Series 9000 is one of the best we’ve found. Given the power of the device, its cutting ability and the number of attachments that make nearly every possible grooming job easier and customizable, not to mention the relatively low price for a device of this quality, we believe the Series 9000 to be one of the best grooming investments you can make.

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