Panasonic’s Arc 5 Shaver Is Fabricated from Japanese Metal and Sea Minerals—and May Make You Nostalgic

That stated, the efficiency remains to be admirable in comparison with most journey shavers, offered you do not let your hair develop out too lengthy. Like a whole lot of foil shavers, the Arc 5 doesn’t like to chop hairs longer than just a few millimeters. Shaving longer whiskers takes a large number of passes—and can nearly actually incur just a few painful hair pulls. The Arc 5 is a neat, clear shaver for many who are already neat and clear.

The Arc 5 can be very a lot not a element shaver. That is an attachment-free machine 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 day by day driver with no separate element trimmer.

Shell Sport

However the shaver’s lack of sharp edges will 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 with no mirror. (Should you’re the form 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 worth. I kinda simply get pleasure from the way it feels in my hand. Enjoyment is a vanishingly uncommon high quality amongst shavers.

“Nagori,” the title of the brand new materials from Mitsui Chemical substances that gives Arc 5’s oddly natural texture, is the form of phrase that folks usually wish to name untranslatable. Nagori refers to a form of instantaneous nostalgia, the type you would possibly really feel for a season because it passes or a meal’s ultimate course. It derives from an outdated Japanese phrase, “the remains of the waves,” referencing the shells and the tracks left behind when the tide goes again the place it got here from.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 nearly actually derives from the ocean minerals that type the idea of it. Nevertheless it additionally describes the sensation I bought 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 boring. The Arc 5’s frivolously 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 value $300 is between you and your accountant.