How to Turn Your Body Into A Hairless Wonderland With Gadgets

I am a surprisingly hairy man. All that hair needs the right tools to tame, trim, and shave. The three devices up to the task? The Mangroomer, the Philips Bodygroom, and the Flowbee have been around for a while and are great separately, but this is the first time that we’ve seen their full power unleashed together. Here’s how they stood up.Let’s start from the head down. First, the Flowbee. Even if you haven’t had the pleasure of having this used upon you—that is the correct description of being Flowbeed—you probably saw this on late night TV ads. If you’re not familiar, the Flowbee is a combination vacuum cleaner and (head) hair trimmer. Both plug into the wall (you can opt to use your own vacuum and save a few bucks on the order) and work together to simultaneously cut and clean up the mess.

It’s pretty unwieldy if you’re doing trimming yourself, so your best bet is to get someone to help. There are different sized spacer attachments so you can get a variation of lengths, but the shortest you can get is probably a #2 or a #3 (in regular trimmer terms). In the end, the only time you’d really use this is if your kid doesn’t care about how he—or help me Jeebus, she—looks or if you’re the last man on Earth and there are no barbers, stylists, or women of any kind around. But you do save money over the long run.

How well it works (1 to 10): 7

How good you look after it’s done: 3

Then there’s the Mangroomer. It looks like a cross between a backscratcher, a nunchuck, and an electric shaver. It allows you to reach behind your back (either overhand or sideways) and shave off the hair. In theory, it’s great. In practice, you need someone else to help.

The performance of the razor is great. It gets all your hair off in one or two strokes if you swipe cleanly and evenly, which means you’ll actually need someone behind you to direct—or even take over. Doing it yourself is alright (and is the point of the gadget), but without straining yourself with two mirrors it’s hard to make sure you’ve gotten your entire back.

As for comfort, well, the blade’s not really protected, which meant I had redness and some irritation after I was done, but cleared up after a good night’s sleep.

How well it works (1 to 10): 6 (8 with a helper)

How good you look after it’s done: 8

Last, and most importantly, the Bodygroom. Philips markets this shaver as a device that gets rid of all hair below the neck. This means your chest, your arms, your pits, your stomach, your legs, your crotch, and even your ass crevasse can be hair free. We only tested this on four of those seven places—points if you guess which—and found it to be a great shave.

It’s essentially a fancy beard trimmer with a fancy shave guard, which means you can stay far enough away from your goods to keep from injuring yourself and close enough to give you the freshness you’re looking for. But like shavers, you’ll have some itching afterwards. However, it’s the most pain-free way to get hair out of your genital region and into wherever you keep excess hair.

How well it works (1 to 10): 9

How good you look after it’s done: 9

The hair all grew back.