Dear Reader,

I just came home from shopping. While queueing forever, I had plenty of time studying the goodies that are usually placed just in front of the cashpoint. There is stuff that is meant for little kids so they annoy their parents with: “If I don’t get this, I cry like hell until you are so embarassed of everybody giving you weird looks, that you WILL buy it!”. But then there are other things there: cigarettes and alcoholic beverages, the strong stuff. The things that usually are excluded from general rebates.

However today I found ALL the shaving blades of Gillette right there as well! Prominently placed in very big packages, so it is harder to steal them. Why should you steal them? They are REALLY expensive! A set of the cheapest was CHF 23 (USD 19). Gillettes latest toy for “the best in man”, the Gillette Fusion Power blades were available for CHF 46 (USD 38).

That is a lot of money! To get these razor blades out into the stores all over the country, the retailers have to hire security companies that usually pick up the money in their bullet proof vans. That’s HOW valuebal those little things are! The saffron of the 21st century. Had I gotten all my salaries in razor blades instead of ordinary cash, I’d be a wealthy man by now…

“It looks like the big razor companies agreed to from some kind of a cartel to keep prices high. Someone should make a business out of selling cheap blades that go along with the gillette and wilkinson handles…”, I thought to myself. This was when I noticed the Matrix3 to the left of myself. Many meters in front of the cashpoint and in an ordinary, less guarded shelf.

“Wow! How is the cheeky company that dears to threaten the cartel?”. On the package I could only find the branding of the retailer I was at, Coop. From a very quick googling/asking I also did not find out a lot more. But it looks like it is some american company and that the Matrix3 can be bought in 1$ shops in the U.S. Here it is sold for CHF 7 (USD 5.7) for the handle and two blades and the extra blades cost CHF 6 (USD 4.9).

The Matrix3 (His Way) has three blades and looks like a normal razor. The only uncool thing about it so far is, that it misses the sexy way of unloading the old blade: The Gillette has a button that ejects the blade right into the bin. On the Matrix3 you have to kind of “break” it off. But unlike in the adverts, there is seldomly a sexy woman around who watches me shaving, let alone watching me swap blades. So that should not be the problem.

The essential question is: “Is this a razor that delivers a nice shave? Or do I cut myself all the time?”. Those are the key questions.

On the “old index” of wesblog (search for “matrix”), I found a “user-review” with the promising title:

“So You’ve Purchased a Matrix 3! (Alternate Title: So you’ve decided to kill yourself slowly and painfully!)”

Excerpt: “Got bored and glued some rusty blades to a stick today. All at weird angles and stuff. Dared my assistant to shave with it. We will be having the memorial service tomorrow.”

Apparently, it was invented by the spanish inquisition! Oh my God! What have I just bought! – Yes, I bought it and I AM REALLY AFRAID TO USE IT NOW! Damn! My only hope is that the editors of the wesblog are paid by the razor blade cartel…

So I found the blog of Tom Doobie. He gave me hope, a lot of hope, here’s an excerpt:

“The first shave seemed decent. Not blow me away decent, but good. Of course, I had a two-day growth on my face, so that may have factored in. But after that it was smooth sailing. The shaves were as good as the Sensor, if not better. But that’s not the best part. My stubble can render a new Gillette Sensor blade inoperable after two shaves…sometimes three. Ever since I’ve been using the Matrix3, I’ve been able to squeeze out up to a *week* of shaves before changing the blade. A WEEK. So not only is the Matrix3 cheaper than the Sensor, the blades last about three times as long. And guess what? I ran out of Matrix3 blades the other week and had to resort back to my Sensor. It tore my face up, even with a brand new blade.”

I just hope Tom is a honest man. I will find out myself tomorrow and let you know…

Thank you.