BEST BEARD TRIMMERS 2026: Complete Buyer's Guide (GQ Grooming Editor)

0:00 – 5:13

The safe bet for almost everyone

He opens with a confident promise: there is a beard trimmer here for customization, quality, value, or range, and he wastes almost no time on theory before going straight to the shelf. That framing matters because Adam Hurly is not pitching one magic gadget. He is sorting the market by the kind of person using it. The first big recommendation is the Philips Norelco Multigroom 9000, which he calls the best all-in-one and, in practical terms, the best option for the most people. What makes it memorable is how many jobs it can absorb without feeling flimsy. He describes it as a detailer, a shaver, a hair clipper, a nose hair trimmer, and a highly customizable device that lets you work down to millimeters. The concrete proof point is battery life: he says he got 17 hours from the first charge, which immediately signals endurance in a category where many tools feel disposable. He also points to its solid steel core and says it earned a Blue Ribbon Award from his platform because it belongs in his personal group of all-time great grooming products. Then he adds the crucial nuance that keeps the recommendation honest. Best overall does not always mean best for the most people. The Philips wins on versatility and reliability, but he hints that another product later will beat it for his own ideal definition of a beard trimmer. He also gives a surprisingly useful warning about Philips Norelco: the company constantly releases slight variations. A 23 in 1 can become a 28 in 1, then a 25 in 1, all within the same product family. His advice is to focus less on the exact attachment count and more on the tier. In his view, the 9000 gives you the most muscle and customization, the 7000 is the best step down because it still preserves the steel core and much of the flexibility, and the 5000 is where quality starts to drop more noticeably. That leads naturally into his budget pick, the Andis inSIGHT. The hook here is that it inherits the DNA of Andis' barber-loved Slimline Pro. He loves the T-blade head because it draws crisp lines, and he trusts Andis guard heads because they are well reinforced, which matters for avoiding patchiness and uneven trimming. His argument is that the inSIGHT gives regular buyers a consumer-friendly version of that professional precision. It is cheap, but it does not feel careless.