Is The Philips Norelco Nose Trimmer 5100 The Best. Philips nose trimmer

Is The Philips Norelco Nose Trimmer 5100 The Best?

The world of men’s grooming products can be a confusing space. There is not only a huge variety of different brands, but even variations within a brand. An example is the range of nose hair trimmers from Philips Norelco. Just within this one branch of their grooming tools, there is the Philips Norelco NoseTrimmer NT5175/49 that I am featuring in this review, plus the NoseTrimmer 3200 and the Multi Groomer MG3750/60. With the exception of the MG3750/60, the base micro trimmer is exactly the same. The difference is the attachments that come with it are different. So, each of these will work as a nose trimmer equally well. Which one you should buy, then depends on what you want to be able to do in addition to trimming your nose and ear hairs. With that out of the way, I want to FOCUS on how the nasal trimmers work on nose and ear hair as well as handling some other grooming jobs. Which is why I picked the NT5175/49 as it works as the best nose and ear trimmer without getting too bogged down with other uses.

What Comes With the Norelco Nose Trimmer 5100?

Ok let’s go into detail about each of the Philips Norelco Nose Trimmer 5100 attachments.

The foil guard on the trimmer is ultra thin to be easy on the skin. If you have a sensitive nose where the slightest buzzing inside your nostrils ends in a sneezing fit, then you’ll be happy to know that this shouldn’t happen to use when using the Philips nose trimmer.

The tips are curved for one thing so they are much less ticklish.

Then the design of the Philips Norelco Nose Trimmer 5100 is such that hairs won’t get stuck in the blades, resulting in hair pulling. It isn’t good to pluck your nose hairs, anyway, so you definitely don’t want your micro trimmer doing it for you.

The shape of the head makes it easy to maneuver inside your nostril, or even inside your ears. As an ear hair trimmer, it also works well, and very gently. You can run the foil guard on the outside of your hairs to knock down any unsightly hairs, too.

Also, the ear and nose trimmer is angled where the foil guard attachment connects to the base. This angle allows for excellent access to get easily inside the nose.

The body of the trimmer has a rubber grip so it won’t easily slip out of your hands.

If you need to edge your beard or sideburns then the easy to attach detail trimmer will convert it from a nose and ear trimmer to a hair edger and trimmer. It will get right down to the skin while leaving only the slightest stubble. In fact, I would say barely noticeable stubble.

The Philips Norelco Nose Trimmer 5100 features DualCut technology to cut hair twice as fast and without the need to keep going over the same spots, reducing irritation.

With a beard comb guard, you can keep your beard trimmed down to a neat ⅛ of an inch.

There are also two other guards for your eyebrows. One to trim them down to ⅛ of an inch, also, and one for 3/16 of an inch.

To use the eyebrow trimmer, simply disconnect the Philips Norelco Nose Trimmer 5100 from the base and attach the detail trimmer. Clip on the preferred length guard and just run the clippers over your eyebrows going against the grain, or the opposite direction the hairs grow in.

How to Use the Norelco Nose Trimmer 5100

The first thing to do after unboxing is to insert the battery. Twist open the body and pop the battery in. Make sure when you twist it to close that the arrows are lined up. You want a tight seal so no water gets inside when you clean it.

Blow your nose first and wipe inside your nostril with a tissue to make sure you don’t have any hangers in the closet.

Now it is ready to go, so just put the tip in your nose and basically turn it round and round along the inside of your nostril.

This will cut the hairs at the base right up against your nasal membrane. You will be left with stubble. This is a good thing, so if you think it is some kind of deficiency with the product, that is not the case.

Your nose hair is there to filter particles out of the hair that would end up in your lungs. You need some stubble to let them do their work. On that same note, make sure you don’t go too far up your nose. Only trim the ones that are poking out so that you leave enough full size hairs.

Though these can be cleaned by running under water they shouldn’t be used in the shower.

The Philips nose trimmer might be sealed enough to keep the water out, so that is not the issue, but the fact is that they don’t work on wet hair.

If you try to cut trim your nose, either in the shower, or right after while your nose hairs might still be wet, they will not get all of the hairs. That will definitely make for a frustrating experience, so make sure your nose hairs are dry.

After you are done trimming, just blow your nose into a tissue to get the loose hairs out.

Cleaning the Philips NT5175/49 Nose Trimmer

Clean up is a cinch and hardly takes a few seconds.

There is a small brush that comes with it that can be used to just wipe away any stray hairs. If you have a bit of build up on it, which you shouldn’t if you do this after every use, then you can run the tip under warm water to give it a deeper clean.

It is very important to clean this as you go. If you leave it too long, the build up will cause it to run slow, or weak or stop altogether. Besides the fact that it is just nasty to think about what that build up actually is that is causing it to malfunction!

As far as maintenance, there is none. You don’t have to oil the trimmers or ever have need to open them up to do any regular deep cleaning.

They are not something you need to add to any to do list, so they won’t ever be a burden.

FAQ About the Norelco NT5175/49 Nose Trimmer

Q: Can the Philips nose trimmer be used as a pubic hair trimmer? A: If you are using it as a way to touch up after having done some routine manscaping, then I would say yes. You could put the eyebrow trimmers on and shave it a bit that way. Without the guards, you could probably do some trimming, too. Especially around the edges. Or, you could put the detail trimmer on with the beard comb and trim it down to ⅛ of an inch. I probably wouldn’t use the detail trimmer on it’s own as it might pinch. Q: How loud is it when used as a nose and ear trimmer? A: These operate very quietly, so when trimming your ears it won’t be so loud as to be uncomfortable. And trimming your nose hairs won’t disturb a sleeping partner, either. Q: Can I buzz my beard off with the detail trimmer? A: This is not the tool to shave your face with. It will definitely put too much of a strain on it. Yes, it can trim your beard with the guard on it, but I don’t recommend doing that across your whole beard either.

Final Thoughts About the Philips Norelco Nose Trimmers 5100

In general, I like rotary nose trimmers over the foil guard ones. With that said, I am very comfortable recommending these nasal hair trimmers since I think they do a great job and at a great price. The biggest reason is because I have lots of other Philips products that I use regularly. They make some solid grooming products for home and the nose trimmers are no exception. If you’re on the fence and want to see how they compare to other nose hair trimmers, then check out our guide to the best nose trimmers by clicking here. If you have used these nose hair trimmers and want to chime in on them, or if you have any questions, make sure to leave a comment below!

Norelco Nose Trimmer

The Best Nose Hair Trimmers

A fter two months of testing eight different designs, we’ve picked the Panasonic – ER430K as the best nose hair trimmer. This is a refined improvement of the classic trimmer design, with a better blade and a vacuum to keep crusty clippings off your shirt. The ER430K is fully waterproof, so it’s easy to clean and keeps batteries dry. Also great is the Philips – NT1500, which proved it’s a better detail trimmer than it is a nose hair trimmer.

A fter two months of testing eight different designs, we’ve picked the Panasonic – ER430K as the best nose hair trimmer. This is a refined improvement of the classic trimmer design, with a better blade and a vacuum to keep crusty clippings off your shirt. The ER430K is fully waterproof, so it’s easy to clean and keeps batteries dry. Also great is the Philips – NT1500, which proved it’s a better detail trimmer than it is a nose hair trimmer.

The 8 nose hair trimmers we tested

BrandPriceBattery Life (Hours:Minutes)Easy cutting (1-5)WaterproofCleaning (1-5)

Best overall: Panasonic – ER430K

The Panasonic – ER430K is a more complicated nose hair trimmer than most. Not satisfied to simply trim your nose hair, it also uses a tiny vacuum to collect the hairs in a little trap for later disposal.

If this trimmer weren’t great at doing what it says on the box, we wouldn’t recommend it specifically because of the vacuum. Fortunately, this is one of the best trimmers we tried, and the price is right in the middle of the range. The vacuum, then, is a nice bonus.

When you’re cleaning this trimmer, it takes less work to clean out gunk because of the flow-through design that allows the vacuum to grab hairs. The manual says to clean the trimmer with the motor off, but if you do run it while submerged it’ll scrub the blades really well with a fast-flowing stream of water drawn through by the vacuum system. The instruction left us uncertain about whether this is intended, but the vacuum-free ERGN30K model lists this as a feature called “vortex cleaning.”

If you don’t care about the vacuum feature and want to save 5, the ERGN30K uses the same great blade and should be just as easy to clean. Panasonic lists the same 90-minute runtime for the cheaper model that we got with the vacuum-powered ER430K, but they might just be giving a conservative estimate. The vacuum feature is handy enough that we think the ER430K is worth an extra 5, and it also comes with a cap and zippered case to keep it clean.

Top Pick: Panasonic. ER430K

Panasonic is one of the few manufacturers trying a different cutting blade in this classic design, and it’s a real improvement over the average trimmer. The ER430K also comes with a handy vacuum feature.

How to use Philips Nose Trimmer NT5000

As mentioned in our testing section, you should see much better run-times with this powerful little motor if you switch to high-capacity nickel metal hydride batteries like these Amazon Basics, Eneloop Pro or Ansmann cells. You’d see an increase with other trimmers, too, but the 90-minute runtime on an alkaline indicates that the Panasonic is pulling just less than 1 ampere of power. This is compared to around 0.3 amps for the others, which means Panasonic will gain more runtime from better battery chemistry.

The competition

The real competition for Panasonic’s trimmer is the ToiletTree trimmer. Some of these are more expensive, some are a bit cheaper, but unless you’re buying from eBay or Aliexpress you’re not saving any money by going for lesser-known brands.

As you can see from the image above, the ToiletTree trimmer (with the white post) uses a very similar cutter to Panasonic’s, so it has similar advantages. It’s hard to say if the Panasonic was working better for us because of a stronger motor or just because of the vacuum drawing hair into the blades, but it did seem to snip hairs a little bit more readily. The biggest difference between the two is definitely the noise of the vacuum, though we think it’s a worthwhile trade-off. (And, as we’ve said, if you don’t want that feature the no-vacuum ERGN30K model is one of the least expensive trimmers we found.)

Key takeaways:

• A refined blade design helps the Panasonic – ER430K cut better and at nearly any angle.
• The vacuum actually works and helps keep those bits of crusty hair off your shirt.
• The strong motor and vacuum feature come at a cost: runtime is only 96 minutes on alkaline AA cells.
• Panasonic put a lot of work into making this waterproof and easy to clean.

Also great: Philips – NT1500

If the traditional nose-cone design doesn’t appeal to you, the Philips – NT1500 is definitely worth checking out. This trimmer uses a blade that’s something like a cross between an electric shaver and a clipper, and it works very well.

On many metrics this trimmer is superior to the Panasonic: it’s cheaper, it runs four times longer on a battery and it’s almost just as easy to clean. But for easy trimming of nose hair, the usefulness lags behind Panasonic’s evolved form of the old standby.

This different style of cutter works fairly well for nose hair, but it’s better for eyebrows and ears. A waterproof design sets this apart from other contenders, but the Panasonic is better inside your nostrils. Easy to clean and long-running, the price is right for a variety of clean-up jobs.

You’ll spend more time fishing around in your nostril with Philips’s design trying to connect the cutter and that one pesky hair. If you want to keep a decent amount of hair inside your nostril to help you avoid breathing in dust, this design isn’t very helpful.

For trimming other stray hairs on your face, though, this is a great design. Eyebrow trimming with the included comb attachment works well, and it’s easy to run over the back of your ear to grab hairs you didn’t even know about.

The Philips trimmer even does an OK job with sideburns and mustache edges, though it’s not a replacement for a beard trimmer. It won’t get especially close, either, so if you were relying on this to form sideburns you’d definitely want to do so before you shave. On the plus side, this design won’t pull or pinch or even tickle the way some other trimmer blades can.

Key takeaways:

• The Philips – NT1500 is a less-conventional trimmer shape that still works very well for cutting nose hair.
• For ear and eyebrow hair, this trimmer is just a bit easier to use.
• This trimmer runs longer than any of the other waterproof designs, 373 minutes on an alkaline AA.
• The price is right: this is also the least expensive waterproof trimmer we found.

Other products we tested

Conair – NE150R

The Conair – NE150R uses a blade design that might be most familiar. Basically a tiny five-segment hair clipper, it’s dialed in to cut efficiently. If you were always certain exactly where your stray hairs are, this design would be ideal. Most people are going to want something they can quickly run around the inside of their nostril, though, and the NE150R doesn’t do this quite as well as the traditional nose-cone design.

In most other respects, though, this is an excellent trimmer. The blade design is simple and very easy to clean, though sadly the motor and battery compartment aren’t waterproof. This was the most affordable trimmer we tested, from a name that’s as old as any in grooming products. The alkaline battery runtime for this trimmer was even a little bit longer than the Philips.

If you’re at all ticklish, the way these blades move back and forth next to your skin might be slightly unnerving. We don’t think it’s a problem, necessarily, but since the competition can cut without tickling your nose as much, Conair loses a few places in the ranking.

If you don’t care about waterproofing and you can always see exactly what hairs you need to cut, this would be a great pick. For the rest of us, it’s just not quite as good as the Panasonic.

ToiletTree

ToiletTree may or may not be the company that designed this trimmer, but it’s one of the best-selling models out there. The ToiletTree brand came up frequently in consumer mentions in our research, and they’re now stocked at CVS stores. There are other trimmers that appear to be identical, but this one is easy to find.

On the plus side, this trimmer is quieter than the vacuum on the Panasonic and uses a similar blade design that trims on the end of the cone as well as the sides. It works almost just as well as the Panasonic, and it will run for almost three times longer on a AA battery.

That said, the ToiletTree costs a few dollars more than the Panasonic, and it’s not quite as powerful or easy to clean. If battery life were a more important consideration this might rank higher. Someday we may see USB-rechargeable designs that make sense, but at this point, you’re still going to need to keep batteries around. Even a two-fold increase in battery life isn’t going to change the way you feel about a trimmer.

The LED light is also a bit silly — even a poorly-lit bathroom doesn’t really benefit from the amount of light that this puts out. In comparison, the vacuum on the Panasonic trimmer might actually save you from some embarrassment or help keep your bathroom clean.

Wahl – 5545

Everyone who has seen or owned a nose hair trimmer probably knows what they need to know about the Wahl – 5545. This is a bare-bones rotary trimmer: the rotating blades chop off anything that comes into the nose-cone as they run along the inside.

Compared to our top pick, this design is lacking in a few ways. The blades are only cutting on the sides, compared to the Panasonic design that snips off at the top as well. The motor seems noticeably stronger on the Panasonic, which does have a tradeoff in battery life.

The Wahl doesn’t have waterproofing, either, which doesn’t stop you from rinsing the blade under your tap, but after using designs that you can drop in the sink it’s a definite regression.

We were also surprised that this trimmer isn’t more affordable. Panasonic has a number of bare-bones designs that are cheaper, and even the waterproof Philips model we picked as our runner up was a few dollars less.

Wahl uses basically this same blade design as an attachment on their cordless 9818 Beard trimmer, and as a free accessory in that package, it’s good to go. As a stand-alone design, though, it’s just not compelling.

Conair – PG 1000

The Conair – PG 1000 looks like a compelling alternative to the old Wahl design and the new Panasonic design for nose hair cutter shapes. The rotary trimmer is shaped in a cone, with blades that seem designed to trim an even length at the opening of your nostril.

In practice, though, this trimmer has two problems. First, hair that enters the trimmer from the middle of the blade cone rather than the side is actually prevented from moving out to the cutting path. Second, you can’t remove the cutting blade from this trimmer for cleaning.

We had hoped that this would be competitive with the Panasonic, but it was actually one of the least-effective trimmers we used. It works, but basically any other blade design will trim hair more quickly and easily.

Not recommended: Kedsum and Groom Mate

Kedsum is one of many brands selling this scissor-action rotary trimmer, while the Groom Mate – Platinum XL is a similar rotary cutter that requires two hands to use. These blades cut in a very similar way to the standby rotary electric blade in the Wahl, but with some interesting differences that make them less useful.

On both trimmers, hairs need to slip down into the side of the cutter to be snipped off; on really long hair it works, but if you’re just doing a precautionary clean-up pass you could easily miss hairs that aren’t lying in the right direction.

When cutting nose hair, this was mostly a pain-free experience. At times, though, hair was pinched and pulled by the cutting motion. Ouch. It’s hard to say exactly what the problem is, and it’s worse when we try it on eyebrow or arm hair than inside the nostril, but since these aren’t very efficient trimmers to begin with it’s just not worth the potential pain.

If we had to pick a battery-free way to trim nose hair, we’d go with these high-end scissors from Rubis or this more affordable option instead.

How we selected

The Wahl 5545 included in this review has been owned and used by our tester for about 10 years and represents a baseline for standard designs. There’s nothing specifically wrong with it, but we looked at the range of other models on the market to see if we could find improvements in design and function.

Finding credible information to narrow down our selections was tricky. Magazine-style features like this one from AskMen didn’t describe anything specific about the performance or cutting ability of the different trimmers they recommend and seemed mostly to FOCUS on claims rather than results.

The relevant subreddits yielded more credible answers about what works and some recommendations. Manual trimmers seemed popular among /r/buyit4life Redditors, so we included the two most popular designs.

We looked for niche blogs that might give more insight into what makes or breaks a trimmer, but again we found no evidence of side-by-side testing in popular reviews.

Amazon and other retailers ratings/user reviews were probably the most useful source of info, with some solid (if anecdotal) evidence of models that were great. As always, we filtered for an average score of 4.0 or better and looked for leading designs that had consistently good reviews.

Nose hair trimmers use cheap components and very basic designs, so we’re not surprised to see that even the most highly-regarded designs seem to have some units leave the factory with parts that don’t work or break quickly. A 10-percent failure rate seems to be about average for the most popular models. There was no apparent alternative in compact trimmers with better longevity, at any price.

The vast majority of trimmers use a “nose cone” cutter guard, so we tried hard to find representative models that used other shapes or designs. We picked three trimmers with other cutter designs to see if any differences showed up in testing.

How we tested

Battery life

We put fresh Ikea – Alkalisk AA alkaline batteries in each of these and let them run until they stopped cutting hair.

We want to point out that this isn’t an absolute virtue: a longer battery life may also indicate a weaker motor. In the case of the Panasonic, it seems clear that vacuuming up hair clippings has a cost in battery life.

The overall winner for battery life was the Conair – NE150R, with a reciprocating blade that trims very efficiently despite its tiny motor. Even when the battery voltage drops too low to spin up the Panasonic, this trimmer will keep on cutting. That said, the Philips – NT1500 was only 10 minutes short of the Conair’s time, so the waterproof design earned a runner-up pick.

These (and most other) alkaline cells we used give about 1186 mAH with a draw comparable to the Panasonic’s bigger motor, so you could improve runtime by switching to better battery chemistry like the Amazon Basics NiMH AA.

Easy cutting and comfort test

Our tester used these trimmers on every nose, eyebrow and ear hair he could find for two months, and supplemented with chest, leg and armpit hair for additional testing. (Leg hair actually hurt the most!)

The electric trimmers all did a good job cutting hair we pushed into the blades, but when it came to actual cutting inside the nostril some designs worked better than others.

The biggest difference we saw among rotary-type blades was inside vs. top cutting blades. Panasonic has developed a blade for their trimmers that cuts on the end as well as the sides, and the ToiletTree trimmer is a very similar design. This allowed for quicker and easier cutting in every task, without giving up the safety and simplicity of the “nose-cone” guard blade.

The manual trimmers from Kedsum and Groom Mate were the only designs that caused “pulling” in use. The blades sometimes failed to cut hairs cleanly, pulling on the hair instead of removing the trimmed end. We tested with a variety of hair types and tried to ensure we were holding the trimmer still while spinning the blade, but the careful practice didn’t change the frequency of painful results. You can get OK results with these manual trimmers, but even scissors would be better.

Thick hair test

Using thick hair and peanut butter, we tried to bog down these trimmers to the point where they wouldn’t cut anymore. While some trimmers had more difficulty connecting their cutting elements with the thick and sticky hair, all the powered trimmers were still able to cut.

Cleaning test

After running each of the trimmers through hair and peanut butter to get them good and gummy, we tried cleaning each with soap and water, then disassembling to see how clean they really were.

While cleaning, we also put dry tissue paper in the battery compartment and immersed the trimmers in the sink to see how waterproof they actually are. All the units advertised as waterproof actually were, using an O-ring seal around the battery compartment cap to keep water away from the battery terminals.

Should you trim or pluck?

Some popular misconceptions come up frequently when people discuss managing nose hair. For example, many will rightly point out that plucked hairs take longer to grow back than hairs trimmed to a length just inside the nose. Plucking is pretty easy with a pair of the best tweezers, and that means it’s better all around, right?

Maybe not. There are a lot of legends and scary stories that you’ll hear about nose-hair-plucking. Our tester grew up hearing stories from his grandpa about someone who died after plucking a hair that went all the way up into his brain, a story that’s almost certainly not accurate. We spent some time sorting fact from fiction and getting the details about why you might not want to do it.

Cavernous sinus thrombosis is a real thing, and it’s really bad, but that doesn’t mean plucking a nose hair will kill you. Basically, plucking a nose hair leaves the inside of your nose with an unprotected wound that could get infected. An infection so close to your brain is definitely something you want to avoid.

A trimmer that reaches all the way to the base of a nose hair may sound like a great idea, but remember that your nose hairs do serve a useful purpose guarding against stuff that could cause those serious infections. Aggressive trimming won’t leave a hole, but it still means you’re not getting the protection the hairs are supposed to provide. Careful trimming of just the ends of the hairs means you’ve still got hair where you need it, but not peeking out at your date.

Also, remember that trimming your hair cannot cause its rate of growth to change: Using a nose hair trimmer will not make your hairs come back quicker or thicker. The rate of growth varies, but on average it should take about six months to grow an inch. Plucked hair takes far longer to grow back (since you’ve removed the follicle and it’ll take time to grow a new one), but just because trimmed hair grows back in a few weeks doesn’t mean it’s growing more quickly or in a different shape.

These trimmers are for more than just noses, though. Trimmers are sometimes said to be better for eyebrows than tweezers, though if you’ve got especially bushy brows then you might appreciate the opportunity to thin them out. We have a bunch of recommendations for hair removal tweezers, and it’s probably worth owning both types of tool.

Important features to consider

Trimmer type: There is no detailed taxonomy of names for trimmer types that we could find, but you’ll probably recognize most of the cutting elements:

• Rotary nose-cone trimmers use a spinning blade inside an outer guard blade. It can’t trim especially close, but it keeps your nose safe from cuts. This is by far the most popular design.
• Reciprocating clippers are like tiny hair clippers with a combed blade moving back and forth against a guard blade. Unlike some hair clippers, these are specifically designed so they can’t cut you, though they can still tickle.
• The Philips Nosetrimmer uses the only really unique cutter design, with a tiny blade moving back and forth inside a hollow foil like a micro-shaver. Despite the unfortunate name, we’re happy to report that these blades do not trim the flesh of your nose.

Multipurpose systems: We tested a few models that came with attachments, but the tiny motors in these trimmers aren’t good for much more than cutting a few hairs at a time.

If you’re looking for a device that does more than just trim nose hairs, you’re definitely better off making the more demanding task a priority. We reviewed beard trimmers and body hair trimmers with attachments suitable for nose hair, and they all work just as well as (if not better than) AA-battery-powered trimmers.

Waterproof design: No, this isn’t to protect the trimmer from your nose, it’s to help with cleaning. All the nose hair trimmers we found were designed to be washed out, but some were completely sealed, so water won’t even get into the battery compartment. This isn’t a big functional difference for trimming, but keeping water out of the electrical connections will help ensure a long life.

The bottom line

If you’re looking for your first nose hair trimmer, enjoy your youth while it lasts. If you’re like those of us who are looking for a trimmer to replace something you’ve had for a few years that has already died, we have some picks that will hopefully impress.

The Panasonic – ER430K is a nearly perfect nose hair trimmer with a powerful motor and blades that cut any hairs at every angle. If you’re trimming on the way out the door, the vacuum feature also keeps crusty hairs off your shirt. This is a waterproof trimmer that’s easy to wash and maintain, and the price is right.

If you’d like something that’s a little more versatile and doesn’t eat through batteries as quickly as Panasonic’s rotary trimmer, the Philips – NT1500 is cost-effective and quite good at trimming hairs. The Philips is better on ears and eyebrows than inside the nostril, but it’ll run four times longer than the Panasonic on a AA battery and it’s still waterproof.

Top Pick: Panasonic. ER430K

Panasonic has sealed the deal with a great trimmer blade design and powerful motor that also sucks up the hairs as it trims. Battery life isn’t as good as some other trimmers, but we think the design is worth that price.

Daniel is a Canadian farm boy who grew up to be a nerd with a literature degree and too many hobbies to count. He emigrated from Canada to California in 2013, and now writes for Your Best Digs full-time. Daniel remains unapologetic about Canadian spelling, serial commas, and the destruction of expensive travel mugs.

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The Best Nose Hair Trimmers

A fter two months of testing eight different designs, we’ve picked the Panasonic – ER430K as the best nose hair trimmer. This is a refined improvement of the classic trimmer design, with a better blade and a vacuum to keep crusty clippings off your shirt. The ER430K is fully waterproof, so it’s easy to clean and keeps batteries dry. Also great is the Philips – NT1500, which proved it’s a better detail trimmer than it is a nose hair trimmer.

A fter two months of testing eight different designs, we’ve picked the Panasonic – ER430K as the best nose hair trimmer. This is a refined improvement of the classic trimmer design, with a better blade and a vacuum to keep crusty clippings off your shirt. The ER430K is fully waterproof, so it’s easy to clean and keeps batteries dry. Also great is the Philips – NT1500, which proved it’s a better detail trimmer than it is a nose hair trimmer.

The 8 nose hair trimmers we tested

BrandPriceBattery Life (Hours:Minutes)Easy cutting (1-5)WaterproofCleaning (1-5)

Best overall: Panasonic – ER430K

The Panasonic – ER430K is a more complicated nose hair trimmer than most. Not satisfied to simply trim your nose hair, it also uses a tiny vacuum to collect the hairs in a little trap for later disposal.

If this trimmer weren’t great at doing what it says on the box, we wouldn’t recommend it specifically because of the vacuum. Fortunately, this is one of the best trimmers we tried, and the price is right in the middle of the range. The vacuum, then, is a nice bonus.

When you’re cleaning this trimmer, it takes less work to clean out gunk because of the flow-through design that allows the vacuum to grab hairs. The manual says to clean the trimmer with the motor off, but if you do run it while submerged it’ll scrub the blades really well with a fast-flowing stream of water drawn through by the vacuum system. The instruction left us uncertain about whether this is intended, but the vacuum-free ERGN30K model lists this as a feature called “vortex cleaning.”

If you don’t care about the vacuum feature and want to save 5, the ERGN30K uses the same great blade and should be just as easy to clean. Panasonic lists the same 90-minute runtime for the cheaper model that we got with the vacuum-powered ER430K, but they might just be giving a conservative estimate. The vacuum feature is handy enough that we think the ER430K is worth an extra 5, and it also comes with a cap and zippered case to keep it clean.

Top Pick: Panasonic. ER430K

Panasonic is one of the few manufacturers trying a different cutting blade in this classic design, and it’s a real improvement over the average trimmer. The ER430K also comes with a handy vacuum feature.

As mentioned in our testing section, you should see much better run-times with this powerful little motor if you switch to high-capacity nickel metal hydride batteries like these Amazon Basics, Eneloop Pro or Ansmann cells. You’d see an increase with other trimmers, too, but the 90-minute runtime on an alkaline indicates that the Panasonic is pulling just less than 1 ampere of power. This is compared to around 0.3 amps for the others, which means Panasonic will gain more runtime from better battery chemistry.

The competition

The real competition for Panasonic’s trimmer is the ToiletTree trimmer. Some of these are more expensive, some are a bit cheaper, but unless you’re buying from eBay or Aliexpress you’re not saving any money by going for lesser-known brands.

As you can see from the image above, the ToiletTree trimmer (with the white post) uses a very similar cutter to Panasonic’s, so it has similar advantages. It’s hard to say if the Panasonic was working better for us because of a stronger motor or just because of the vacuum drawing hair into the blades, but it did seem to snip hairs a little bit more readily. The biggest difference between the two is definitely the noise of the vacuum, though we think it’s a worthwhile trade-off. (And, as we’ve said, if you don’t want that feature the no-vacuum ERGN30K model is one of the least expensive trimmers we found.)

Key takeaways:

• A refined blade design helps the Panasonic – ER430K cut better and at nearly any angle.
• The vacuum actually works and helps keep those bits of crusty hair off your shirt.
• The strong motor and vacuum feature come at a cost: runtime is only 96 minutes on alkaline AA cells.
• Panasonic put a lot of work into making this waterproof and easy to clean.

Also great: Philips – NT1500

If the traditional nose-cone design doesn’t appeal to you, the Philips – NT1500 is definitely worth checking out. This trimmer uses a blade that’s something like a cross between an electric shaver and a clipper, and it works very well.

On many metrics this trimmer is superior to the Panasonic: it’s cheaper, it runs four times longer on a battery and it’s almost just as easy to clean. But for easy trimming of nose hair, the usefulness lags behind Panasonic’s evolved form of the old standby.

This different style of cutter works fairly well for nose hair, but it’s better for eyebrows and ears. A waterproof design sets this apart from other contenders, but the Panasonic is better inside your nostrils. Easy to clean and long-running, the price is right for a variety of clean-up jobs.

You’ll spend more time fishing around in your nostril with Philips’s design trying to connect the cutter and that one pesky hair. If you want to keep a decent amount of hair inside your nostril to help you avoid breathing in dust, this design isn’t very helpful.

For trimming other stray hairs on your face, though, this is a great design. Eyebrow trimming with the included comb attachment works well, and it’s easy to run over the back of your ear to grab hairs you didn’t even know about.

The Philips trimmer even does an OK job with sideburns and mustache edges, though it’s not a replacement for a beard trimmer. It won’t get especially close, either, so if you were relying on this to form sideburns you’d definitely want to do so before you shave. On the plus side, this design won’t pull or pinch or even tickle the way some other trimmer blades can.

Key takeaways:

• The Philips – NT1500 is a less-conventional trimmer shape that still works very well for cutting nose hair.
• For ear and eyebrow hair, this trimmer is just a bit easier to use.
• This trimmer runs longer than any of the other waterproof designs, 373 minutes on an alkaline AA.
• The price is right: this is also the least expensive waterproof trimmer we found.

Other products we tested

Conair – NE150R

The Conair – NE150R uses a blade design that might be most familiar. Basically a tiny five-segment hair clipper, it’s dialed in to cut efficiently. If you were always certain exactly where your stray hairs are, this design would be ideal. Most people are going to want something they can quickly run around the inside of their nostril, though, and the NE150R doesn’t do this quite as well as the traditional nose-cone design.

In most other respects, though, this is an excellent trimmer. The blade design is simple and very easy to clean, though sadly the motor and battery compartment aren’t waterproof. This was the most affordable trimmer we tested, from a name that’s as old as any in grooming products. The alkaline battery runtime for this trimmer was even a little bit longer than the Philips.

If you’re at all ticklish, the way these blades move back and forth next to your skin might be slightly unnerving. We don’t think it’s a problem, necessarily, but since the competition can cut without tickling your nose as much, Conair loses a few places in the ranking.

If you don’t care about waterproofing and you can always see exactly what hairs you need to cut, this would be a great pick. For the rest of us, it’s just not quite as good as the Panasonic.

ToiletTree

ToiletTree may or may not be the company that designed this trimmer, but it’s one of the best-selling models out there. The ToiletTree brand came up frequently in consumer mentions in our research, and they’re now stocked at CVS stores. There are other trimmers that appear to be identical, but this one is easy to find.

On the plus side, this trimmer is quieter than the vacuum on the Panasonic and uses a similar blade design that trims on the end of the cone as well as the sides. It works almost just as well as the Panasonic, and it will run for almost three times longer on a AA battery.

That said, the ToiletTree costs a few dollars more than the Panasonic, and it’s not quite as powerful or easy to clean. If battery life were a more important consideration this might rank higher. Someday we may see USB-rechargeable designs that make sense, but at this point, you’re still going to need to keep batteries around. Even a two-fold increase in battery life isn’t going to change the way you feel about a trimmer.

The LED light is also a bit silly — even a poorly-lit bathroom doesn’t really benefit from the amount of light that this puts out. In comparison, the vacuum on the Panasonic trimmer might actually save you from some embarrassment or help keep your bathroom clean.

Wahl – 5545

Everyone who has seen or owned a nose hair trimmer probably knows what they need to know about the Wahl – 5545. This is a bare-bones rotary trimmer: the rotating blades chop off anything that comes into the nose-cone as they run along the inside.

Compared to our top pick, this design is lacking in a few ways. The blades are only cutting on the sides, compared to the Panasonic design that snips off at the top as well. The motor seems noticeably stronger on the Panasonic, which does have a tradeoff in battery life.

The Wahl doesn’t have waterproofing, either, which doesn’t stop you from rinsing the blade under your tap, but after using designs that you can drop in the sink it’s a definite regression.

We were also surprised that this trimmer isn’t more affordable. Panasonic has a number of bare-bones designs that are cheaper, and even the waterproof Philips model we picked as our runner up was a few dollars less.

Wahl uses basically this same blade design as an attachment on their cordless 9818 Beard trimmer, and as a free accessory in that package, it’s good to go. As a stand-alone design, though, it’s just not compelling.

Conair – PG 1000

The Conair – PG 1000 looks like a compelling alternative to the old Wahl design and the new Panasonic design for nose hair cutter shapes. The rotary trimmer is shaped in a cone, with blades that seem designed to trim an even length at the opening of your nostril.

In practice, though, this trimmer has two problems. First, hair that enters the trimmer from the middle of the blade cone rather than the side is actually prevented from moving out to the cutting path. Second, you can’t remove the cutting blade from this trimmer for cleaning.

We had hoped that this would be competitive with the Panasonic, but it was actually one of the least-effective trimmers we used. It works, but basically any other blade design will trim hair more quickly and easily.

Not recommended: Kedsum and Groom Mate

Kedsum is one of many brands selling this scissor-action rotary trimmer, while the Groom Mate – Platinum XL is a similar rotary cutter that requires two hands to use. These blades cut in a very similar way to the standby rotary electric blade in the Wahl, but with some interesting differences that make them less useful.

On both trimmers, hairs need to slip down into the side of the cutter to be snipped off; on really long hair it works, but if you’re just doing a precautionary clean-up pass you could easily miss hairs that aren’t lying in the right direction.

When cutting nose hair, this was mostly a pain-free experience. At times, though, hair was pinched and pulled by the cutting motion. Ouch. It’s hard to say exactly what the problem is, and it’s worse when we try it on eyebrow or arm hair than inside the nostril, but since these aren’t very efficient trimmers to begin with it’s just not worth the potential pain.

If we had to pick a battery-free way to trim nose hair, we’d go with these high-end scissors from Rubis or this more affordable option instead.

How we selected

The Wahl 5545 included in this review has been owned and used by our tester for about 10 years and represents a baseline for standard designs. There’s nothing specifically wrong with it, but we looked at the range of other models on the market to see if we could find improvements in design and function.

Finding credible information to narrow down our selections was tricky. Magazine-style features like this one from AskMen didn’t describe anything specific about the performance or cutting ability of the different trimmers they recommend and seemed mostly to FOCUS on claims rather than results.

The relevant subreddits yielded more credible answers about what works and some recommendations. Manual trimmers seemed popular among /r/buyit4life Redditors, so we included the two most popular designs.

We looked for niche blogs that might give more insight into what makes or breaks a trimmer, but again we found no evidence of side-by-side testing in popular reviews.

Amazon and other retailers ratings/user reviews were probably the most useful source of info, with some solid (if anecdotal) evidence of models that were great. As always, we filtered for an average score of 4.0 or better and looked for leading designs that had consistently good reviews.

Nose hair trimmers use cheap components and very basic designs, so we’re not surprised to see that even the most highly-regarded designs seem to have some units leave the factory with parts that don’t work or break quickly. A 10-percent failure rate seems to be about average for the most popular models. There was no apparent alternative in compact trimmers with better longevity, at any price.

The vast majority of trimmers use a “nose cone” cutter guard, so we tried hard to find representative models that used other shapes or designs. We picked three trimmers with other cutter designs to see if any differences showed up in testing.

How we tested

Battery life

We put fresh Ikea – Alkalisk AA alkaline batteries in each of these and let them run until they stopped cutting hair.

We want to point out that this isn’t an absolute virtue: a longer battery life may also indicate a weaker motor. In the case of the Panasonic, it seems clear that vacuuming up hair clippings has a cost in battery life.

The overall winner for battery life was the Conair – NE150R, with a reciprocating blade that trims very efficiently despite its tiny motor. Even when the battery voltage drops too low to spin up the Panasonic, this trimmer will keep on cutting. That said, the Philips – NT1500 was only 10 minutes short of the Conair’s time, so the waterproof design earned a runner-up pick.

These (and most other) alkaline cells we used give about 1186 mAH with a draw comparable to the Panasonic’s bigger motor, so you could improve runtime by switching to better battery chemistry like the Amazon Basics NiMH AA.

Easy cutting and comfort test

Our tester used these trimmers on every nose, eyebrow and ear hair he could find for two months, and supplemented with chest, leg and armpit hair for additional testing. (Leg hair actually hurt the most!)

The electric trimmers all did a good job cutting hair we pushed into the blades, but when it came to actual cutting inside the nostril some designs worked better than others.

The biggest difference we saw among rotary-type blades was inside vs. top cutting blades. Panasonic has developed a blade for their trimmers that cuts on the end as well as the sides, and the ToiletTree trimmer is a very similar design. This allowed for quicker and easier cutting in every task, without giving up the safety and simplicity of the “nose-cone” guard blade.

The manual trimmers from Kedsum and Groom Mate were the only designs that caused “pulling” in use. The blades sometimes failed to cut hairs cleanly, pulling on the hair instead of removing the trimmed end. We tested with a variety of hair types and tried to ensure we were holding the trimmer still while spinning the blade, but the careful practice didn’t change the frequency of painful results. You can get OK results with these manual trimmers, but even scissors would be better.

Thick hair test

Using thick hair and peanut butter, we tried to bog down these trimmers to the point where they wouldn’t cut anymore. While some trimmers had more difficulty connecting their cutting elements with the thick and sticky hair, all the powered trimmers were still able to cut.

Cleaning test

After running each of the trimmers through hair and peanut butter to get them good and gummy, we tried cleaning each with soap and water, then disassembling to see how clean they really were.

While cleaning, we also put dry tissue paper in the battery compartment and immersed the trimmers in the sink to see how waterproof they actually are. All the units advertised as waterproof actually were, using an O-ring seal around the battery compartment cap to keep water away from the battery terminals.

Should you trim or pluck?

Some popular misconceptions come up frequently when people discuss managing nose hair. For example, many will rightly point out that plucked hairs take longer to grow back than hairs trimmed to a length just inside the nose. Plucking is pretty easy with a pair of the best tweezers, and that means it’s better all around, right?

Maybe not. There are a lot of legends and scary stories that you’ll hear about nose-hair-plucking. Our tester grew up hearing stories from his grandpa about someone who died after plucking a hair that went all the way up into his brain, a story that’s almost certainly not accurate. We spent some time sorting fact from fiction and getting the details about why you might not want to do it.

Cavernous sinus thrombosis is a real thing, and it’s really bad, but that doesn’t mean plucking a nose hair will kill you. Basically, plucking a nose hair leaves the inside of your nose with an unprotected wound that could get infected. An infection so close to your brain is definitely something you want to avoid.

A trimmer that reaches all the way to the base of a nose hair may sound like a great idea, but remember that your nose hairs do serve a useful purpose guarding against stuff that could cause those serious infections. Aggressive trimming won’t leave a hole, but it still means you’re not getting the protection the hairs are supposed to provide. Careful trimming of just the ends of the hairs means you’ve still got hair where you need it, but not peeking out at your date.

Also, remember that trimming your hair cannot cause its rate of growth to change: Using a nose hair trimmer will not make your hairs come back quicker or thicker. The rate of growth varies, but on average it should take about six months to grow an inch. Plucked hair takes far longer to grow back (since you’ve removed the follicle and it’ll take time to grow a new one), but just because trimmed hair grows back in a few weeks doesn’t mean it’s growing more quickly or in a different shape.

These trimmers are for more than just noses, though. Trimmers are sometimes said to be better for eyebrows than tweezers, though if you’ve got especially bushy brows then you might appreciate the opportunity to thin them out. We have a bunch of recommendations for hair removal tweezers, and it’s probably worth owning both types of tool.

Important features to consider

Trimmer type: There is no detailed taxonomy of names for trimmer types that we could find, but you’ll probably recognize most of the cutting elements:

• Rotary nose-cone trimmers use a spinning blade inside an outer guard blade. It can’t trim especially close, but it keeps your nose safe from cuts. This is by far the most popular design.
• Reciprocating clippers are like tiny hair clippers with a combed blade moving back and forth against a guard blade. Unlike some hair clippers, these are specifically designed so they can’t cut you, though they can still tickle.
• The Philips Nosetrimmer uses the only really unique cutter design, with a tiny blade moving back and forth inside a hollow foil like a micro-shaver. Despite the unfortunate name, we’re happy to report that these blades do not trim the flesh of your nose.

Multipurpose systems: We tested a few models that came with attachments, but the tiny motors in these trimmers aren’t good for much more than cutting a few hairs at a time.

If you’re looking for a device that does more than just trim nose hairs, you’re definitely better off making the more demanding task a priority. We reviewed beard trimmers and body hair trimmers with attachments suitable for nose hair, and they all work just as well as (if not better than) AA-battery-powered trimmers.

Waterproof design: No, this isn’t to protect the trimmer from your nose, it’s to help with cleaning. All the nose hair trimmers we found were designed to be washed out, but some were completely sealed, so water won’t even get into the battery compartment. This isn’t a big functional difference for trimming, but keeping water out of the electrical connections will help ensure a long life.

The bottom line

If you’re looking for your first nose hair trimmer, enjoy your youth while it lasts. If you’re like those of us who are looking for a trimmer to replace something you’ve had for a few years that has already died, we have some picks that will hopefully impress.

The Panasonic – ER430K is a nearly perfect nose hair trimmer with a powerful motor and blades that cut any hairs at every angle. If you’re trimming on the way out the door, the vacuum feature also keeps crusty hairs off your shirt. This is a waterproof trimmer that’s easy to wash and maintain, and the price is right.

If you’d like something that’s a little more versatile and doesn’t eat through batteries as quickly as Panasonic’s rotary trimmer, the Philips – NT1500 is cost-effective and quite good at trimming hairs. The Philips is better on ears and eyebrows than inside the nostril, but it’ll run four times longer than the Panasonic on a AA battery and it’s still waterproof.

Top Pick: Panasonic. ER430K

Panasonic has sealed the deal with a great trimmer blade design and powerful motor that also sucks up the hairs as it trims. Battery life isn’t as good as some other trimmers, but we think the design is worth that price.

Daniel is a Canadian farm boy who grew up to be a nerd with a literature degree and too many hobbies to count. He emigrated from Canada to California in 2013, and now writes for Your Best Digs full-time. Daniel remains unapologetic about Canadian spelling, serial commas, and the destruction of expensive travel mugs.

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Your Guide to Finding Using a Nose Trimmer

You might not be dealing with this issue in your twenties, but by your thirties or forties, the coarse strands sprouting from your nostrils require a nose trimmer.

This post may have affiliate links, meaning we earn a small commission on purchases through the links (at no extra cost to you). This does not change our opinion but does help support the site. Thank you!

A grooming essential for all men that’s now mostly electric, a nose trimmer cleans up your appearance where your shaving razor can’t go.

What is a Nose Trimmer?

As a baseline, nose trimmers help manage unsightly, increasingly visible hair coming out of your nasal passage and also assist with taming any hairs emerging from your ear canal.

Operation is relatively straightforward. All you really need to do is guide the trimmer inside the nostril and move it so the blades approach the skin. With your ear, the trimmer stays within the ear canal to catch any errant hairs.

Today, a nose hair trimmer features a slim metal or plastic design, which often houses a battery. At one end, a rotating head meant to cut the hair has a plastic guard around it covering the blades. A motor allows the blades to turn, and this motion helps cut down the hairs, rather than uncomfortably pull on them.

Just as with a trimmer for your beard, a nose hair trimmer is easy to maintain: All you need to do is rinse it under warm water after use to get rid of debris before it accumulates. Aside from this feature, nose trimmers these days either use a rechargeable battery, and thus have to be plugged in to charge up before use, or have a battery that needs to be changed out periodically.

As some men find with their beard trimmers, lubrication may be required after some time for the moving parts to optimally operate.

Types of Nose Trimmers

Nose trimmers come in two basic types: electric and manual.

Electric Nose Trimmers

Electric nose trimmers dominate the market due to their convenience and ease of use. As already mentioned, these use a battery to power the blades. All the user has to do to is move the trimmer where the hair is, and the blades do their job. Overall, electric nose trimmers are a more efficient, time-saving solution that requires little-to-no energy on your part.

Manual Nose Trimmers

Manual nose trimmers, an older option, are still around. Due to the energy involved the user typically has to use two hands to move the rotating blade they’ve fallen out of favor.

How to Use a Nose Trimmer

Although many men simply trim their nose hairs by looking in the bathroom mirror, you should consider a magnifying mirror and a clear light source to do a more thorough job. To trim your nose hairs:

• Start by removing any dust and mucus from your nasal passages. Generally, you will want to blow your nose first before washing the area with lukewarm water. Without doing this step, you risk these substances clogging your trimmer.
• Then, dry out your nasal passages with a towel.
• To target the nose hairs, turn your trimmer on, and bring it close to your nostril. Start from the outside and progess inward. Expect to feel a tickling sensation during this step.
• Do this step for both nostrils, until your nasal passage appears to be hair free.

If you’re using a manual trimmer, the process won’t be drastically different. However, you’ll need to use both hands to power and maneuver the trimmer, and a back-and-forth motion is recommended for getting as much hair as you can.

The Best Nose Hair Trimmers

If you’re looking for your first nose trimmer or to upgrade your existing one, consider these options:

Philips Norelco 5100 Nose Hair Trimmer

The Philips Norelco 5100 is known for an all-in-one solution that not only cleans up your nose but can also be used to groom eyebrow and ear hairs and touch up your sideburns, beard, and neck hair.

Philips Norelco Nose Trimmer 3000

This Philips Norelco Nose Trimmer 3000 offers an ergonomic solution for your nose and ears, and includes an eyebrow attachment for additional grooming options. Like the 5100, this nose trimmer helps protect the skin, by reducing nicks and irritation, and offers a fully water-resistant design for ease of cleaning.

Wahl Ear, Nose Brow Trimmer

This Wahl nose trimmer comes equipped with multiple interchangeable head attachments, making it an ideal three-in-one solution. Depending upon location and hair length, you can select from a reciprocating, detail trimming, or rotary head, while its steel cutting blades are easily washed under water to remove all debris.

Through this combination, you not only get a quality, wet-to-dry solution for your nose hairs, but can also get a close trim for your sideburns, eyebrows, ears, and neck. A small design fits into your dop kit for a convenient travel solution.

Wahl Micro GroomsMan Personal Pen Trimmer

For an even more compact size, the Wahl Micro GroomsMan was specifically built for travel, featuring a single attachment that’s designed for both nose and ear hairs and delivers the performance for your beard and sideburns. Wahl provides this multipurpose power through detachable detailer and rotary heads, consisting of quality blades inside aluminum casing.

Remington NANO Series Nose and Ear Trimmer

Remington nose trimmers tend to be on the affordable end. However, price doesn’t compromise quality, and what you get with the NANO series is a trimmer with multiple combs that delivers a practical, reliably performing, and showerproof solution for managing stray hairs.

Beyond Remington’s usual nose trimmers, the NANO series goes above and beyond with antimicrobial silver casing and the Active Blade Clean System. Together, these aspects result in a more hygienic trimming solution that controls bacteria and prevents hair and debris from building up in the system and later irritating your skin.