Philips QC5170 DIY Hair Clippers review

Philips promised to make cutting your hair easy

29 July 2006 12:24 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Philips believe they has solved the age old problem of shaving your own hair with the creation the DIY hair clippers.

The trick, it says, is that the head rotates through 180 degrees so you can literarily cut your hair as if you were combing it.

Sound great and in practice it actually works, however we found greater concerns with the clippers that its funky design.

The problem? Well it’s the grading and cutting lengths as we found out to our cost. You see the clippers, rather than coming with a series of different combs, come with just two. The first offers cutting lengths from 3-11mm and the second from 13-21. Seems logical enough.

On the wire free clippers themselves there is a button that allows you to set the height of the blade in relationship to the comb. There are five heights available to the user and depressing a bright orange button allows you to select which one. The system has been designed so that you have to push in the button to move the height of the blade and this is enough to stop mistakenly changing the settings mid-cut.

However, what isn't clear is what these settings refer to in the world of the barber shop. From personal experience, let us tell you now that the number 3 isn't the same as a grade three, in fact its more like a number 1.5 as we found to Mrs Pocket-lint's surprise.

Of course, grading stupidities aside, the DIY hair clippers do do a good job, The rotating blades do make it easier to cut those awkward to reach areas behind your ears and the fact it's cordless certainly makes it easier too.

Verdict

The Philips DIY hairclippers do work, just be careful if you invest, in understanding the Philips grading system first before you delve right in like we did. Why Philips didn't stick with the conventional grading system is beyond us, and the clippers aren't as good as they could have been because of it.

As for the rotating head, yes it is more gimmick than not, but none the less it does make life a little bit easier. Not enough that we would swear by it, but enough to notice a difference.

Good, but not without its issues.