Does exactly what it claims to do

Author's Rating:

Pros: Easy to clean, effective, quiet, painless, attractive, compact

Cons: Very tickly when trimming nose hairs, no rechargeable battery

The Bottom Line: 
Works very well and is quiet, attractive, and well priced.

Author's Review
Either it seems like more hair is growing out of my ears and nose than ever before or I'm just becoming more conscious of it, but it's got to go! Cutting it with my regular clippers is difficult because the clipper head is too large to get well enough into these small spaces and do a complete job. Tweezing is time consuming and can be somewhat painful. I realized my only answer was to buy one of those personal groomers that I had scoffed at for so long.

After reading over reviews on Epinions and Amazon, it seemed like the Panasonic ER411 model got the highest marks among the inexpensive ones ($18 on Amazon), so I went for it. I just popped a double A battery in it and it was good to go. The little motor sounded sort of like a very quiet dentist's drill, which impressed me for some reason. The unit itself is attractive and clean looking, gold in color and shaped like a bullet. It's small enough to travel with if you are so inclined. You can't see the blades moving, there is a metal nozzle tip and the blades are underneath, so it seems very safe.

Sure enough, it works like a charm. Just turn it on and insert it in your ears or nose and it does it thing. It makes a little cutting noise when it's trimming, so you know it's working. I also used it between my eyebrows and it seemed to work well there, so I tried it along my lipline and under my nose and other places where my razor is too big to shave effectively, and I was impressed with all the results. For the most part, you don't feel the trimming- you just hear it, which is another plus. The main exception to that is when you use it in the nose, where there is a rather extreme ticklish (not a pain, but a tickle) feeling that's enough to bring me to tears. I got used to that, however, and the fact is that I would expect that you've got to feel something when trimming nose hairs, so this is better than a painful alternative.

Cleanup is very easy in that the whole unit can be rinsed in water. You can pull off the plastic blade cover and get it more throroughly as well. I don't think this needs to be done after every use, maybe only every two or three should suffice. I believe this is the only maintenance needed on the trimmer other than changing the battery. I can't speak for the battery life, since I haven't needed to change it yet, but after about eight uses, it's still going strong.

Overall, I'm very pleased with this purchase and it would be a deal at double the price. No one will ever see stray ear or nose hair on me again (not that they did before, but I knew it was there)!