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I remember when the Gillette Mach3 Power first came out. I had just started shaving with a double-edge safety razor, and thought the notion of a vibrating Mach3 was just about the dumbest idea I'd ever heard (NAMBLA's Toys for Tots campaign notwithstanding). Because the whole reason I'd ditched the Mach3 in the first place was to finally get a good shave. Now they've stuck a vibrator inside the handle and raised the price of both the razor and the cartridges? Please.

I never thought guys -- even American guys -- could be so dumb as to fall for this kind of gimmick, but fall they did, like a ton of bricks. According to Gillette, the Mach3 Power is now its best selling razor! Think about that for a moment. Doctors, lawyers, the airline pilot on your next flight -- all of them educated men, the best and the brightest. And they all ditched their old Mach3 to shell out ten bucks for a newer version that has a battery-powered vibrator which Gillette claims somehow does a snake charmer number on whiskers and coaxes them to stand up even higher than the one, two, three-blade tugging action that's already assaulting your facial hair.

Then I started reading on the shavegeek forums that some of these guys were crowing about how the Mach3 Power was the best shave they'd ever had. One of the moderators of the MSN Wetshavers board is even a full-on Mach3 Power missionary, trying to sway newbies by claiming he gets a month's worth of shaves out of each cartridge, and falling hook, line and sinker for the line that the M3P's blades are somehow more advanced than the older Mach3 blades, justifying their higher price.

All of this just made me scratch my head, and dig my heels in even deeper. No way was I going to drop ten clams on this stupid scam, even if the gadget geek inside of me was kind of curious to see what all the fuss was about. What if it actually did shave better? What if the vibrating shave head really did somehow make for a closer, more comfortable shave? Even if Gillette's marketing blovia was hooey, vibrating razors have been around since the 1940s. Maybe there's something to this whole vibrating blade thing.

Yesterday I'm in the drugstore and lo and behold, the Mach3 Power's on sale for eight bucks. For some reason, ten bucks is a ripoff in my mind, but knock two bucks off and it's go time.

So I buy it. I feel like an idiot buying this ultra-modern piece of plastic junk when I've got dozens of high quality DE razors at home, but I tell myself I have a responsibility as a journalist to try it. If I'm going to get on my soapbox and talk up old-school DE razors as being superior to modern multi-blades, I should at least try whatever new modern razor comes along, just to stay current, right?

I go home, I cut open the hard plastic blister pack, and I observe the Mach3 Power close up. Ye gods this is an ugly razor. It's lime green and fake metallic and looks like one of those awful futuristic Nike running shoes you see at the mall that makes you wonder who the hell buys such ugly, loud, offensive sneakers, until you look around and realize that's what everyone in the mall is wearing, and if anyone's the FREAK it's you, old-timer, in your ten year-old Chuck Taylors. You might as well be Herbert Hoover.

I want to give the new Mach3 Power the benefit of the doubt, so I prep my face in the usual way -- hot shower, Taylor's shaving cream whipped up into a beautiful lather with my Vulfix #2235 silvertip badger brush, just like I do when I shave with my DE.

The Mach3 Power has a little power button on the handle that toggles the vibrator on and off. A light press and the whole razor starts humming and jiggling, moreso than I'd expected from a lone AAA battery Gillette claims lasts for months of daily shaves.

I bring the M3P to the top of my cheek and make the first downward pass. Smooth. Doesn't even feel like I'm shaving, or even contacting the blades to my skin for that matter. Really, it doesn't feel like I'm cutting any whiskers at all, except that I'm clearly leaving a shaved path in the razor's wake. This new vibrating version definitely feels different than what I remember from the original Mach3.

I shave my entire face and neck, then rinse with hot water, relather, and do an against-the-grain pass. Gillette makes much hay of the claim that the M3P excels at against-the-grain shaving, because of the supposed hair-raising magic of the vibrations. I will say this -- the Mach3 Power does indeed shave against the grain without the user feeling much of anything. It's eerily not there, except it is.

I rinse with hot water, then rinse with cold water. And that's when I feel my face for the first time since the start of the shave.

I've still got stubble.

So I splash my face with hot water again, relather, and do another whole shave -- another North-to-South shave, rinse'n'relather, and then another S-N pass.

I've still got stubble. And what's more, my face is seriously irritated. I've got red blotches on my neck (the same kind of blotches I used to get from the original Mach3, which led me to try to find a better way to shave in the first place), and lots of little shave bumps on my neck, jaw line, and cheeks. And I can still see and feel stubble on my face.

I am not going to go through the day with a crappy shave, even in the name of science. I grab my Merkur Progress DE, load a fresh Merkur Platinum blade, and after lathering up one more time with the Taylor cream, I do a quick, light against-the-grain pass, and all of the stubble the Mach3 Power couldn't shave in two entire shaving cycles is gone. My face still shows the beating it took from the "smooth" M3P, but at least it feels good to the touch..

If you love the Mach3 Power and you're screaming at your monitor that I should give this thing at least a week so my face can re-adjust back after using a DE all this time, you're wasting your breath. I wouldn't shave with this thing again if you paid me. It gave me a lousy shave.

I can't believe guys love this thing, and are willing to pay a premium to make it a part of their daily regimen. If anything, I think the original Mach3 is better, at least in terms of leaving your face somewhat stubble-free, even if I never got the kind of glass-smooth shaves with it that I routinely get with a DE. And the older Sensor Excel leaves both the old and the new Mach3s in the dust. If I couldn't use a DE, I'd use the Sensor Excel. It's the only really good razor Gillette still makes. It doesn't shave my quite as comfortably or as closely as a DE, but it comes a lot closer than any of the Mach3s, vibrating or not.

Fifty years ago Gillette teamed up with MIT to design its classic adjustable DE razor, which may be the greatest razor ever. If you're lucky enough to get ahold of one, it'll shave you as well or better than anything you can buy today, and that includes the high-quality Merkur DE razors. It's a precision-made piece of solid stainless steel that cost guys a dollar when it was new and still shaves with the best of them half a century later.

Clearly, making Mach3 razors that force users into a cycle of buying expensive proprietary cartridges is a more lucrative business model than making a safety razor which consumers can load with any competitor's standard double-edge blades, especially when everyone else these days makes far better DE blades than Gillette does anymore. But to hold the classic Gillette DE in one hand and the Mach3 Power in the other is to question so many things beyond mere shaving that words simply escape me.