8 Best Beard Trimmers (2025): Full Beards, Hair, Stubble
- Wahl Peanut Li Beard Trimmer
It's thankless work updating a classic. Change too much, and the loyalists stage an uprising. Don't change enough, you can't capture a new generation who now expect more, new, better, or maybe even just pointlessly different. Wahl's previous cordless update to the classic Peanut didn't get quite as much love.
But this sleek, handsome sky-blue Peanut Li (7/10, WIRED Recommends) offers the same blades and guards beloved by generations of barbers, but with a whole lot more juice. The Li can rev up to a heady 7,000 rpms, making it nearly impossible to bog down even in a beard as thick as a horsehair broom. (I know this, bcause I used the Li on a horsehair broom.) And yet the Li got a whopping two and half hours of battery life on my testing after a mere 20 minute charge. This is a zippy, agile little trimmer. It weighs just four ounces, same as the original Peanut Whether it lasts like the classic remains to be seen.
- Wahl Pro Series High Visibility Skeleton Style Trimmer
The Wahl Pro Skeleton’s big selling point is the exposed ball-and-socket head design that lets you see more of your face (and less trimmer) in the mirror. Typically hidden behind a metal or plastic exoskeleton, Wahl has engineered this premium design well, and it feels great to use.
The outer casing is a blend of a grippy rubber and smoky semigloss metal. It's a pretty aggressive design, but the cutting style is thankfully rather more refined. The Wahl Pro Elite uses small tooth stainless steel blades for a finer, closer cut. It's not brilliant for thicker hair, but is appreciably multifunctional, with a small-but-useful foil shaver attachment and nose hair trimmer included alongside a whole set of plastic attachments for longer trimming.
Buying this premium design, however, is a bit like picking a manual espresso machine over a bean-to-cup coffee maker. It does a brilliant job, but you need to put the work in. There’s no bundled adjustable length head, for instance, so changing grades is a bit of a fiddle. Battery life lasted longer than the promised two hours, but charging is slow, taking the same time again. —Andrew Williams
wired
