Remington Limitless X9 rotary shaver review

The Limitless X9 is Remington’s new flagship rotary shaver. It had a launch price of £199.99 but as it’s sales season, you can buy it for half of that. It comes with a handy travel case that fits the shaver and all its attachments, and the shaver itself boasts Remington’s 360 PivotBall technology.

Let’s take a closer look.

Design & Build

• USB charging
• Battery life indicator
• Easy attachment change

The Limitless X9 comes in a hard travel case, 19cm x 13cm x 9cm, with the Remington logo on the front. Upon unzipping, you find the shaver, its blades covered with a cap, nestled inside in moulded inserts next to the trimmer head. In the underside of the lid is a webbed sleeve with a hair comb attachment, a USB power cable and user manual.

The X9 is a handsome shaver, in a black and dark bronze colourway. It weighs about 180g, so it’s pretty light in the hand. On the front, there’s a power button roughly where your thumb would fall, and below this is the turbo button for extra oomph when tackling thick stubble. If you press and hold the turbo button for three seconds, it also functions as a travel lock.

Right at the bottom, there’s a line of five pinpoint lights that function as a battery indicator: it displays how many shaves you have left. The 90cm USB cable plugs straight into the shaver’s base – there’s no need to place it in a charging stand. But it’s worth noting that a plug isn’t included in the kit, so you’ll have to either purchase one separately or use one you already have.

The shaver body is about 15cm long, and the shaver head is 6cm at its widest point and 6cm at its longest. The shaver head is embedded into a ball clasped by the shaver handle, which allows the entire shaver head to nudge 360 degrees – this is Remington’s PivotBall technology.

The shaver head is made up of three rotary heads, each about 2.5cm in diameter, and each one rocks into the centre of the shaver head itself, so there’s a lot of subtle motion in both the rotary heads and the shaver head itself.

Underneath the shaver head is a button that flips the head up so you can clean underneath. To change attachments, simply pull the shaver head off and click the trimmer head into place.

The trimmer blade is 3cm long, and the attachment head arcs over to provide a good angle from the body of the shaver to the trimmer blade edge – you won’t need to hold your elbow out quite so high to get the right trim angle on your facial hair.

The comb clips over the trimmer and adjusts the cutting length from 1-5mm – it’s for short facial hair trimming only.

Features & Performance

• Quiet
• 5 min quick charge, 90 mins for full charge
• Can nip skin initially

The first thing we need to mention is that a rotary shaving technique is somewhat different to a foil shaving technique. You shave with a rotary in short, circular movements around your face, almost like a buffing motion, to make the most from the revolving blade action. The pressure needs to be quite light; don’t press the shaver against your skin.

It can take a while to adjust and get it right. We found, initially, a light touch shave on very dry skin worked well, but as soon as there was any kind of dampness to the skin, the Limitless X9 nipped, which is odd since the X9 is a full waterproof shaver and can be used wet or dry.

Remington says that the shaver can nip the first couple of times you use it – until you and your skin get used to a rotary shaver. During testing, we spoke to regular rotary shaver users who found the Limitless X9 fine in this regard; however, it’s worth mentioning that they preferred a rotary shaver as it can handle longer and coarser facial hair better than a foil shaver.

The nipping issue could be about facial hair type and familiarity with rotary shaving technique.  

The Limitless X9 is also noticeably quieter than a foil shaver.

What’s very interesting about the Limitless X9 is that it analyses how long it takes you to shave, and then represents the battery charge level in terms of that data, so if all the LEDs are lit at the bottom of the handle, you know you have enough battery power for five shaves.

It takes 90 minutes to fully charge, and from that, you’ll get a total of 60 minutes runtime – although there is a five-minute quick charge feature, which will give you enough battery life for a single shave. 

As the shaver is charging, each lit LED equates to 20% of charge.    

The trimmer attachment does the job well, and there was no nip or tug that we could discern. Likewise, the comb attachment was very effective and took away hair quickly and easily.    

Price & Availability

The Limitless X9 (XR1790) is Remington’s flagship rotary shaver and has a UK RRP of £199.99. However, you can now buy it for half of that from Boots, Currys, Amazon and Argos and we think it’s good value at this price, especially with its travel case and accessories. However, if it’s a bit pricey, Remington has some more budget-friendly rotary shaver options, which you can see on its website.

The Limitless X9 is not currently available in the US.

Should you buy the Remington Limitless X9?

This a shaver for people who like rotary models and prefer them to foils. If that’s you, we’d recommend it – the trimmer attachment and the accompanying comb performed extremely well – but we would caution people who typically use a foil shaver that there’s a bit of a learning curve in terms of changing technique when switching from foils to rotaries.

Our testers didn’t enjoy being nipped by the X9, although it does only seem to occur when skin is tacky, and Remington warns about the possibility in the initial stages of a foil to rotary swap.

But for those who are comfortable with this type of shaver, and for people with thick stubble, the X9 is a good looking shaver that’s easy to use. We especially liked its clever battery indicator. As it comes with a travel case, it would make a great gift as well.