A nose and ear hair trimmer is a single-purpose tool, and the good ones are separated by unglamorous things: how it sounds held against your ear, whether the switch works when your fingers are damp, and whether the cutting head comes apart to be rinsed. This guide draws on a test of 42 trimmers and covers the five that were recommended from it.
What follows is recorded testing, translated. Nobody at Truthful Reviews has used these trimmers. This guide also makes no claim about health, hygiene or safety — those are medical questions and a product test cannot answer them. What it can tell you is how each device is built and how it behaved.
How the trimmers were assessed
Before any practical work, size, feel, materials and build quality were examined, with pleasant materials, a good hand position and a grip that does not slip treated as most important. Supplied equipment and accessories were checked next.
Running noise came after, and the range across the field ran from whisper-quiet to something closer to a dentist's drill — the single most relevant property for a device used right next to the ear.
For the practical test, arm and beard hair and loose eyebrow hairs were tackled first, and nose and ear hair afterwards. Every device was used with fully charged batteries. Most removed hair well and some disappointed badly: two Philips models, the NT3650/16 and the NT5650/16, removed almost no hair at all and were rated inadequate. Where eyebrow heads were supplied, the differences between devices were sharper still.
The Picks
Best for most — Beurer HR 2000
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Beurer does not call this a nose hair trimmer but a precision trimmer, and the testing bore that out. It has enough power to deal with thick beard hair, which makes it a genuinely useful tool for small corrections in facial hair, and it reaches nose hair in awkward spots.
Ergonomics are excellent — the curves settle into the palm. The housing is plastic but well made and feels expensive, and the matt black finish looks grown-up enough to leave on a shelf. It stands there tidily, though the tapered foot and fairly tall body mean a careless moment will tip it over. It is protected to IPX4 against splashes, so it can live by the basin, but it is not fully waterproof and should not go near the bath.
The shear head is angled slightly back towards you, and the narrow shape reaches tight, hard-to-get-at places such as the inside of the nose near the tip. It handles eyebrows too: the supplied comb clips on two ways for either 3 mm or 6 mm.
Cutting performance is where it pulls clear. It takes off every hair on the first pass, consistently, without the motor bogging down and without pulling — and beard hair, much thicker and tougher than nose hair, is no challenge. That makes it a strong candidate for the fine angles in a beard that a full-sized beard trimmer struggles to reach.
Two clear faults. The on/off switch is extremely stiff and its smooth surface makes it worse; there is a small ridge in the middle, and it is sorely needed, because without it the thing would barely switch on at all. Even with it you need real force and ideally both hands. And while it is far from the loudest here, it is no quiet operator either, with a rattling, sharp note. That is tolerable at the nose; near the ears you would rather have something that sounds kinder.
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The purist's alternative — Braun EN 10
Unremarkable to look at, classic in shape, with no special equipment and no eyebrow capability. That makes it a trimmer for purists — and purists are well served, because it does the core job very well.
Expectations going in were low. The narrow silver plastic body looks like any other trimmer and makes a staid, almost boring impression. First inspection changed that: it sits well in the hand, a finely nubbed surface gives a secure grip, and nothing rattles when it moves.
The protective cap seats snugly and finishes exactly flush with the switch. With the cap on, the switch cannot move at all — a simple but effective way to stop it turning itself on in a bag. The cap has cut-outs in the top, which do let dirt and crumbs in, but also stop moisture being trapped after the shear head has been cleaned.
The supplied 1× AA battery fits in the bottom in the usual way. Switched on, it is remarkably quiet — quiet enough to raise doubts about whether the motor was strong enough, and the practical test answered those doubts favourably. That quietness is what makes it the pick for ear hair.
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Best without a battery — Zwilling Classic Inox
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The choice if you would rather not deal with batteries at all. It is made of robust stainless steel, is high-quality throughout and works perfectly well one-handed. The two wing-shaped grips are squeezed together like scissors, which makes it feel closer to a nail clipper than a trimmer. Nose and ear hair is its limit — eyebrows are outside its remit.
Because it uses a spring mechanism it probably will not last quite as long as a spring-free mechanical trimmer, though the standard of construction means that should not be a concern for a long time. It comes apart in seconds for cleaning or oiling, with no extra tool needed.
The one awkward detail is the fixing wheel that holds everything in place: it sits very close to one of the wings with barely any room to grip it, so anyone with thick fingers may end up reaching for pliers. Once it is loosened, the entire inner cylinder and blade crown pulls straight out.
With no motor, the running noise amounts to a quiet click. Everything else sits tight, nothing rattles, and the feel as the grips close is very good — the counter-pressure is not too high, but taut enough to be precise.
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Most versatile — Manscaped The Weed Whacker 3.0 Pro
A revised version of the 2.0. The new plastic housing is light and handy but solidly built, and it is waterproof to IPX7. A strong motor sits in the slim handle, driven by a lithium-ion battery, and at 49 g it runs for up to 60 minutes across eyebrows, ears and nose.
Two shear heads and two comb attachments are supplied, along with two protective caps and a detailed, well-illustrated set of instructions. The battery is built in rather than removable, and charges over a supplied USB-C cable into a moisture-protected port in the handle — though no USB power adapter is included, which you will need to supply yourself.
With the classic round head, nose and ear hair came off quickly and thoroughly. Sharp rotating blades and that strong motor give it excellent cutting performance, and it reliably catches the fine, curved hairs at the ear and in the nose that other trimmers skip. The running noise is pleasantly sonorous, which makes it comfortable to use right at the ear canal. A long shear head with a flat, finely toothed blade handles eyebrows.
The catch is that it is expensive.
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The complete kit — Wilkinson Sword The Stylist
A multifunctional trimmer that gets by on solid construction and straightforward handling, covering nose, ear and eyebrow hair. The 85 g body comes with two different trimmer attachments plus an additional shear comb, and a small brush for quick cleaning between uses. Power comes from a replaceable, ordinary AA battery.
Its running noise is pleasantly quiet and sonorous, which suits it to work in and around the ear. Part of the reason is the material choice: the rotating drive head is made of brass, which promises a long life.
The thin, 3 cm attachment is for eyebrows and ear hair. Its narrow shape and double-sided blade make it well suited to hairs in awkward, inaccessible parts of the ear, and the small right-angled comb that fits the long attachment shapes eyebrows in a few passes. Cutting performance is solid, producing thorough results quickly.
Its weak point is a stiff start button.
