How to choose

Women have two main choices when it comes to electric hair-removal devices: Foil shavers and epilators. In foil shavers, cutters on a floating head vibrate behind a screen, chopping off the hairs at skin level. Epilators use hundreds of tiny tweezers to pull hairs out, similar to the way hot wax treatments remove hair. Overall, the epilators in our tests scored higher than the razors, but the devices have somewhat different uses and appeal to different women. Most notably, the shavers can be used anywhere on the body blade razors can--and must be used as often as a blades as well. Epilators remove hair only from the legs or forearms and some women find them painful, but they need to be used just once every three weeks or so.

If you're trying an electric razor or epilator for the first time, give yourself some time to get used to it, since it can take that long to develop the right technique. For that reason, choose a shaver or epilator with at least a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can return it if the product doesn't work out for you.

Women's Shavers
None of the 11 women in our panel, all of whom previously used blade razors, said they would switch to an electric. The devices were too hard to use, took too many passes to do the same job, and left bumps and irritation under their arms.

Still, they offer some advantages over blades that may be important to some women. They avoid nicks, since the cutters don't touch your skin; that's especially important to people who take medications to thin the blood or have bleeding disorders. And they let you shave without soap and water--a plus when you're traveling, if you need a quick touch-up, or you like to shave away from the bathroom.

Epilators
Three of our four tested epilators were very good at removing hair, our panelists said. But they didn't much care for the Epilady Legend: It took longer to remove the hair and was difficult to use, perhaps due to its narrow head. Several of our testers said that using the devices is more work than shaving--though you typically only have to do it once every three weeks.