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BEWARE OF FAKE BLADES!
First, I want to explain that I gave 5-stars because this is a product review and this product is excellent as a razor blade. HOWEVER, be careful where you buy it from, some sellers especially on ebay and amazon (third parties) are selling FAKE blades. It's hard to recognize at first but you can tell from a few things:
1. If you are familiar with Gillette shave, you will feel the difference immediately. For example, my one-month old genuine Gillette razor still shaves better than a fake one.
2. Lubricating strip on the fake one is not real. So, how do you know it? With real Gillette product you can immediately feel there is a lot of lubricant (a little sticky moisture feeling), BUT with the fake one, your face will feel very dry even when you used the blades for the first time. Because they are not lubricating! They are fake strips and made out of some plastic kind material.
3. Even after many months of use, If you try to remove lubricating strip on your real Gillette product, you can see that there is still a lot of lubricant just under the strip and on the strip itself. And this strip is a one piece well-aligned strip, easy to remove and easy to put back. BUT, if you remove the fake one's strip, this just plastic kind strip will break into parts and you cannot put it back in place.
4. If you have a good eye, look closely to see if all three blades are leveled and adjusted as parallel to each other. Usually, on the fake ones, you will see a slight misalignment, basically they are out of line and think about it, what it can do to your face. Check all the blades in the box individually. None of them should be misaligned.
5. Look closely to see small black dots on the blades. Original Mach3 blades have a little larger dots and their paint does not feel as precise as the fake ones. This is because, real ones have an almost invisible clear coat but you can see it if you look at the black dots directly.
6. Look at the blue plastic strip just under the blades, now try to abuse them with the tip of your fingernails (Be careful do not cut your fingers).
They are many micro-aligned plastic lines, and When you do this, they re-align themselves immediately without no damage to themselves. BUT on fake ones, they try to align back, but they can't! They always leave marks on abused spots on them.
7. Look at the front side of blades. Just under the moving head, you will see five parallel lines on the plastic stable part. On the real one the line in the middle is slightly thicker than other ones. But on the fake one they may show difference. And the fake ones, usually (not always) a little darker in color of plastic, if you have good eyes.
8. Now a little flexibility test. You know Mach3s has flexible heads. Fake ones, too... However, if you move the head with your finger to the back, it should come back to the original place with a smooth movement. On the fake ones, they come back but they come back quicker than the real ones. And fake ones even make a slight plastic sound when coming back.
9. Look at the plastic cartridge holder if it has serial number printed on it. If so, it still DOESN'T mean they are real. Nowadays, they are putting serial numbers on fake ones, too. So, follow the first 8 steps, to make sure you have the real ones.
Nowadays, fakes are so close to real, I hope this review helps to all of you. I know some of the sellers who sell fake ones will find this review not useful. BUT using genuine razors is a health issue so be careful. And always buy from reliable sellers. Amazon itself is very reliable but be careful with other third party sellers. Read their reviews first!
