Philips Norelco 9500 vs 9400

The Philips Norelco 9400 and Philips Norelco 9500 are similar performing shavers, sow which one do I recommend and why?

The Difference

The two shavers are almost identical. They both can give you a very close and comfortable shave. They have the same number of blades. They are both wet/dry with the exact same cutting actions per minute.

There are only really 3 differences:

• Pressure indicating lights – The 9500 has lights near the head of the shaver to alert you when you are pressing too hard. This is a useful feature for some people, but after the initial shave, I ignored the lights.
• Smart Hair sensor – Both the 9400 and 9500 have SenseIQ to adapt the power of the shaver to the thickness of your beard. The only difference is how fast the sensor reads your beard density. The 9500 can read the density 500 per second while the 9400 can only read the density 125 times per second. I could not tell the difference between 125 times per second and 500 times per second.
• Price – The Philips Norelco 9400 is priced significantly less than the Philips Norelco 9500. See below for links to check the current price.

Comparison Table

The below table shows a side-by-side comparison of the features of the Philips Norelco 9400 and the Philips Norelco 9500. As you can see, they are very similar with the only differences being the pressure indicator lights on the Philips Norelco 9500 and the higher hair density read rate from the smart hair sensor.

	9400	9500
Cutting actions per minute	150,000	150,000
Self-sharpening blades	72	72
Pressure indicating lights	NO	YES
ComfortGlide rings	YES	YES
Motion control sensor	YES	YES
SenseIQ	YES	YES
Smart hair sensor (reads per second)	125	500
Pop-up trimmer	YES	YES

Conclusion

I recommend the Philips Norelco 9400 because the price is lower and all you are missing is the lights, which I did not really find very useful.

See the list of my favorite shavers.