Men-U Pure Bristle Shaving Brush

this was my first brush, and I feel I lucked out in the boar department. I have found I prefer badger, but the overall performance of this brush has me really reaching for it lately.

Tips worked in after about 20 lathers, although it was plenty pleasant up to then. now, however, it has that wonderful stiffness and softness on face balance I was wanting out of it.

Overall, I believe this one will stay in the rotation for a long time to come. Does a terrific job on soaps, and for a boar does surprisingly well with creams as well. The lather never fails to impress--not as good as my silvertip, but good for $20.

This is a boar brush so if you like your badger then you probably won't like this. I prefer boar when I'm using soaps you can get just as good a lather from soap with badger but I find it takes longer and more effort, personally I think boar is so much easier and loads up with soap almost instantly. One common misunderstanding seems to be complaining that boar brushes are prickly, this is because they are INITIALLY. After a bit of use the ends split and soften and the prickliness goes away if you haven't given your boar brush a chance to wear in (and that's at least two weeks) then don't complain about how prickly it is - you've missed the point. Boar is also much stiffer than badger so you need a firmer hand for lathering.

I've had this brush a long time now (couple of years), I don't use it much though as I tend to use my Omega 48 just because it's newer and it's at the front of the shelf. Actually there's very little to chose between them - the Men-U has a slightly shorter knot but not enough to make any impact. Knot thickness and density are almost identical as is the stiffness of the bristles.

Price - depends on how you look at it, compared to even a cheap badger it's a bargain at less than £10, on the other hand compared to other boar brushes it's merely competitive.

Handle is not high quality, quite a cheesy plastic thing, it does the job just fine but there's no tactile pleasure in it. Unfortunately this is very much the same as the Omega.

This brush needs a good soaking before use, even more so than a badger brush but if used properly will produce beautiful lather enough for 3 or 4 passes quickly and easily.

Tends to shed more than my Omega and probably loses a bristle every three or four shaves - I guess that means eventually it'll thin out and stop working so well but given the thickness of the knot it'll be many years before that's a problem.

If you want to try a boar brush this is comparable quality to the best available.

I thought this brush was good value and indeed a lot better than some i bought at twice the price and i shaved with this for about 2 years and still have it, for the price great!