Astra SP's... what are comparable blades ?

[TonyBrown]

maybe its me, I used a red Personna the other day and I could not stand it, horrendously bad shave with it on my Merkur HD, Astra was excellent and the Blue Personna was excellent... for me, the blue was much more like the Astra than the red was... the red blade got one shave and went in the garbage, i have no patience to put up with one bad shave to get to the good ones, the red tugged, pulled, and irritated my skin worse than the Merkur blades did, Astra's performed from shave #1 as did the Personna MedLabs.

so I don't really see the comparison of Astras to the Reds, imho, its a better comparison to the MedLabs. just my .02

 

[Smooth_Shaver]

As stated by other members, I feel that the Gillette 7 o' clock blades are quite close to the Astra's. Astra is now owned and produced by Procter & Gamble (owner of Gillette) so that would explain the similarity

 

[Almightys]

maybe its me, I used a red Personna the other day and I could not stand it, horrendously bad shave with it on my Merkur HD, Astra was excellent and the Blue Personna was excellent... for me, the blue was much more like the Astra than the red was... the red blade got one shave and went in the garbage, i have no patience to put up with one bad shave to get to the good ones, the red tugged, pulled, and irritated my skin worse than the Merkur blades did, Astra's performed from shave #1 as did the Personna MedLabs.

so I don't really see the comparison of Astras to the Reds, imho, its a better comparison to the MedLabs. just my .02

Do you want to trade any of those personna reds then?

 

[TonyBrown]

Do you want to trade any of those personna reds then?

only had one blade, my brother has a couple packs of em so I ~may~ try another one some day, just to be sure...

 

[Oscroft]

In my blind test I found the Astra SP and Red pretty much indistinguishable. But I must stress that's for me, and I have relatively soft whiskers - I suspect people with coarser beards will be able to detect subtle differences in sharpness better than I can.

 

[eastomjac]

id go here before id do amazon http://www.razorsdirect.com/wilkinsonsword.html

 

[Island Dreamer]

id go here before id do amazon http://www.razorsdirect.com/wilkinsonsword.html

They're twice the price there.

 

[Almightys]

They're twice the price there.

Exactly? they are twice the price. amazon has three sellers all under $10 per 100?

 

[beeranon]

After trying out around 15 different blades, I made a quantity buy on Red IPs (200), Astra SP (100), Astra SS (100; I actually find these to shave a little closer than the Astra SP), Feathers (100), Iridium Super (100), and Polsilvers (100). Of the bunch, the Astras are head and shoulders the best bang for the buck.

Needed to make sure I could get through the year for the Purchase Sabbatical, you know.

 

[shamus]

Maybe get some Derby blades. They might be comparable to the Astra blades that your accustomed to using....and a lot less.

 

[DBlair]

Astra SP are my standard go-to blades and I would say that if you like these, you will probably like:

- Israeli Personna/Crystal
- Perma-Sharp Super
- Treet Platinum
- Gillette 7 O'Clock SuperPlatinum (Russian, Blues)

 

[Synthetic Badger]

I find Astra SP's not to be quite as sharp as the 7 o'clock series blades; Polsilvers also feel sharper to me. But Astras are easy and forgiving and not at all picky about the razor they like to go with.

In sharpness, I would compare Astra SP's to Timors, though the latter are smoother and last longer.

 

[bScanner]

Astra SPs were my main blade. I compared them to Personna "labs" and had a hard time telling the difference but I switched to the Personnas. I recently tried an Astra again and it seemed harsher than the Personna labs. Maybe I got a bad blade because Astras have always seemed very smooth to me. Anyway, I'm sticking with the Personnas mainly.