Retailing at £70
.
The Wahl Icons were a bit of a game changer, when they were first released 18 months ago.
They had a more powerful motor, in fact they had 40% more power than the conventional Wahl Super Taper.
This prompted a lot of excitement within the UK barbering industry, with scores of barbers rushing out to buy these new and superior Wahl Icons.
Initially they retailed at around £100 , but you could pick them up at trade shows for around £80, which is what I payed for them at the time.
When first using the Wahl Icons, I found myself really impressed by they're power accompanied with a quiet running motor, I could literally hear the clippers cutting the hair.
Even though the Icons were far more powerful than anything I'd previously used, they never seemed to overheat which is a great benefit when cutting over 20 people per day.
So not only were they powerful, they were also efficient and quiet.
After a while , I decided it was time to clean my clippers, so I took the whole device apart and stripped it right down to give the hardware a good clean.
On reassembling the Icons I noticed (this is a common problem) the smaller screws would not tighten properly, especially the screw in the lever for blade adjustment.
So after putting them back together, the clippers worked fine, but that was when something happened during the middle of a haircut.
When I opened the Icons up to 0.5 they seemed to lose 85% of they're power and were unable to cut through the hair.
This was a really big concern, as the clippers were unable to perform their intended job...
I did manage to find a way around this problem by taking out the lever screw and wrapping a small amount of insulation tape around the thread of the screw itself, then screwing it back into the hole. The tape caused the screw to become wider, thus giving it more grip on the devices interior thread.
It then had full cutting power again at 0.5 lengths. Although this was only a temporary solution to the problem, as the constant opening and closing would eventually ware the tape away. Id the problem would reoccur.
Other than that, the Icons were finally the answer to what I was looking for.
That was until I discovered Larry the Barber Man, but that's another story.
First Impressions of the Icons.
They have a very simplistic and attractive design. They're powerful and easy to use.
Pros
Keeps Cool Attractive Quiet Powerful Easy to adjust V9000 Motor (6000 spm)
Cons
Price Build quality Screws wont tighten Lever arm screw wont tighten Loses power when cutting Unreliable
I give the Wahl Icons
3.8 out of 5
This is due to the devices build quality.
