Braun has come out with a product that claims to offer numerous benefits to the users of its line of Braun electric shavers.
The Braun Clean and Renew Station.
It is available with selected models of the 5, 7 and 9 series of Braun electric shavers. As the name suggests, it is both a docking station, (in that it recharges your shaver), and a cleaning system, as it also cleans, lubricates, and dries your Braun electric shaver, keeping your blades in peak condition…all automatically.
The Braun Clean and Renew station can also be purchased individually and used with your Series 3 shaver. If buying a separate unit, you will also have to buy the braun cleaning cartridges, they are not included.
On the face of it, this would seem like an almost ideal product to feature alongside a company’s range of electric shavers. But, there are costs involved, as well a couple of less than desirable features, which have been reported by users of the Clean&Renew Station.
Overall, however, the concept seems to be a good one. Your Braun electric razor is maintained in a hygienic condition, and blades are cleaned and dried, which tends to improve the life of the shaver over time. It also has some reported benefits for your skin, with reports of reduced skin irritation due to the use of the alcohol-based cleaning solution. 
The Braun Clean and Renew Station uses a cartridge-based system to supply the hygienic cleaning solution to the docking station. Each cartridge is expected to last for approximately one month if you clean your shaver every day.
It is reported that, if you leave the Braun cleaning cartridge in the cleaning dock, you will lose a certain amount of cleaning solution to evaporation. This can be overcome by removing the cartridge from the dock, and closing the cap on the cartridge. This will preserve the cleaning solution and avoid evaporation, if you want to maximize the cartridge use.
I much prefer to leave it installed and get maximum convenience from the system at the cost of a few cents per month.
They can be purchased easily enough online through Amazon, in a 4 pack, for under $20.
Instead of buying the genuine Braun cleaning solution, some users have resorted to making their own. While we are going to reserve judgment on the wisdom of this approach, we’d be remiss if we didn’t at least mention it as an option for the more industrious and thrifty users. There is at least one recipe available on the internet for a home-made cleaning concoction with which to refill up cartridges.
Another issue that has come up in connection with the Braun cleaning dock is the battery charging feature. Every time that you plug your electric shaver into the Braun Clean and Renew dock, it automatically recharges your electric shaver battery.
I say ‘automatic’ in the sense that you don’t have an option – if you plug it in, it starts recharging, whether it needs it or not.
This doesn’t seem like a real big deal on the face of it. However, Braun electric razors run on lithium-ion batteries. The useful life of a lithium-ion battery is impacted by the number of cycles that the battery is subjected to. Each time the battery is plugged in to recharge, counts as a cycle, but it is not as simple as counting the cycles to know where your battery is at…maximizing battery life is a little more complicated.
Some manufacturers recommend that you let the lithium-ion batteries in their appliances run down as far as possible before being recharged. They’re giving you a tip to increase the life of your battery. Perhaps having the recharging feature be optional when using the Clean and Renew station would be a better option. I choose to fully discharge, and fully recharge my battery every 3 months or so.
If Braun could let you chose whether you wanted to recharge the battery or not, this would allow you to have some control over your battery life. But, that’s not an option in the way that the Braun cleaning dock is set up currently.
Another point of contention that is pointed out by seasoned users of the Clean&Renew Station is the need for regular cleaning of the cleaning dock itself. To assist, Braun has published a guide to the cleaning and maintenance of the cleaning dock.
The contacts that provide the current to recharge the electric shaver’s battery seem to be the main culprit. These contacts can become fouled, and dirty, and don’t always provide enough current to charge the battery.
Although, it doesn’t cost anything other than the price of a Q-tip to clean them, it’s still something to think about when weighing the cost of purchasing the Braun cleaning dock.
The Braun cleaning dock is a great accessory for the Braun range of electric shavers. But, in our view there’s still room for improvement.
Hopefully Braun will look to these improvements in a later release, and optimize what is already a popular and extremely useful part of their product range.