The Sensotouch 3D 1250 is my fourth Philips electric shaver. It's also the best, so far. Note, this review is based on two weeks use, so it doesn't take into account any long-term reliability issues (and by long term, I mean more than two years).
The previous shavers I've used have been a mid-range 3 head shaver from around 2000 (it lasted until 2006, and was still working but it's battery was almost completely exhausted so it needed to be plugged in while shaving), the top-of-the-range HQ9190 from 2005 (I went through two of these in four years -- the batteries completely died after two years making the shaver useless), and the mid-range HS8020 from 2007 bought in 2009.
Of these, I was very happy with my first shaver, which lasted for ever and still works as a plug-in shaver. However, the newer shavers have improved over it by offering the ability to be washed clean in hot water -- this is a big advantage.
The second shaver, the HQ9190 was a good shaver while it lasted. The shaving mechanism on all newer Philips shavers is a lot looser than the old ones, which takes a bit of getting used to, but which works very well once you adjust your technique. This shaver was easy to maintain (you could clean it in water) and a decent size, but after two years, with two different shavers (I got a replacement since the first failed just inside the warranty) it failed completely. Thus my note about long-term reliability above. This was doubly disappointing considering the HQ9190 was a top-range shaver, and quite expensive. As far as I'm aware it was Philips' first use of LiOn batteries in their shavers and they may have got it horribly wrong and never corrected it in this design. Hopefully they've corrected it by now.
The HS8020, which is a "wet shaver" using Nivea shaving cream built into the shaver was a bit of a disappointment. It simply doesn't shave as well as Philips' dry shavers. When used dry it's very painful (abrading your skin) and very slow (not picking up longer hairs). When used wet it's OK but not spectacular, and I found that using it wet didn't really suit my lifestyle (I don't have morning showers). When used dry, it also drops all the cuttings straight out the bottom, so you have to be careful to shave over the sink. The recharger was also poorly designed, with contacts at the bottom of the shaver corroding onto your bench when water inevitably dripped from the shaver.
The Sensotouch solves all the problems of the HS8020, while still having the new, separate head design (originally labeled Arcitec). The cuttings are caught in the independent head, and the flexibility of the head mount, plus the flexibility of the blade mounts within the head make it very easy to shave with, and to shave quickly.
This is a big shaver, and the charger is big, too. However Philips have finally got the charger design right, with contacts on the side of the shaver rather than the bottom. The shaver can now sit in a small, plastic dish while the contacts are up, out of any pooling water at the side. The size of the shaver doesn't affect shaving, once you're used to it, but it does make it a little less convenient to travel with. At least the charger wall unit is still nice and small.
The shaver has a simple three-segment charge indication, which seems not entirely reliable so far. I'm sure it will adapt, but none of the shavers I've had have been terribly reliable at showing charge indications -- in fact very few of my electronic gadgets are good at giving battery indications, so Philips isn't alone in struggling with this.
The shaving heads themselves work very well, giving a pretty close shave very quickly with no abrasiveness at all. There is no comfort-level adjustment like my first two shavers, but neither is it required. The latest iteration of Philips' head design works really well, handling longer hairs as well as shorter ones, and doing it quickly.
The shaver is easy to clean, although it feels a little fragile, with its three heads opening separately like an alien Predator's mouth. Still, previous experience shows that these parts are actually stronger than they look.
Finally, the shaver has a very handy trimmer, which I use for trimming sideburns. I really missed this on the HS8020, which doesn't have this feature.
Oh, and it's quite a handsome shaver -- nicely designed and varying plastics making it pleasant to both look at and hold.
In conclusion, then, this is the best Philips shaver I've used so far, and a worthy improvement on previous efforts. It doesn't seem to get anything wrong so far, and does everything just a bit better than previous shavers (except for portability). Personally I view the Nivea series of shavers as a dead end for my usage patterns, and I'm glad I bought the cheapest in that range, although knowing what I know now I wouldn't have even bought that one.
In comparison to the other members of its family, the Sensotouch 3D 1250 seems like the obvious choice, with the other two models above it merely adding slightly better battery life and a jet cleaning unit. I was rather unimpressed with the jet cleaning unit that accompanied the second instance of my HQ9190 (the first came with a bomb-proof stainless steel travel case), and the unreliability of the digital battery remaining readout of the higher end models is not really worth paying for either. So don't waste your money and just get a 1250 -- you'll be getting a solid, fast, comfortable shaver.
(BTW, Philips claims that the Sensotouch 3D shavers work with shaving cream, too. This rather defeats the point of an electric shaver for me, so I haven't bothered testing this out.)
Update:
The RQ1250 stopped working last week, out of the blue. Simply didn't turn on. I took it in to Philips to get it repaired under warranty. We'll see how that goes. Impossible to tell whether this is a design flaw (as with the HQ9190, which failed around the same time in both models I had) or just a one-off issue. At least Philips has a two year warranty and it's relatively easy to take advantage of it. I would be more annoyed if I didn't still have my HS8020, though.