CR5 Issue 154 March 2018 digital

Technology
In the old days, we had combs, brushes and curling
tongs – and that was about it. Now there’s more
tech than you can shake a GHD straightener at,
all of it promising to deliver luscious locks or
silky-smooth skin. So which technology is
actually worth having for your hair?
There are two kinds of gadgets: gadgets
for getting rid of hair you don’t want,
and gadgets for mak-ing the hair
you do want look better. In the first
camp we’ve long had electric razors,
epilators and little personal trimmers,
but lately they’ve been joined by lasers —
well, light treatment anyway. Intense Pulsed Light
(IPL) is one of the gentlest hair removal methods
around, but you can’t do it if you’re about to go
somewhere sunny, and it doesn’t work on lighter
hair or very dark skin.
Beware of any firm claiming to offer laser treatment
from home devices: laser is a more powerful IPL
and it’s the preserve of salon machines costing five
figures.
The best known IPL system is probably
Philips’ Lumea, whose products are
around the £250 - £350 mark. That’s a
lot of money for a gadget, but if you
have the right skin tone and hair colour
it means no ingrowing hairs, waxing
or other unpleasantness. It’s safe
everywhere, too.
What about the hair you do want?
The same pseudo-science that infests
beauty products is in hair care too,
with lots of big and clever-sounding
nonsense trying to convince us that a
hairdryer is more than just a hairdryer.
Sometimes a hairdryer is all you need.
The biggest name in high-tech hairdryer
technology is Dyson, whose unlovely
(is it just us? It looks like, well,
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DON’T HAVE MAD MARCH HAIR
The gadgets for trimming, taming, styling and straightening
40 Log into www.cr5.co.uk your local community website!
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a
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Dyson) but very effective Supersonic costs £299.
It’s very powerful, very quiet and stays cool to
the touch, although we can’t help thinking we’re
basically holding a hand dryer next to our heads.
More modest technologies can make a big
difference too. Straighteners with
adjustable tempera-tures can
help prevent
too much frizz,
especially with hair
you’ve coloured, and straightening brushes such
as BaByliss’s £50 2440BDU put the heat inside
the hairbrush to great effect. The same firm
has embraced the other big trend in haircare:
straighteners that also style. The Smooth & Wave
Secret isn’t cheap – at £129.99 it’s up there with
the luxury brands such as GHD – and it looks like a
weapon, but it’s enormously clever: hair is drawn
into its ceramic chamber, held and preheated, and
then it either uses Smooth Mode to straighten or
Wave Mode for waves and curls. It goes up to 230
degrees for even the most untamed hair and takes
just 15 seconds to warm up. That’s important: some
rivals don’t like to point out that by the time their
straighteners reach peak temperature, you could
probably have grown a beard.
It’s very important to shop around for products
like the ones we’ve mentioned, as — with the
exception of Dyson, which keeps a firm hold on its
prices — they’re subject to constant aggressive
discounting by supermarkets, beauty shops and
online sellers. And it pays to be flexible when it
comes to specific brands: the difference in price
between Brand A with nice packaging and the
slightly less cute Brand B can be staggering.
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1. Philips Lumea IPL system 2. Dyson Supersonic
3. BaByliss diamond heated brush
4. BaByliss Smooth & Wave