Technology
Hair we go
Top tech to tame your tresses and sort your stubble
There’s a quiet revolution happening in personal grooming: even the humble hairdryer has become high-tech, the most expensive example of which is Dyson’s Supersonic hairdryer. At just under £300 it’s a lot pricier than a hot hairdryer from the local supermarket, but its clever motor delivers much faster drying without extreme heat. If your time is money, it’ll save you a fortune. Dyson also makes a hightech styler, the even more expensive Airwrap. It’s currently a whopping £399 but unlike traditional stylers it doesn’t use super-high temperatures that can do serious damage to your hair. Designed for curling, waving, smoothing and volumizing, it uses high air pressure instead of heat. If you can’t quite stretch to a £400 styler, GHD has introduced what it calls SMART technology into its recent stylers and straighteners. It constantly analyses the temperature of the heated plate to deliver consistent, accurate heat across it, monitoring and adjusting the temperature 250 times
per second to deliver the fastest possible styling without dangerous or damaging high temperatures. Expect to pay around £189. We’re seeing more cordless devices now that battery technology is better, and the DAFNI Allure claims to be the world’s first cordless straightening brush – charge it once and you can take it travelling. At £155 it’s quite expensive, but it means you can stay looking your best, even in a festival field. Technology has turned its attention to stubble too. Fancy a five-bladed razor that crosscuts your stubble 70,000 times a minute and analyses the thickness of your stubble to deliver the smoothest possible shave? That’s what the Panasonic ES-LV9Q offers. Yours for around £300. If the budget is tighter, Braun’s clever Series 9 once again offers smart analysis while you shave but adds micro-vibrations which Braun says reduces friction to deliver a gentler shave. That’s currently £189 and includes its own personal cleaning station to
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keep it in tip-top condition. The shavers we’ve mentioned so far are foil shavers, with multiple full-width foils across the top; if you prefer individual rotating heads, the top-rated three-headed shaver on Amazon is Philips’ Series 9000. Currently selling for around £230, it promises incredible results even on three-day growth and offers three different shaving modes depending on how much of a hurry you’re in. Like the Braun, it also comes with its own cleaning station but much cheaper models are available from the same manufacturer. The rush to make personal grooming products smart has had a few hiccups. For example, in 2017 L’Oreal launched a smart, Bluetooth-enabled hairbrush that could deliver “a complete hair diagnosis” based on how you brushed your hair. It didn’t take off: it turns out that what we want from technology is much more practical. Sticking Bluetooth into a brush is very clever, but so far at least it doesn’t seem to be very useful.
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