Given its impact on our hair styling routines over the years, it’s exciting news indeed when ghd announces a new arrival.
The brand’s classic heat-styling tools changed the hair-straightening game back in 2001 and ghd has evolved its options since then to do an increasing array of clever things to our hair. Not to mention, a recently revamped range of styling products to help.
Now ghd has released arguably its biggest update ever.
The new ghd Duet Style is a two-in-one hot-air styler that is said to transform hair from wet to styled, while also promising to do it with no damage to strands.
The brand says it has called on “21 years of heated styling and drying expertise and combining the science of convection and conduction to create Airfusion technology, bringing together the power of air flow and the performance of actively heated styling plates to deliver a sleek, smooth and glossy style.”
Here are five key things you need to know about the new styler:
1. It combines hot air and straightening plates
The styler itself is larger and slightly heavier than more recent ghd stylers. It has a wider, flatter, paddle-shaped head that contains familiar glossy, flat metal plates as well as an airflow grille in between the plates to dry hair. It also has angled air vents in each side of the paddle head, said to help dry your roots.
A digital motor within the handle draws airflow in from an air filter in the cord end. The airflow passes through a heater to reach the optimum temperature for drying without damage, then passes into the drying chamber and out onto your strands.
On startup the motor whirs up but its airflow isn’t overwhelmingly powerful, nor is it as loud as a standard hairdryer.
2. It’s easy to use
Though we had briefly read the press release, the unit is intuitive to use and we found it does what it says it will. There’s only one switch (one) and one button (shine shot), and a light stops flashing and the styler beeps when its ready to style in each mode.
You need to start with freshly-washed, towel-dried but still damp hair. Take a comb and separate a medium-sized section of hair. Clamp the styler at the root for 2-3 seconds before gliding down the section of hair from root to ends. We found you may need to repeat this step to ensure hair is fully dry.
3. You can also use on dry hair
The styler can also be used as a simple straightener. It has what it calls a ‘shine shot’ mode and at the touch of a button transforms the tool into a ghd styler with airflow stopped, the heated plates working at the optimum styling temperature of 185°C, for when hair is already dry and simply needs styling.
We used this mode to quickly go over hair after it was dried using the drying mode, for a beautiful shiny, sleek and polished finish.
The brand says the shine shot is ‘designed to boost dried or second day dry hair and offers 2x more shine and hair alignment for smoother and instant frizz-free hair’.
4. It works brilliantly (on fairly straight hair)
We have been using the styler for several days and can honestly say it’s quite brilliant being able to dry and straighten hair with one tool in a matter of minutes. Definitely less packing next time we travel!
However, we have only tested the Duet Style on fine, shoulder-length hair, and the benefit of its speed and streamlining your routine could well be challenged by very thick or curly hair. For these hair types, a more powerful hairdryer and separate straightener is likely to be needed or you’ll need to section hair into even smaller pieces to dry and smooth it as one. This means you’d lose any time potentially saved by having one styler.
It leaves hair feeling silky and smooth and yes, straight.
That being said, we haven’t managed to achieve any body, volume or bounce with it, so in our book it’s really only useful if you regularly blow-dry and then straighten your hair, because it cuts the time and tools used to do that job in half.
Another downside is that because the plates/paddle are quite large, it was tricky to get as close to the scalp as needed, but with practice and perhaps holding the hair section higher this may become easier to reach my roots properly. If you have curly or textured hair, missing this area could result in an uneven finish.
5. It is claimed to cause no damage to hair
ghd claim that the groundbreaking technology, including multiple sensors that maintain an even heat, prevents any damage to your hair even when styling from wet.
The brand says after undergoing tests, no thermal hair damage was detected after four passes through the hair. If this is truly the case, for those of us that regularly use a number of hot tools, this could be a useful, hair-saving replacement!
- The new ghd Duet Style is available in black and white and costs NZ$645 from ghdhair.com/nz and selected salons and retailers.
