Babyliss Heated Smoothing brush first impressions

When it comes to hair straightening it is a long way from an iron and a towel we have come! I remember the very first time I saw a hair straighteners. I couldn’t understand what my friend was doing! When she told me she was straightening her hair, I  was so confused and asked “why are you not using an iron?” Since then I have tried every single tool you can think of in search of pin straight hair!

The latest tool to land on my desk to try out, is the Babyliss heated smoothing brush. I had seen these all over social media for the for a while now and if I am honest, I had earmarked them as nothing but a gimmick. They held a decent price tag too and as I hadn’t seen any of my trusted beauty gurus talk about it,  I had decided to hold off. When it was sent to me last week, I was delighted to give it a go and decided that as I wasn’t the only one doubting if this actually worked, I would do a first impressions video on YouTube, so that you could see exactly how it works and what I really thought!

The Heated smooth brush, is about the size of your standard paddle brush. It is slightly thicker to accommodate the bristles but it is lightweight and absolutely travel friendly. The pad itself has a mixture of moveable bristles and fixed ceramic fins that do the actual straightening. It promises to give volume and shine to your hair within minutes.

There are 3 heat settings on the brush. 180, 190 and 200 degrees celsius. As I have quite thick hair,  I always put my hair tools up to the highest setting. If you’re hair is finer however, this would work just as well on a lower hear. The brush heats up in about a minute and while it was very hot, it was a lot safer to use then other hair tools I have tried out, as the bristles keep the heated areas away from your skin for the most part. I did hit it off my face once or twice, but it didn’t burn the way a traditional straighteners can.
To use, your hair needs to be bone dry. As you can see in the video, I tried it in two ways. I tried it on hair that was sectioned off and on loose hair. Either way, you hold a piece of the hair taunt and bring the brush through the hair from underneath. I found that you didn’t have to go overly slow and two brush throughs was enough. Once I had brushed through the hair  twice underneath, I ran the brush over the top to get rid of any remaining frizz. I was actually quite surprised at not only how easy it was to use but how straight my hair was. It felt incredibly silky, smooth and almost like I had ironed it!!

I think it is important to note, that my hair is a little frizzy rather than unruly and for the most part it is easy to style. I do however find, that if I use a GHD it takes a while to get it as straight as the smoothing brush got it. I would be inclined to say, that if you have curly hair, this might not be the tool for you. This would be much better for someone who has kinky or frizzy hair.

I was genuinely so surprised at how well this brush worked. While I would have liked a little more volume, it certainly didn’t flatten the hair the way some tools can. My hair moved well and wasn’t just a block of hair if you get me. It did give the movement that a salon blow dry gives, but just not as much volume. A little bit of backcombing gave me the volume I love!

You all know my love of my Steampod, but and on heart for me the smoothing brush holds it own  and in fact has a little bit of an edge because it is travel friendly and doesn’t require water!!!!

Would I recommend this? Absolutely, but as I mentioned above if you have very curly hair, I would use the Loreal steampod instead. Also I don’t think it would work too well on bobbed hair. I have compared the Babyliss smoothing brush with he GHD and steampod in the video below.

The prices vary from shop to shop and I have seen it online for as high as €140. Harvey Norman did send me this and to be fair their price seems to be one of the lowest at €99.95. It isn’t on their website yet, but you can pick it up in store.