(upbeat music)
- Hey guys, it's Mindy from Cute Girls Hairstyles.
How is it going?
So today, we are doing another Fab or Fail.
You guys are loving these
and I keep getting so many requests.
So, we are going to do, today,
the hair straightening brush.
So, before we move on to the hair straightening brush,
if you guys have not already heard,
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and it was totally safe, mother-approved,
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And on top of that, we have some super fun things coming
in the next six months,
I'm not gonna tell you what they are,
over on that channel,
but we've been working really hard on them.
So, you should definitely go check out Uniland.
You can click the button right up here
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and a thumbs up, just so you show us a little bit of love.
You're gonna love it, your kids are gonna love it.
Definitely go over and check it out.
So, let's move on to the hair straightening brush.
Okay, so this is what I wanted to do on this one.
I'm sure have all seen the Facebook videos
where the girl takes the brush
and just rolls it nicely through her hair,
and suddenly she has this beautiful, shiny,
completely straight, amazing hair.
So, what I wanted to know today is,
does it actually work, for one,
and then on top of that,
does it actually work better
than a regular hair straightener would work?
And on top of all of that,
I'm gonna answer the question,
"Would an expensive one work better
"than a less expensive one?"
So today, I have two straightening brushes.
One is this one by InStyler.
I picked this up at Ulta.
You can see the packaging right here.
And this one was $59.99,
so I would say reasonably-priced,
but still not inexpensive-cheap,
but I would say, like, reasonably-priced for a hair tool.
Okay, the second one I have is this Amika.
I believe that's how you say the brand,
and I picked this one up at Sephora.
This beauty was $129.99,
so, much more expensive,
definitely a tool that you wouldn't add to your arsenal,
unless you, like, really, really loved it.
They both, on the back of the box,
say they have heated plates, that they have, you know,
infrared heat, they both have cool-tip bristles,
they both have automatic shutoff,
they both have swivel cords.
One claims it heats up in 30 seconds,
the other one just says it's a quick heat-up.
They really sound quite similar,
there's a few little added extra bells
and whistles on this one, but ultimately,
really quite similar.
Okay guys, so, I pulled the tools out of the boxes.
This one just came, literally,
pretty much with this in a plastic bag
and the directions.
This one, the pretty, pink packaging, came with a box,
and then this nifty, little carrying pouch like this,
and it even came with some cool stickers,
if that is the make-or-breaker for you,
but they are cute.
And then on all of them,
the directions just say plug them in,
basically run them through your hair from root to end,
don't hold it too long and you're good to go,
and you're gonna have, as the Amika directions say,
"Instantly creates smooth hair in a single stroke."
So, we shall see.
I will tell you that immediately,
I noticed when I pulled them out,
the Amika's cord, I don't know if you can see this,
it's like a professional tool cord, like, it's heavy duty,
it's about,
I would say double the thickness.
I'm gonna try to show you here.
Here's the InStyler's cord and here's the Amika's.
So, it's about double the thickness
and is about double the length.
Yeah, definitely differences on the cord right away,
but other than that, about the same weight
and they have relatively,
pretty much the same buttons on them.
So, I'm gonna turn them on,
they both claim they heat up fast
and we'll see which one heats up faster.
Okay, so they are both on.
I'm gonna make sure this one's at 450.
I'm gonna heat them to 450,
which is the hottest, which is the setting for, like,
coarse or curly hair.
My hair has a little bit of curl to it
and it's pretty thick,
so I'm gonna take it up to 450 and see what that does.
So, we're still waiting.
Waiting.
This one's telling me what it's counting.
This one, you can see it counting up.
This one's just blinking.
So,
I guess when it stops blinking, that means it's done.
This one's at 420.
Oh, this one stopped blinking
and this one's at 450.
(gasps)
So within, like, a millisecond, they both got to 450.
So, not bad and I wouldn't say
that was a terribly long
heat-up.
Okay, so I've parted my hair in two sections,
this half, one half, the other half,
and we're just gonna run them through a couple times
and see what we think.
Let's start with the InStyler.
Alright.
So, I will say,
now that I'm sitting here,
this one's kinda noisy.
It's kinda making, like, a humming-buzzing sound.
This one's not at all.
I don't know what that means.
InStyler,
root to tip.
So, again.
I'm going just a little bit slower
'cause it went through kinda fast the first time.
Okay, it did straighten my hair a little bit, yep.
And I'm doing just, like, medium sections of hair.
I'm not doing a ton, I'm not doing tiny sections.
I'm trying to really hold this firmly
so that it's right against the heating elements
in the brush.
Trying not to move too fast,
but not so slow it burns my hair.
Kinda hard on the ends, I think.
Okay, so you can see,
right there, I mean, it is straighter than my hair.
For sure.
Okay, now let's try the Amika on this side.
Okay, so here's the Amika.
Okay, so that was the first pass on that one.
Let's try it again and just do it a little bit slower.
I'm gonna do a second section
so we have pretty much exactly the same feel.
I am noticing that, like,
when I'm putting it into my root, like,
I can't get completely down now.
I am getting pretty close, I feel like,
but I still think you're, like,
an inch, inch and a half away from your root, real root.
If that matters to you with the brush.
And I do think it's a little bit hard, like, right here,
you're kinda really having to hang onto those ends
and then they just kinda fall through.
So, I could see how you might have
to run your ends a couple times.
Okay, and that's the second pass.
Here's the InStyler,
here's the
Amika.
I'm gonna go with Amika.
Okay, I'm gonna go with,
pretty much, they did exactly the same thing
'cause I don't really feel like one
was significantly better than the other.
I do think it was harder to hang onto the ends
and get the ends, like, I feel like you'd have
to go over them a couple times
'cause once they get into the brush, they just zip through.
And I do think that you didn't get up
into your roots really tight,
and I personally don't think that either one
of them gave me the silky, smooth, like,
instantaneous...
Like, for me personally, I'm just trying to envision,
like, if all of my hair looked like this
and like this,
so like, that's straightish.
Like, that wouldn't feel done to me, personally.
This feels almost like I just kinda blow-dried my hair and
went outside, like, I don't know.
When I straighten my hair, straighten,
the word, to me, feels like it needs to be really,
really straight and really slick,
and I don't feel like
that's what I got here.
I mean, it's definitely straighter than my natural hair.
I do have one more test,
what I wanna do is heat up my favorite,
actual straightener-straightener
and run it over my hair,
and see, like, how we feel about the difference in that,
versus the straightening brush
'cause I think I know what the answer's gonna be,
but I wanna do it on camera so you guys can see it.
Okay, I have my hair straightener all heated up
and ready to go.
I am noticing, as I'm sitting here,
I just had them laying like this on the table,
and I just touched them with my fingers,
just to see if the bristles were super hot, like this,
and I did notice that the InStyler's bristles are quite hot.
Like, if I left my hand there,
I would definitely get burned.
This one, also hot, but not as hot.
Like, I could leave my hand there longer.
I don't know why that would matter, necessarily,
just a F.Y.I.
Okay, hair straightener.
I'm gonna take a piece, like, kind of in the back
to try to not,
you know, use hair that we've already gone through once,
and I'm gonna take about the same piece of hair, size-wise.
And then, we're just gonna do the same thing,
like, root to tip.
Okay.
Going down it.
And I do always use heat protectant on my hair.
Okay, so this was the piece
I just ran the hair straightener over
and this
was
the section I did
with the hair straightening brush.
This still feels a little bit like a Hagrid hair look to me,
this front part, and the back part doesn't as much.
I definitely also think I had more control over the ends,
like, you can see how the ends are falling
with the pretty little curl to them,
and here, it's just, like, they're kinda rough still
and a little more ratchet-looking.
So, while the camera was off,
I decided to take another step further
and just test something.
So, I actually did this left side of my hair.
In the end, I felt like the Amika brush maybe did,
like, one tiny bit better than the InStyler.
Like, hardly any, but maybe this much better.
So, I did my entire left side of my hair, my left,
with the Amika brush, this side.
You can see it.
And this is what it looked like,
which actually is straighter than I thought it might be,
like, when I was initially doing it.
And then, I used my regular hair straightener,
just the good, old-fashioned straightener,
on the right side of my hair
and finished my hair out with that, on this side,
so that I could really get a clear difference,
or if there was a difference, for that matter.
And these were the results,
so you can see for yourself, like, here's the left side,
here's the right side,
and in my personal opinion,
the hair straightener still wins.
So, in conclusion, final wrap-up,
I would give the Straight Up straightening brush,
by InStyler, out of a 10,
I would probably give it a five.
I mean, it did straighten my hair,
but it didn't really, like, flatten-totally my hair,
and I liked the cord less.
Now, on the Amika,
I would probably give it, for usage,
a six because I thought it did a little bit better
and I thought the cord was really nice,
but considering it was double the money,
it definitely didn't do twice the job.
So, I don't feel like the difference in cost
was worth what you're gonna get by buying this one.
Technically, they did straighten my hair,
so they didn't, like, fail,
but I personally wouldn't recommend buying
either one of them, just because I would still tell you
to go get a hair straightener,
like, and use a good hair straightener.
Does it work?
I don't think so, like,
not like the videos you're seeing on Facebook,
where it's like a one whoosh and it's, like,
this beautiful, straight hair.
I don't feel like that happened.
I'm gonna give it, like,
a one-thumbs-up and a one-thumbs-down, how's that?
'Cause it, like, technically did work,
but it also wasn't worth the money.
So, I hope you guys enjoyed this Fab or Fail.
Leave a comment below on other products you guys
want me to try, anything from the totally-weird
to the totally-normal.
But, leave a comment below.
If you guys wanna see Uniland, which you do,
please go over and check it out,
and you can click the button right there
to check out our Uniland videos.
My latest favorite is the Itsy Bitsy Spider,
so cute.
And if you wanna check out our other Fab or Fail videos,
you can click the link right here
and check that out,
and we will see you guys later.
Bye, guys.