Cloud 9 Hair Straighteners and The Internal OCD Monster.

I was starting to feel rather left out when these started doing the rounds on blogs, so I was really keen to give them a whirl when I was offered a pair for review purposes. However, I had to balance this out with the battle with the internal OCD monster - I have a morbid fear of leaving straighteners on, and setting fire to the place...

So, these baby's have set themselves high standards by taking on the GHD - after all this is made by the people who produced the GHD, previous holders of the hair straightening crown, unchallenged for, well, years....

Your Cloud Nines come very nicely packaged, complete with a lovely box bearing the motto "Less Heat More Style", and lovely turqoise and black packaging...

Inside the box you get the straighteners (duh!), a heat cover (good for the OCD monster) and a carrying/storage pouch;

The straighteners have a lovely long cord, which swivels at the straightener end - I like this as a feature as it prevents cord tangles, which makes my internal OCD monster happy. 

Other features include an on/off switch;

And then there is the temperature control;

The temperature control is obviously one of the most key features of these irons - GHD's operate at one temperature, namely very high, which is great for producing straight hair but bad for the hair itself - the temperature control allows you to adjust the iron for both your hair type (finer hair needs a lower temperature), and also for the style you want to create (higher temperatures to create curls and waves...). This CHART shows this in more detail.
The straightener is curved allowing easy waves and curls to be created. Also, the Cloud Nines have a clever feature where they switch off after half an hour if they aren't used, which is another feature that pleases my internal OCD monster.

They also feature lovely shiny black ceramic plates;

These contain some kind of magic pixie dust secret ingredient which promises to seal in shine to the hair with each use. Now this is where the sceptical monster wanted to know what the heck this stuff was, and also - What happens when it runs out? Does it run out? How does it work? Is it real? Whatever the answer is, the real issue is - if it works does it matter?


So, prepare yourselves for the before and after shots...

So, the above monstrosities shots show my hair before straightening - I washed and blast dried with a hairdryer just as I normally would before tying it back. My hair is baby fine but I have copious amounts of it - also, due to the hacking it had recently "style" (and believe me, I use that term very loosely) I recently had cut into the hair its looking rather fluff-tastic and fly away. Repeated dyings have left it looking low on shine too...

And above we see the after shots - I straightened the hair on 100 degrees, and this allowed me to straighten it, tame the ends (my hair does that thing where it curls under on one side and out on the other side...), and reduce the fluff, without having to go over and ove the hair fifty times... I personally think it does look shinier than in the before pictures. The best thing is though, because you don't have the one heat setting (ie larva) a la GHD, you can straighten without knocking all of the volume out of your hair - it still looks bouncy and not too flat and limp, which is a big achievement with fine hair. 

To use the straighteners, you plug 'em in, switch on on the handle and then set the temperature. The straighteners bleep when first turned on and the temperature light flashes until it reaches the temp you have selected (this takes less than half a minute, for any temperature, unless you are going down in temp, which takes longer). Oh, and ALWAYS use a heat protectant - any heat will damage your hair so don't take un-necessary risks!


The criticism I've heard and read a lot about these is that people catch their hand in the hinge;

I personally haven't found this to be an issue - and when I compared my GHDs, they actually have a similar style hinge to the Cloud Nines, and most people seem to adjust to that! I actually found that because of the position I hold the straighteners in, I switched it off a couple of times accidentally, but I soon adjusted...


The bottom line? I'd definitely recommend these straighteners - especially for people with fine or damaged hair. They basically have all the good features of GHD's with added extra's, making them good for different hair textures and creating different styles. I have GHD's but haven't used them since I recieved these over a month ago... Price wise these retail at £129.95, which a similar price as the GHD's. The size shown above is the medium iron, however it is also available in wide and micro - the wide irons retail for the same price, as the medium iron.


You can find out more about the range, including stockists and prices HERE.