Our beauty editor’s honest Remington Proluxe You Adaptive Straightener review

Thinking about investing in a new pair of flat irons? You’ll want to read this Remington Proluxe You Adaptive Straightener review first.

Everyone has their thing when it comes to beauty. Some people love perfume, while others are obsessive about nails. For me, it’s hair, and more specifically, finding the best straighteners. My thick, frizz-prone, and naturally curly hair has been a source of annoyance for as long as I can remember, and I have genuinely lost weeks trying to tame it with heat over the years. 

I haven’t owned a pair of Remington straighteners for a long time, but their latest launch piqued my interest. The key selling point is that it uses “Intelligent StyleAdapt Technology” to get to know your hair, and personalizes the heat settings based on what it learns. So, could this clever straightener really understand my hair better than I do? I put the Remington Proluxe You Adaptive Straightener to the test to find out.

Our Beauty Editor's Remington Proluxe You Adaptive Straightener review 

Design and first impressions

Remington Proluxe You Adaptive Straighteners certainly have shelf appeal. They look good, with a sleek black design complimented by flashes of metallic. They’re satisfyingly weighty (I never trust a straightener that feels flimsy) but not so heavy that they’d leave your arms aching by the time you’re straightening the top layer of your hair. 

The plates are standard width, making them a good size for getting right to the roots (and subduing wispy baby hairs) as well as the lengths and ends. This means they’re also the ideal shape for getting to grips with how to curl hair with a straightener, as not everyone wants poker-straight hair every day. 

According to the brand, the plates have a ceramic coating that’s 10 times thicker than standard. This means they are slightly different from entirely ceramic straighteners, as they are metal underneath, but will still help to ensure an even distribution of heat. For extra pizazz, they’re infused with diamond particles too, which makes for a smoother glide through the hair. 

A final thing to note here is that the straighteners come with a handy two-in-one protective storage sleeve and styling mat, and the plates can be locked together when not in use. That’s two big ticks for easy travel and storage. 

Remington Proluxe You Adaptive Straightener technology

We’re all busy people, and not everyone has the time to fiddle around with the heat settings on their straightener every morning. What’s so brilliant about the Remington Proluxe You Adaptive Straightener’s StyleAdapt technology is that it does the hard part for you. It effectively takes out the guesswork, giving you the best temperature for the job. 

When you turn the straightener on for the first time, it automatically defaults to StyleAdapt1 mode. Then, as you work through the hair section by section the sensor strip in the center of the plates starts getting to know your hair. The little icon on the display panel spins as you style, indicating that it’s learning what your hair needs and adjusting the temperature accordingly. The sensors can read the hair temperature up to 2,500 times in a single styling session, but neither the current temperature (nor any changes to the temperature) are shown on the display. 

If you share your straighteners with someone else, Remington has catered for that too. There is the option to move the mode to StyleAdapt2, a second profile that means someone else can personalize the straightener to their hair type without overriding your settings. 

It is also possible to overrule the adaptive technology and use it as a standard styler where you move manually between the temperatures. The temperature range is broad, from 150°C to 230°C. If you’re choosing the heat setting yourself, Remington recommends 150°C-170°C for fine, bleached, or thinning hair, 180°C-200°C for normal, healthy hair, and 210°-C-230°C for hair that’s thick, has a tight curl type, or is difficult to style. 

How well does the Remington Proluxe You Adaptive Straightener perform?

We’re all friends here, so I’m willing to admit that I’m normally a straightener-brand snob. I like my GHDs and my Cloud Nines, so I didn’t have super high expectations from Remington. But I’m pleased to report that I was more than impressed by the results. My hair is thick in that there’s a lot of it, but also each strand is coarse enough to rival wire. I blow-dried with my best hair dryer but didn’t spend much time smoothing – leaving the heavy lifting to my new straighteners. 

Remington’s Proluxe You Adapt Straighteners heat up in an impressive 15 seconds, and I started on the curliest parts of my hair in the StyleAdapt1 mode. The first time I used them, it took two slow passes through each section of hair to properly smooth and straighten, but by the second use, it only took one go. It felt much hotter from the second go too, and I can only assume this is because the straightener had learned that it needed to bring out the big guns to whip my hair into shape. 

As you can get quite a lot of hair between the plates at once, it took around 15 minutes to fully straighten my shoulder-length hair in four sections. I was impressed with the results: shiny hair that felt soft and silky with just a small amount of static. I’ve had this kind of result from straighteners before, only to find that I have fluffy and frizzy hair come lunchtime, but these really did go the distance, and my hair was just as satisfyingly sleek by evening. 

This is not necessarily a performance metric, but a big plus for anxious types like me is that these stylers automatically turn off after 60 minutes of not being used for extra peace of mind. 

What’s not so good about them?

I’m a bit of a control freak, so although it’s the key selling point of the styler, I personally didn’t love relinquishing control of the heat settings in the adaptive mode. As I do use heat regularly, I want to keep split ends to a minimum so tend to use my straighteners on a hotter setting after washing, and then on a cooler one for touch-ups in between. 

Although the straighteners don’t display the temperature during StyleAdapt mode, my hair felt hot to the touch and the irons sizzled a little on my heat protection spray. This, combined with the fact that the brand recommends temperatures of between 210°C-230°C for thick hair, makes me confident that I was using one of the highest temperatures to tame my unruly mane. 

This is hotter than I would usually go (for reference, my GHD Platinum+ hair straightener is set at 185°C) and I haven’t yet tested for long enough to see how this would impact the health of my hair. It is a catch-22 situation, as I would need to pass over each section of hair multiple times using these straighteners at lower temperatures, compared to just one pass at a higher heat setting. For these reasons, I’d be likely to switch between adaptive and manual modes. 

Remington Proluxe You Adaptive Straightener review: My verdict

So, what's the verdict of my Remington Proluxe You Adaptive Straightener review? If you’re looking for a smart straightener that knows how to give you smooth, sleek hair fast, then this is worth every single penny. It glides through their hair easily with no snagging, and the results are long-lasting. You will need to be a little patient though, as it does take a few uses for the straighteners to fully adapt to your hair’s needs. 

The downside is not knowing exactly what temperatures you’re using at any given time on the adaptive modes, so the option to switch to manual mode is a welcome one. I liked that it offers a wide range of temperatures to choose from here too. Given how well this worked on my thick, naturally curly, and very fluffy hair, I’d say with confidence it would work well on any hair type. A smart tool you’d be smart to invest in.