I’ll be honest, I’ve been hesitant to write this review because I generally don’t enjoy scaring people or coming across too negative. But I felt as a beauty blogger, it was important for me to always be honest and share with you with experiences I have that stand out and to be 100% honest with you, so here we go!
A few weeks back I came across this interested device called Babyliss Perfect Curl, which is basically an automatic curler. You place a small strip of your hair into the styler, clamp it down and it sucks in the rest of the hair and curls it for you! It sounded so easy and I’ve been having a ton of issues with curling my hair lately so I knew I had to try it. Unfortunately the Babyliss version seemed to only be available overseas, so I searched the internet and found a Vs Sassoon version called Secret Curl.
After reading a bunch of reviews online from other bloggers I thought this would be a great product to purchase. Unfortunately it may have been great for the other bloggers, but for me it was a bit of a traumatic experience.
I’d like to pride myself in being relatively savvy with my hair, I’ve been straightening my hair for over 10 years now and I know how to curl it with a straightener so I’m okay. For reference, my hair isn’t perfect. I’ve never bleached / dyed it ever in my entire life, but I do throw a lot of heat treatment at it without using conditioners / heat protectors so it’s a little on the frizzy side, and I naturally have wavy hair.
I followed all the instructions, I made sure to read the review carefully and take their advice. I added some heat protectant to my hair and a 10 cent piece amount of Moroccan oil to soften my hair a bit more. Blew dried my hair and combed it right through to remove any knots and then sectioned it off. I took about a one inch amount of hair and went ahead and started styling.
The results were nice, I changed the settings around to see what sort of curl I could get and for the most part the curls were super tight, which is good! Gives me more room to play and style them when I’m done, it worked well and made creating curls very easy! But I did notice that every couple of pieces I’d put in would cause the curler to beeper repetitively at me because it was jammed and not curling properly.
Each time that happened, I’d let my hair out and move on to a different section to let my hair cool. So it wasn’t the most seamless experience and did take a bit of going back and forth to make sure all my hair was properly styled.
Unfortunately about half way through is when I encountered my bad experience, I placed some hair in and it was jammed. No worries, I released the styling to remove my hair, only this time it was stuck. So I tugged with a little more force and still no luck. So I quickly switched off the styler so it would stop generating more heat, though I was concerned that the part of my hair currently stuck would continue to receive heat. I started tugging hard till I felt like some of my hairs started to snap and then I knew, I’d need to cut my hair out. So I unplugged the styler and raced to my bedroom to find a pair of scissors and snipped my hair out.
Fortunately because I was only styling very small sections at a time, and my hair is so thick, you can’t even tell where I had to cut my hair. But the experience really upset me, so put the styler back in it’s box and returned to my tried and trusted GHD straightener to curl the rest of my hair manually on my own.
All in all, I didn’t have a good experience with this styling, in fact it really upset me because $130AUD is a lot of money and since I’ve already used the product I can no longer return it.
Due to my own personal experience, I would not recommend this product. I would stick to curling irons or straighteners if I were you. I’d be concern that if what happened to me happened to someone with lighter / thinner hair, that it could have ended worse.
If you’re keen, I would see if you could try this on yourself before buying. I suspect it would work a treat if your hair is naturally healthy and silky, I suspect having hair that has been damaged by heat treatment only exacerbated the problem.
Oh my gosh, that sounds terrifying!
Turned out okay in the end, but I’m happy with my traditional curling irons 🙂
That sounds really scary! 😮
It was in that moment! Fortunately I’ve got so much hair no one can tell 🙂
Oh no, I’ve seen YouTube videos of this and it looked really cool! Sorry to hear about your experience 🙁
Me too! That was the original reason I got it, suppose you probably need to already have pretty smooth healthy hair. Mine tends to not be very slick unless I straighten it, despite all the oils and combing 🙁
Yikes HT! That’s so sad, luckily you have tonnes of hair 😛 I did actually have this on my to buy list though, but now I’m thinking it’s best to stick with my curling iron! <3
Your hair is a lot shorter than mine, so you may not get the same problem, but I personally prefer curling irons over motorised curlers now 🙂
I use Rusk Miracurl and I LOVE it. Think it is also the original version in Australian market. To be honest I got stuck as well but that was because I didn’t read the instruction properly where styling different section of the hair, I had to flip the curler around otherwise it will get stuck.
With Rusk I could easily untug my “stuck” hair so it was all good for me!
http://www.ponikuta.com/2013/06/rusk-miracurl/#.UmiIE_mnrkE as
That’s good! I think it’s normal for hair to generally get stuck quite a bit with these sort of curlers, esp if your hair is as long / thick / frizzy as mine, but if you can untug it then that’s most important.
Drats, I was deciding between the Rusk and VS one and thought I might get the latter because it’s slightly cheaper than Rusk’s. Did you send any feedback to VS about this? It could be that you’ve gotten a faulty device?
Nope, this wasn’t sent to me, it was one I bought with my own money so I figured I’d just share my personal experience. Not sure if mine was faulty, it appeared to function okay. Just don’t think it was a good match for me personally.
Ooh thanks for writing this review, I’ve been really curious about these devices so it’s to read a few different points of view. I’d be so scared of getting my hair stuck in one of these contraptions!
My pleasure! I wanted to provide a different perspective on the device since I noticed almost every review out there was sponsored by VS in some shape or form (not all, just the ones I’ve read) and thought given I got it with my own money, my 2 cents would be worth providing too 🙂 Good luck on your hunt!
Wow! I’m had no problems at all with mine. It gets jammed and beeps only when I use too much hair because I get very impatient very quickly.
Hope your hair is okay.
maybe it has something to do with the length of hair?
Could anyone tell me what the differences between the rusk miracurl and the vs sasson curl secret are? I got the vs sasson thinking it was the miracurl, it’s a gift for my step daughter 1st bad review I’ve seen so far.
Rusk miracurl is the original vs sassoon have copied it … But to avoid copyright they have left out two important features one is safety as the rusk cuts out when hair is jammed and secondly curls can change direction
I tried to return it at the shaver shop but couldn’t so that’s what she is getting 🙂 I’m sure she will be happy with it, i have seen other good reviews! yea I see you can change direction of curl and there is there is an extra low heat setting of 190.
Well iv done some more research, miracurl and curl secret are both members of the brand babyliss so they are the same product just with added feautures! In America the miracurl is the upgraded version they call it the pro! So there ya go…….
Conair is the big company that owns both styling tools I should say!
The only reason your hair got stuck was because too much hair went in at once. You have to abide by the 1″ or max 1 1/2″ thickness or it’ll get stuck. I’ve owned my Curl secret for about a month & a half now and it’s by far the best tool ive used. Ive got bra strap length hair and it takes me only 10 mins to do up my entire head. I also own an Instyler, a GHD flat iron, a Babyliss hot air curler but none of them could match the efficacy & convenience of the VS Curl secret. Btw, got mine at Big W in Perth for AUD159.90 in November 2013.
Thanks for visiting and your comment. As stated in my post, I followed the instructions precisely. I’ve been using a wide range of heating tools for well over a decade now so I’m very aware and cautious regarding how different tools function and always try a number of times before giving up. I’m really glad that this tool, worked for you, unfortunately not every tool will work universally for every person since we all have different hair types, which based on my experience is why this tool didn’t work for me. Happy you’ll continue to get use out of your tool 🙂