i gave up on curling my hair in middle school. No matter how hard I tried, I could never replicate the corkscrew curls I’d see on my friends or the popular YouTube beauty vloggers I subscribed to at the time. Instead, I settled for the loose waves I managed to achieve with my flat iron. I’ve since stuck to that same look for over a decade.
Enter the TikTok-viral Beachwaver B1, a curling iron that automatically curls your hair with a push of a button. This hair tool has, finally, given me the ringlets of my dreams. Thanks to Black Friday, it’s currently $50 off—which is one of the lowest prices we’ve seen. (It’s worth noting it is final sale, though.) If you’ve been seeing it all over your For You page, take this as your sign to hit that buy button.
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Why We Love the Beachwaver B1
Photograph: Amazon
There’s one reason I struggled to curl my hair: I could never grasp (ha ha!) the mechanics of how to use a curling iron. Which direction do you wrap it? How are you supposed to bend your wrist? How is the hair all supposed to fit on the iron?
Beachwaver’s B1 takes the guesswork out. All you have to do is clamp your hair, press the button, and watch as a strand of your hair automatically wraps around the wand. With two arrow buttons on the handle, you can spin it to the right or to the left, depending on which side of your head you’re curling. Once you’ve spun it close to the root, hold it there for a few seconds and unclamp it to reveal a beautiful corkscrew curl. It did take me a little time to get the hang of it, but after a while it felt like second nature.
This particular model comes with a 1-inch barrel, which is ideal for my shoulder-length hair (Beachwaver is offering discounts on a few other sizes as well). It comes with three different heat settings too: 290 degrees, 350 degrees, and 410 degrees Fahrenheit. Other notable features are the short clamp that prevents accidental kinks, a 30-minute automatic shut-off, and an 8-foot swivel cord. It’s also super lightweight, making it easy to carry in my duffel bag when I’m traveling.
Worried about heat damage? The Dyson Airwrap (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is also on sale for $480 ($120 off). It’s a lot more expensive than the Beachwaver, but it relies on hot air instead of hot metal to style your hair—making this the healthier option. And, like the B1, it automatically wraps your hair around the barrel without having to twist your strands manually. The parts are interchangeable, too, so you get more than just a curling iron. In addition to two curling barrels, the Airwrap comes equipped with a round volumizing brush, a Coanda smoothing dryer, a soft smoothing brush, a firm smoothing brush, a filter cleaning brush, and a storage box.
But if all you want are those beautiful curls, you can rest assured the Beachwaver B1 is more than enough.
