Hair gadgets have become increasingly popular over the last decade. Hair dryers, curlers, steamers — you name it, there’s probably a TikToker shilling for the latest hair gadget that will totally revolutionize a hair routine. Even so, I was excited to get a demo of L’Oréal’s Light Straight at CES 2026.
It’s an extension of the tech that L’Oréal introduced at CES 2024 with the AirLight Pro hair dryer. In a nutshell, most conventional hairstyling tools rely on heated coils and motors. The AirLight Pro hair dryer introduced infrared light to help speed up drying while reducing the overall heat required. (I’ve been doing some long-term testing of the high-tech hair dryer versus a standard one over the past year, and I can confirm that it is much faster.)
The Light Straight uses the same tech, but in a flat iron form. The proposed benefit is the ability to straighten or curl hair with one pass, using less heat. Typical hairstyling tools can exceed 400 degrees Fahrenheit, but the Light Straight won’t go beyond 320 degrees. Altogether, the company says that should translate to three times faster styling and hair that’s two times smoother. Considering that styling can take forever — and lead to some crispy strands — saving time while also reducing damage is a compelling pitch.
I didn’t get to try it on my own hair for hygienic reasons. I did, however, get to handle the device and see a robot arm curl and straighten a test strand of hair. The flat iron is relatively lightweight to hold and heats up quickly. In the demo, I was able to see the robot curl and then straighten hair with a single pass — but the resulting hair wasn’t too hot to the touch. It was an impressive demo, though we’ll have to see how the device performs on different hair types. L’Oréal told me that the device should work on most hair types, but it’s not going to change the fact that flat irons are easier to use on certain hair types over others.
The Light Straight is slated to arrive sometime in 2027, so we don’t yet know how much it’ll cost. Further down the line, L’Oréal says it’s keen to expand this infrared light tech to multi-styler tools like hair dryer/roller brush combos.
