The Best Hair Straighteners of 2020, From Flat Irons to Brushes

Claudia Fisher
·11 min read

There are few beauty wins as satisfying as discovering the best hair straightener for your hair. To accomplish this feat, you have to weed through tons of potential matches and, through trial and error, find the flat iron or straightening device best suited for your individual hair texture and time limitations.

Read on for the best hair straighteners that cater to a bevy of beauty and lifestyle concerns.

Whether you have curly hair or extremely thick hair, are looking for a mini flat iron or a hair-straightening brush, there are almost too many factors to consider on your quest for the best hair straightener possible. In addition to hair-texture concerns, you have the financial element: Will a more affordable tool from reliable brands like Remington and Conair get the job done, or do you need to splurge on a high- to mid-tier option from well-known luxury brands like GHD, Chi, Harry Josh, Babyliss, and Paul Mitchell for sleek hair? If you’re worried about cutting down the primp time in your morning routine, you may want to look at flat irons with larger plate widths and fast heat-up capabilities. Titanium flat irons tend to heat up quicker than those with ceramic plates, but the strength and speed you get with titanium plates may mean sacrificing the more limited heat damage to your hair done by ceramic flat irons. Heat gets evenly distributed across ceramic plates, and they’re often enhanced in one of two ways to further protect hair. When infused with tourmaline, ceramic plates create negative ions during the heat-up process, which add a conditioning layer to protect and moisturize your strands. Then you have infrared irons with ceramic plates, which not only emit negative ions, but also heat hair evenly from the inside out to reduce visible damage.

If the thought of clamping any hot flat iron, ceramic or not, down on your colored, brittle, or otherwise damaged hair makes you cringe, maybe you should look into a steam hair straightener or a ceramic flat iron with a wide range of adjustable heat settings to use in tandem with your favorite heat-protecting hair products.

With constantly evolving technology, the best hair straighteners of 2020 are probably different than they’ve looked in years past. To help you navigate through the latest hair straightener features and designs, we’ve rounded up a list of our top contenders. Whatever your main priorities are when it comes to finding the best hair straightener, these are some of the most popular heat styling tools out there.

RELATED: The Most Popular Hair-Styling Product in the U.S. Is One You Probably Hate

Best Hair Straightener on Amazon

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With a whopping 31,700 customer reviews, the HSI Professional Glider is, without a doubt, a popular choice of ceramic flat iron. Aside from the very reasonable price point, customers love how quickly the hair straightener smooths even the most unruly texture and leaves tresses looking professionally styled. The heat options range from 140- to 450-degrees Fahrenheit, giving you a wide range of options to discover the ideal heat for you hair, and the dual-voltage means you don’t have to leave your new hair-straightening staple at home when you travel. An added touch? The flat iron comes with a mini argan oil leave-in hair treatment to boost your hair’s shine and softness.

Shop now: $40; amazon.com

Best-Rated Hair Straightener on Sephora

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Sephora’s best-selling hair straightener and flat iron list is dominated by styling tools from big hitter GHD. The crème de la crème on the beauty retailer’s list is GHD’s Platinum+ Professional Performance 1” Styler. The smart flat iron operates at 365-degrees Fahrenheit, which the brand considers “the optimum styling temperature for even healthier hair,” has a 20-second heat-up time, and a heat-resistant plate guard to protect your furniture and other surfaces. While the price point is definitely on the higher side, GHD’s ceramic hair straightener uses predictive technology that adapts to your hair’s individual texture and the speed at which you're straightening, promising you a unique — and worth it — hair-styling experience.

Shop now: $249; sephora.com

Best Flat Iron for Fine Hair

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The narrow, vibrating ceramic plates and moisturizing heat of this Bio Ionic flat iron make it the perfect hair straightener for fine hair. Each plate is infused with water-emitting mineral rock to keep your hair hydrated despite the fact that you're heat styling it, and the rounded edges make it easier to straighten close to your roots without leaving crease marks. The bio ionic tool promises a 10-minute styling time, meaning your morning routine will definitely be expedited with this flat iron in your beauty arsenal.

Shop now: $230; ulta.com

Best Hair Straightener for Coarse Hair

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With its larger-than-average ceramic plate width of 1.5 inches, the T3 SinglePass X 1.5-Inch Wide Flat Iron styles hair quickly and (as the name suggests) with fewer passes over the same pieces of hair, limiting the potential of leaving your hair damaged. The high-tech straightener heats up in just 30 seconds and was designed specifically for long, thick, or coarse hair that can be a bit stubborn with flat irons that don’t pack as much power. As one Amazon reviewer raves, “Love this!!! This iron heats up fast. Gets really hot. Cuts down on time to straighten. I have thick wavy/curly hair and this is the best flat iron I have found recently.” If quick styling of hard-to-manage hair is your goal, this hair straightener could be your best bet.

Shop now: $200 (Originally $230); amazon.com

Best Hair Straightener for Damaged Hair

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Most professional hair stylists recommend using additional styling products and heat protectants to limit the damage hot tools can do to hair, but there are also hair straighteners that can be less abrasive on your locks than others. Agave Healing Oil’s Healing Vapor Iron harnesses agave extracts and moisture-infusing infrared technology to nourish and strengthen your hair as you style it, promising to banish frizz and split ends in the process. While a vapor-infused pouch may seem like an unusual feature for a hair straightener, customers report softer, silkier hair after use with no incidental greasy residue from the flat iron's agave vapor.

Shop now: $109; bedbathandbeyond.com

Best Steam Straightener

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Steam straighteners, like the less common vapor flat irons, are typically considered better for your hair because they provide more moisture, making the straightening process less drying on your strands. While a steam hair straightener sounds super fancy, Conair makes a reasonably-priced Infiniti Pro Ionic Steam Flat Iron that heats up in 30 seconds and boasts five temperature settings up to a high heat of 455-degrees Fahrenheit. The steam straightener, with tourmaline-coated ceramic plates, also features three retractable combs, giving you options for the most effective length to detangle your particular hair while you style.

Shop now: $30 (Originally $44); amazon.com

Best Hair-Straightening Brush

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Drybar, which basically re-wrote the script on the salon blow-out experience, created its own hair-straightening brush so clients can achieve professional-level sleekness at home. Drybar’s bright yellow Brush Crush Heated Straightening Brush, with customizable heat settings up to 450-degrees Fahrenheit, smooths hair in a matter of minutes and leaves your locks with a little more bounce than a traditional flat iron hair straightener would. A hair-straightening brush like this is great for someone who prefers more of a natural look to pin-straight hair and might be your easiest at-home route to looking like you just got a fresh salon blow out.

Shop now: $145; sephora.com

RELATED: This Hair Dryer Brush Has Thousands of 5-Star Reviews — And It’s Legit Changing People’s Lives

Best Flat Iron to Curl Hair

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Perhaps not how the first inventor of a hair straightener intended, flat irons have been increasingly popular as hair-curling tools. (Here’s how to curl hair with a flat iron if you want a refresher.) Haircare mainstay CHI caught on and created the Tourmaline Ceramic 3-in-1 Hairstyling Iron, which not only has flat inner ceramic plating but curved plating around the outer barrel. The rounded plating maximizes the curling potential each time you wrap your hair while also limiting the amount of hair-snagging and clamp lines that often come with using regular flat irons to curl your hair.

Shop now: $75 (originally $99); amazon.com

Best Mini Flat Iron

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Mini flat irons are great for travel, but not if they can’t work in other countries. BaBylissPRO’s Mini Straightening Flat Iron is dual-voltage, meaning it won’t burn out when you plug it in abroad (with the right adapter). And just because it’s tiny doesn’t mean its results are: Featuring nano titanium hair-straightening power at a heat of 430-degrees Fahrenheit, the mini flat iron from BaBylissPro is a strong straightening force, even on thick and coarse hair. The compact styling tool also comes with a matching blue travel pouch, so everything from packing and using it as you globetrot is a breeze. Another bonus of the tiny size? At just six-inches long with half-inch plates, you can finally get those frizzy roots and stubborn flyaways.

Shop now: $30; ulta.com

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Best for Super Sleek Finish

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Celebrity hair stylist Harry Josh — who’s worked on the famous manes of Rose Byrne and Victoria’s Secret Angels Candice Swanepoel, Gisele Bündchen, and Karlie Kloss — created his own line of hair products, including the famous Pro Dryer 2000 and the Ceramic Flat Styling Flat Iron. With a 1.25-inch plate made of nano-ceramic and tourmaline material, far infrared heat gets distributed evenly throughout your hair to ensure all-over smoothness and shine while the negative ions produced in the process hydrate your locks. With temperature settings ranging from 235 to 425 degrees Fahrenheit, you can choose a heat just right for your hair type and texture

Shop now: $200; dermstore.com

Best for Thick Hair

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If your normal hair straightening routine takes too much time to sustain, it might be time for you to turn to a titanium flat iron. Croc’s Classic Black Titanium 1.5” Flat Iron adds an extra dose of protection by utilizing negative ions, which close the cuticle layer of hair, seal in natural moisture, and prevent static electricity from leaving your tresses frizzy or disheveled. With Croc’s hair straightener, you’ll get the speed and durability of titanium flat irons with the negative ions and infrared rays normally produced by ceramic heaters to balance the impact of the plates’ strength. The tool also features a wide temperature range with 17 heat settings (from 280 to high heat at 450 degrees Fahrenheit) so you can customize your routine to best suit your hair texture and desired look.

Shop now: $140; ulta.com

Best Time Saver

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Shop now: $34; amazon.com

Best Cheap Option

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The hair straighteners on this list run the gamut of price points, but the best bang for your buck might be Remington’s adored 1” Anti-Static Flat Iron with Floating Ceramic Plates and Digital Controls. The thousands of Walmart and Amazon reviews are overwhelmingly positive, with many shoppers saying the hair straightener’s thin size also makes it ideal for creating wavy and curly looks. With titanium coating on the plates, the flat iron heats up in 30 seconds but won’t leave a ton of damage in its wake. The digital display makes it easy to see which of the six heat settings you’re using so you can adjust as you style, with a temperature range up to 410 degrees Fahrenheit.

Shop now: $25; bedbathandbeyond.com