Move over, Dyson: This $79 steam straightener made me break my 5-year flat iron ban

I have spent the better part of the last five years treating flat irons like an airborne virus.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not in the “air-drying only” camp. I diffuse my curls regularly, and when I do indulge in heat styling, I defer almost exclusively to my Dyson Airwrap — the curly and coily version, of course. But standard, sizzling, ceramic clamping straighteners? Absolutely not.

Ever since I committed to nursing my curl pattern back from the brink of oblivion, traditional flat irons have remained permanently banned from my bathroom vanity. Then the algorithm stepped in. After seeing Wavytalk’s Steam Sesh ($79 on Amazon) on what felt like every third video on my feed, I finally caved.

Here’s how a 10-minute session went down, and why I might be in my straight-hair era.

The nostalgia of the heat chamber

The promise of steam styling is what lured me in. Unlike traditional flat irons that pan-fry your hair bone-dry, steam infuses moisture directly into the cuticle, reducing heat damage, boosting shine, and holding frizz at bay.

It’s also a nostalgic full-circle moment. At fourteen, I had a curling tong with a plastic water cap you pumped down for bursts of lukewarm steam. Seeing that category modernized feels grounded in an industry obsessed with over-engineering every tool to death.

Out of the box, you get a surprisingly generous starter kit: a heat-resistant glove, a scrunchie, two sectioning clips, a detachable comb, and a dropper for the water reservoir. Wavytalk insists on distilled water to avoid mineral buildup.

Naturally, I had none and used tap — so consider this your PSA to buy a jug before your delivery arrives. As my mother always put it: do as I say, not as I did.

What it’s actually like to use

Using the Steam Sesh feels wonderfully analog in a world where every beauty tool suddenly requires an app or a Bluetooth pairing. The controls are simple: on/off and temperature, as well a dedicated steam button you can turn on or leave off depending on what you want.

I set the heat, skipped the fussy, paper-thin sectioning I usually dread, and just went for it.

My entire head took about 10 minutes. The steam gave a quiet hiss as the plates glided down, and instead of that scorched-keratin smell, my hair felt soft, hydrated, and surprisingly glossy.

In a beauty space obsessed with 12-step routines customized to your exact hair porosity, it’s refreshing to find a straightforward, one-size-fits-all tool that just gets on with the job, and, I might add, does it extremely well.

The 10-hour endurance test

The real kicker was the endurance test. I styled it in the morning, went about my day, and by evening, there was barely a rogue kink or puff of frizz in sight. My Dyson is great, but getting this level of pin-straight glassiness without feeling like I compromised my hair’s structural integrity has made me an instant fan.

At $79 (or $56 if you grab it while its on sale), calling the Steam Sesh a good value is an understatement. It’s an absolute steal that proves you don’t always need to drop a small fortune to get salon-quality results at home.

Kaycee’s hair holy grails

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More from Tom’s Guide

• I cut my curly hair routine from 2 hours to 20 minutes. Here’s the ‘lazy girl’ method that’ll help you do the same
• I used Google’s Nano Banana to try a bunch of different hairstyles — and the results blew me away
• I tested the Dyson Airwrap i.d. Curly + Coily on my hair — the hype is completely justified

Kaycee is the How-To Editor at Tom’s Guide, crafting no-nonsense tutorials across phones, home hacks, TVs, beauty tech, and grooming. If it plugs into a wall, sits on a vanity, or refuses to work when you need it most, she’s probably written a guide on it. Beyond troubleshooting everyday life, Kaycee is an award-winning poet, a quintessential Aries, and perpetually replaying the same four RPGs on repeat.