The search for the best hair straightener can often be a frustrating one. When reading hair straightener reviews, you’re left wondering how similar your mop of curliness is to hair of the girl who wrote, “This is the best hair straightener I’ve ever used! It works so quickly!”

After all, just about anyone can tell you that what works fine for one girl might not work well enough for another.

With that in mind, this post seeks to provide a thorough overview of the Remington S5500 hair straightener. Whether or not this particular model will be the best hair straightener for you, of course, largely depends on your personal hair styling needs.

Remington S5500: The #1 Selling No-Frill Hair Straightener

Remington SS500 at a Glance

Features you can expect

The Remington S5500 features a digital temperature display, letting users quickly and easily set their desired temperature.

The default setting for the temperature is 370 °F, with a maximum of 410 °F and a minimum of 310 °F. Fans of lilac hues will be pleased with the fun purple color of this hair straightener.

Official product descriptions boast that the ceramic plates of this flatiron are crafted using anti-static technology that works to effectively reduce negatively charged particles in hair, thereby reducing static-based fly-away ends.

This product is compatible for use with 120 volt outlets. New devices are backed by a two year warranty.

Reasons for buying it

Perhaps one of the greatest pros to the Remington S5500 is its low price. At less than half the cost of many other models that offer similar features, this low cost alone will probably be seen as reason enough for many consumers to go ahead and purchase it.

Other advantages to this flatiron model include automatically turning off after an hour. While this might be a little frustrating if you’re planning on spending a long time using it, it will probably be a much-appreciated function during those mornings when you’ve left your home but can’t remember whether or not you remembered to turn off your hair straightener.

The Remington S5500 also features a relatively rapid heat-up time (30 seconds for the default setting), a swivel cord (appreciated for styling convenience), and a temperature lock function (to prevent accidentally altering heat settings during use).

A turbo boost setting can be used to expedite plate heating time, and a lock feature helps keep this flatiron stored easily in the clamped position when not in use.

One inch wide ceramic plates of fairly decent length provide heat to hair; these ceramic plates are claimed to help reduce the possibility of heat damage to your tresses.

Reasons for considering its alternatives

Reading through hair straightener reviews reveals that while the original version of the Remington S5500 featured a built-in dual-voltage capability, the current version no longer supports this feature.

Because of this, anyone looking for a flatiron for use during international travel will probably be disappointed.

Additionally, although it features one floating plate, it still cannot offer users the impressive clamping action that a product with dual floating plates would. But to be fair, the best flat iron with dual plates may not come cheap and it is not something that one should be expecting the price tag of Remington SS500.

To put things in perspective, Onei MK-I Halo which is considered to be among the best dual-plate models, cost more than 5 times of what the Remington SS500 fetches.

While the maximum and minimum heating settings for this hair straightener should probably be adequate for most consumers’ needs, some might still wish for a wider range of options. Just keep this in mind as this will be the norm when you are paying for entry-level models as this.

If you are looking for one that lets you adjust to multiple temperature settings, BaByliss Pro Nano Titanium is a good candidate but it is going to cost you several times more.

Finally, some of the hair straightener reviews for this product complain that it seemed to have an unpleasant, almost burning-like smell when turned on. Personally, I’ve never found this to be a problem. While I have noticed the mentioned smell, I’ve never found it to be offensive enough to hamper my hair-straightener endeavors.

The Bottomline

Overall, the Remington S5500 flatiron is certainly a fairly affordable option.

However, as mentioned previously, whether or not it is the best straightener for you will depend on your personal hair care needs.

While this model has some nice features, it is nothing but a basic entry-level flat ironing device. It definitely has its shortcomings but then, you are not paying for those features anyway, do you?