GHD’s Chronos Max Review: High Tech, Not High Heat

If you've had your hairsbreadth dyed, cut, oregon styled with immoderate regularity successful nonrecreational salons, likelihood are you've encountered a GHD-branded hairsbreadth tool. A longtime favourite of hairstylists, the institution has been astir since 2001 and is known for some its devotion to technological innovation and its tools' longevity. ("I've had the aforesaid GHD for 10+ years" is simply a emblematic remark connected immoderate beauty- oregon hair-related subreddit.) GHD's regular Chronos, Platinum+, and wet-to-dry Duet Style are each apical picks successful our usher to the Best Hair Straighteners, truthful of people we were archetypal successful enactment to trial the company's newest release, the Chronos Max, blistery disconnected the presses successful February 2025.

Like astir GHD tools (GHD, successful lawsuit you were wondering, stands for “Good Hair Day"), the universal-voltage Chronos Max feels coagulated and high-quality, arsenic befits a hairsbreadth straightener northbound of $300. It besides plays a convenient small chime to fto the idiosyncratic cognize it's been turned on, is preheating, oregon is turning off, and the 8.8-foot cord has a swivel attachment connected the iron's back. (Unlike different level irons, though, it curiously does not travel with velcro to assistance hindrance the folded cord.) The archetypal Chronos ($229) has been astir since 2024, but the main quality betwixt it and the Chronos Max is the Max's larger 1.75-inch-wide plates, designed specifically to grip “thick, long, and curly hair”—just similar mine.

Turning Up (or Down) the Heat

I person been utilizing a level robust connected my long, 3a curly hairsbreadth astir each time for the past 33 years, and I recovered galore things to emotion astir the Chronos Max during my two-week investigating period. The chime, for one—even though the Chronos lone takes astir 30 seconds to vigor up, I had nary thought however convenient it was to property a fastener and not person to continually halt what I'm doing to cheque to spot if a airy had turned disconnected oregon stopped flashing.

I besides loved the sturdiness of the body. So galore hairsbreadth straighteners nowadays are made with specified inexpensive integrative they practically consciousness hollow, but the GHD is solid, weighing successful astatine 12 ounces without the cord—just capable heft to consciousness substantial, but not unwieldy.

Perhaps the astir funny feature, however, is its azygous somesthesia setting. That's right: 1 button, 365 degrees Fahrenheit. No more, nary less, nary adjusting. WIRED reviewer Brenda Stolyar experienced this for the archetypal clip portion investigating the archetypal Chronos, and liked that it yet forced her to bash little harm to her hair. As idiosyncratic who's spent their full beingness cranking each straightener up to max somesthesia to obliterate immoderate hint of curls oregon frizz, though, I admit I was dubious.

Meredith Kirkland, a stylist of 20 years and GHD’s elder nationalist acquisition manager, says it's really a story that coarse oregon curly hairsbreadth needs a instrumentality with higher heat. “All of our hairsbreadth is made retired of the aforesaid material, it’s conscionable shaped differently,” she explains. More specifically, the shaft of a consecutive hairsbreadth is perfectly round, portion a curly hair's is flatter, oregon much oval.