Not every device needs to be smart. Do you really want your toaster texting you when your bread burns? But Withings and Kérastase — L’Oréal’s professional products — have developed a smart hairbrush that can tell you more about the health of your locks than your hairdresser can.
Countless factors can contribute to the health and manageability of your hair, including how you brush it. If you’re too forceful with a hair brush, you can contribute to damage like split ends. But with the Kérastase Hair Coach Powered by Withings, and a free accompanying smartphone app, you’ll get a detailed breakdown of not only how your hair is doing, but how you can be better caring for it.
So what qualifies the Kérastase Hair Coach brush as being “smart”? A surprising amount of technology that’s built right into the brush. There’s a microphone that listens to the sound of your hair as you brush to detect correct or incorrect patterns in your technique.
That mic also works alongside a hidden three-axis load sensor that can measure the brushing force on your hair and scalp, providing immediate haptic feedback if you’re brushing too hard, while an accelerometer and gyroscope counts brush strokes during your morning routine. There are even conductivity sensors in the bristles that can tell if your hair is wet or dry, so the waterproof brush can adjust its analysis of your technique accordingly.
All of the data collected by the Kérastase Hair Coach brush is passed onto its accompanying smartphone app over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth which collects additional environmental data — like temperature, humidity, UV and wind — from local weather forecasts to give the user an overall hair quality score, but also tips on how to improve their brushing habits to in turn improve the health of their hair.
Because L’Oréal played a big part in the development of the smart brush, the app also makes recommendations on what Kérastase hair care products a user should be buying and using. So in addition to spending somewhere around $US200 ($277) when it’s available in the US mid-2017, the smart brush also puts L’Oréal ads on your smartphone, which sucks. But there’s no reason you can’t find cheaper versions of Kérastase’s recommended products if changing up your brushing routine alone isn’t improving the health of your hair.
Australian pricing and availability has yet to be confirmed.
[Withings]
We’re on the ground at CES 2017 in Las Vegas! Follow all of our coverage of the latest and greatest in tech here.