Review: Emi by Remington Hot Roller Set

For women, every day is a constant puzzle in trying to figure out what to do with our hair. Put it up? Leave it down? Braid it, curl it, scrunch it, flat-iron it? It can be a pain in the neck and we end up spending a ton of money just to avoid having our hair look like a rat's nest.

There are a bunch of products on the market these days to jazz up your hairstyle, and I can safely say that I'm guilty of giving in to many crazes and fads. However, I will sometimes find myself pleasantly surprised and others will utterly disappoint me. After giving in to a fad this time around, I found myself with the latter feelings.

I picked up the emi by Remington hot roller set for $10USD at Shoprite in the beauty aisle on sale for 50% off. Hot rollers appear to be making a surprising comeback these days, and more and more often nowadays I am hearing about women opting for this styling method over a curling iron. The price was certainly right for an experiment, so I purchased it.

Once I got it home, the first problem made itself apparent. The instructions booklet - which is a beauty must-have especially when dealing with something that could potentially burn your skin or hair - consists of a few panels, front and back, the majority of which explains the warranty. Only one panel is devoted to actual instructions and these come in the form of a few tiny pencil-drawn pictures with a line of text. For a person who is not accustomed to using rollers of any kind, these instructions did not do much in the way of helping.

I noticed the next issue when I opened the roller-case itself and examined the contents. Everything that was promised was inside; 10 hot rollers (5 small and 5 large) and 10 very foreign looking "holding pins." However, the small rollers are what I would consider an average-medium sized standard roller and differ only slightly in size from the large rollers. I have medium length hair and so this immediately made me skeptical to the variations of the possible results, but I held off those reservations until I put the rollers to the test.

I heated up the rollers as instructed, merely by plugging in the case. The box and manual promise a 90-second heat-up, which I was impressed by. However, upon use it took much longer than 90 seconds for these things to get hot enough to use, and once they were I ran into my next problem - how in the heck do I keep these things in my hair?! I consulted the instructions again for how to use the holding pins and found them less than helpful. I secured the rollers as best as I could (they honestly expect you to only need one pin per curler) but they kept flopping down away from my head, which would never give me a proper curl in the medium length hair that I have but I held out and waited for the results.

The task of putting these things in my hair, waiting, putting more in, waiting and removing was arduous, time-consuming and frustrating. While the result (see the included photo) was nice, it was nothing that I could not have achieved in less time with less aggravation with a curling iron. If you've got the time to spend and have long hair, this may work better for you. However, this is one product I won't be using again on myself or on others, or recommending.