News

• Dyson has launched an updated version of its 2020 Corrale straightener
• The Corrale CoolShine has a clever heat-removing attachment
• The brand has also unveiled a hot brush called the Airsmooth

In recent years, Dyson's hair gadget efforts seem have been mostly focused on its Airwrap styler and Supersonic hair dryer lines. So when I was invited to a showcase of the brand's new launches, I was expecting, perhaps, some cool new attachments or an upgraded Supersonic. I was equal parts surprised and pleased to see something altogether more novel.

There's a brand new tool — which I'll get into in a minute — as well as a surprise second-gen version of the Corrale straightener, called the Corrale CoolShine. If that name isn't ringing any bells, I don't blame you. The original Dyson Coralle came out in 2020 and never quite managed to set the haircare world alight.

I tried a Corrale out at the time and although I didn't hate it, it didn't make it into my regular styling routine. So I was especially pleased to see that the surprise second gen has tweaked or removed my least-liked features, and added some more that I'm genuinely excited to use.

One key feature of the original was that it was cordless. That's all well and good, but the knock-on effect was that it was also really very heavy and chunky. The Corrale CoolShine is not cordless, and as a result it can be nice and streamlined and lightweight. I'm very happy with this about-turn; the new, compact shape is much more comfortable to hold, and easier to direct precisely.

The flexible plates from the first-gen version are still present here. They have to be, really — these are what 'corrale' the strands of hair, applying gentle pressure to, theoretically, allow for effective straightening at lower temperatures.

However, they've been downsized in line with the general shrinking of the straightener, and are slimmer in width. In their new format, they look much less likely to snag on strands of hair, as the previous version could sometimes do.

That's the 'Corrale' covered, but where does the 'CoolShine' come in? This refers to a unique-to-the-market cooling attachment. It comes in the form of a pair of frames that slide over each of the hot plates, and clip in place. They feature a heat-extracting copper pipe that contains water and is designed to help remove residual heat from hair.

So the central plate gets hot as usual, and then the bars either side of the plate pull the heat away immediately, helping you avoid heat damage. Dyson promises "hair that is cooler to the touch during and after styling, with a smoother, softer feel".

When it was initially announced, it sounded like kind of cold plumbing system, but speaking to a Dyson representative at the product showcase, I learned the system is subtler and more complex.

The tube has just a 'bead' of water in it — if you're envisaging cold water running through it, that's not the case — and it will absorb some of the heat of the plates as you style, so don't expect those bars to remain cold as you style. I'd be very interested to try it out for myself to see how much of a difference these plates make in practice.

There was a Dyson Corrale CoolShine being demoed at the event, and I was very impressed at how it managed to take the model's coily hair to perfectly smooth with an incredible glassy finish — but the kicker is that the stylist (and Dyson rep) wasn't using the CoolShine attachment.

The representative explained to me that the frame is removable to allow for precision styling, as well as in instances where you need to get right up to the root. Both were required here.

A final welcome touch is that Dyson has added universal voltage, so you'll be able to take the tool away with you when you travel abroad.

The other new gadget is the Dyson Airsmooth brush dryer. This is a fairly traditional hot brush, for creating bouncy blowouts, but — of course — there's a bit of a Dyson twist.

The engineers have added two different types of bristles: some with loops at the top, and some with open bases. The former are engineered so they provide the right amount of tension for a smooth finish, without snagging on a range of different hair types. The latter are meant to diffuse and control the airflow for less turbulence and less frizz.

Dyson has given the Airsmooth a teardrop profile, to enable you to get closer to the root. I've seen this before, on the Shark Glam, and it works well there. There's also intelligent heat control keeping temperatures stable, and again, there's universal voltage — good news for your holiday hair.

The Dyson Corrale CoolShine straightener will have a list price of $329 / £TBC / AU$499. The Airsmooth dryer brush will cost $249 / £199.99 / AU$399 at sticker price.

The Airsmooth dryer brush goes on sale from Dyson US and Dyson UK today (September 8) in the US, with the Corrale CoolShine joining it on September 15.

At Dyson Australia, the hot brush is already on sale (launched September 4) and the straightener will arrive in November.

81% of UK knowledge workers now use AI weekly. That's adoption. What it isn't, is transformation.

Most organizations have layered AI onto broken processes and fragmented systems and called it progress.

Meanwhile, 82% of UK IT leaders have absorbed unexpected AI cost increases, and 58% report high adoption with limited measurable productivity gains.

We have a usage problem dressed up as a strategy.

Here's what's actually going wrong and what needs to change.

AI doesn't fix bad processes. It accelerates them. If your data is fragmented, your ownership is unclear, and your workflows are inefficient, deploying AI makes those problems faster, not smaller.

Real value requires asking harder questions: Where do decisions actually get made? Which processes should fundamentally change? Who owns the outcome? Until you answer those, you're generating AI activity, not business impact.

Nearly two-thirds of UK IT leaders say they're fully accountable for AI-driven business outcomes, while AI deployment is spreading across departments, often outside governance structures. That's a recipe for accountability without visibility.

IT management sets the framework. That's necessary. But every business leader who owns a process needs to own how AI changes that process. What does success look like? Who monitors it? Who's responsible when it goes wrong?

If you can't answer those questions before you scale, don't scale.

One in four UK workers use unapproved AI tools. The instinct is to lock it down. The smarter read: your people are telling you your current tools create friction, and they've moved on without you.

Restriction isn't a strategy. Channel that demand toward trusted tools with real governance, then use governance as an accelerant, not a brake. The organizations moving fastest are the ones that treat low-risk use cases as low-risk, and reserve serious scrutiny for high-stakes applications.

Nearly half of UK IT leaders say AI initiatives stall because AI lacks organizational context. That's not a technology problem, it's a work infrastructure problem.

Think about how you'd onboard a new hire. You'd give them the org structure, the priorities, the decision rights, the rules. An AI agent needs the same. Without it, even capable models produce output that someone has to spend 30 minutes correcting, which is exactly what's happening.

The fix is connecting AI to where work already lives. Not asking employees to reconstruct context every time they open a prompt.

If your AI metrics are licenses purchased, prompts submitted, or hours theoretically saved, you're measuring the wrong thing. The question is whether the work is improving.

Are customer issues resolving faster? Are teams spending less time searching for information? Are the right decisions getting made with better speed? At Asana, we built an AI seller assistant and measured its impact on the sales process, response rates, net-new meetings booked. That's the bar.

Agents are coming. Systems that act on behalf of people, not just assist them. When that happens, organizations will need to know: which agents exist, who created them, what they can access, what they're authorized to do, and how their performance is tracked.

This isn't a future problem. The organizations building that discipline now will be the ones who can scale agentic AI without the governance catching up after the fact.

The businesses pulling ahead won't be the ones using the most AI. They'll be the ones who've connected it to clear ownership, proportionate governance, and the workflows where execution actually happens.

Adoption is table stakes. Value is the real work.

We've listed the best productivity tools.

This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.

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