Review (4/5): Practice makes perfect
I also had never used a clamp-less iron before, but I have spent a lot of time trying to achieve that nice loose spiral that holds but doesn't look too rigid. This really does the trick. I have long,straight, baby fine hair and summer humidity is pretty much death to anything I try, and the curl falls right out. Somehow this holds up really well.
My complaints with it are just that even though it does get really, really hot, it seems to take longer to heat up than some of the "instant heat" irons I've been used to. So even though it doesn't take too much time once it's fully ready, there is a longer wait time on the front end, and not really a clear way of telling when it's fully ready either--it doesn't have a color-change light or dot like some of them do. Also, the glove is kind of dumb. I took a stab at it the first few times. It's weirdly small, for one thing--so it's awkward putting it on, you can still feel a good amount of heat through it, so it's not that effective at sparing your hand, and I could never get the hang of using it with the glove. It just felt really clumsy and took at least twice as long, so I stopped using it, and it's totally doable. You do have to be a little careful, sure--but honestly, I was hand wrapping my clamp curling iron almost the same way when I was trying to fake the spiral curl look so this isn't all that different---only this time it works. Now that I've had it for about a week, I feel like I have it really down. Since it takes longer, I can't use it every day during the morning rush, but it's kind of a fun way to shake things up.