4/10
Open rating explainerInformationWIREDAesthetically pleasing design. Hair dye smells good. Affordable.TIREDOverpromises, under delivers. Proprietary app and products mean the machine isn't future-proof. The AI-powered app and website are bad.I’ve been dyeing my hair vivid colors since the seventh grade, when I turned my hair magenta for a Halloween costume, and it accidentally stayed that way. I’ve had nearly every shade under the sun, though my favorite has always been pink. I’ve had my hair dyed professionally, and I’ve done it at home. I've bleached it to a level 10 white blond and plastered fashion colors like purple over my natural brown (terrible idea, by the way). And I've flirted with beauty printers that create custom shades of foundation before and loved them. It makes perfect sense that I’d check out the Zuvi ColorBox, an at-home device that promises to do for hair what beauty printers do for makeup, dispensing colors to dye your hair any hue. Sadly, I can’t recommend it.
An Honorable Mission
Photograph: Louryn StrampeThe Zuvi ColorBox has a kinder core aesthetic and a compact footprint. The box comes with the machine, two “base” containers, three primary color cartridges, plus a few other accessories that I ultimately deemed useless. The included bowl was cracked, the whisk is flimsy, the combination tint brush and comb are both too small to be helpful, and you only get one pair of gloves, which is borderline insulting. It also didn't include a wall adapter for the required USB-C cable, and I will never stop talking about how much it bothers me that companies have stopped including all necessary components.
The Zuvi ColorBox app was still in beta when I was using it, so there's a chance my assessment of it will no longer be relevant at some point. But I found it confusing and cumbersome. In theory, it's cool (a common theme with this product): You can choose from over 1,000 preconfigured hair dye shades, and see how they'd look over your base color (ranging from “light blond” to “light brown.") You can also upload an image and pick the color from it, which involved the app repeatedly asking for access to all of my phone photos, and then me realizing I had to precisely tap the chosen pixel for the color picker—there was no sliding the tool around like you can on Instagram Stories, for example.
ScreenshotZuvi app via Louryn Strampe
ScreenshotZuvi app via Louryn StrampeI decided to try to replicate the neon pink that took me 10 years to perfect. First, I chose a pixel from a photo where my hair looked particularly vibrant. The app recommended a color, and then I told the machine to dispense a sample-sized amount. It squirted out a bit of the base white, followed by a bit of the “red,” which actually looks more magenta to me. I mixed it up. It wasn't right—too pastel, too washed out. I applied it to a Level 10 blond extension to see how it'd hold up. It was even more diluted once on the hair, and nowhere near the eye-watering blue-based neon pink I'd requested.
So I went directly to the source. I screenshot a photo of the swatches from the hair dye brand I use and told the ColorBox app to replicate it. This time, the sample size squirted out some base, some red, and then tried and failed for 10 minutes to produce any yellow from the cartridge. “Dispensing … 91 percent," the app confidently told me. Great! Another lying robot set out to ask for all my photos and do a mediocre job at something I could've just done myself. But I tried to remain positive. I waited patiently. I mixed up the resulting sample size, with no yellow, because after three attempts and even some manual shaking, it still wouldn't come out. This pink sample was closer, but ultimately just looked like a slightly more pigmented version of the first color I tried. Neither was correct. Neither was vivid. Neither is going to last beyond a wash or two.
You can choose from a color wheel or tweak the recommended shades, but I was never able to get close to the pink I was seeking. No matter where I went on the color wheel, I could never get a truly intense color. They were always just different variations of the same washed-out pastels. The app also tries to offer helpful estimates on what a color will look like on different base hair shades. But as any professional (or professional DIY-er) knows, vivid colors simply do not look vivid unless you apply them to pre-lightened or very light hair.
Photograph: Louryn StrampeEarly review videos of the ColorBox that I watched after testing confirm what preteen girls have been discovering since Manic Panic first hit the scene: No matter how much you want it to, blue hair dye is never going to look right over your brown hair.
The app does say you should pre-lighten hair, but I fear that beginners looking for a magic way to unicorn-ify their tresses are going to expect results that are simply impossible unless they're specifically seeking various pastel hues that they could easily create at home without the machine. And I also think that at the point at which you're either bleaching your hair at home or paying a professional to lighten it, you might as well just continue the process from there.
If all goes well, the app recommends letting your hair process for 30 to 40 minutes, rinsing with cool water, and using color-depositing conditioner to keep your color around. I do think it's really cool that you can create a color-depositing conditioner that matches the shades you've previously dispensed, which can help maintain the color you chose. This implies you can find a color that you'd want to maintain in the first place.
Can I Speak to a Person?
Photograph: Louryn StrampeThe app and website also use a lot of generative AI, which grossed me out. Why rely on generated images of something that ought to be able to be generated by your product? This showed up on product renders and on possible results pages, showcasing what (in theory) the product could do. But I simply do not believe it to be capable. The generative AI was also misleading in terms of color combinations—on one slide, it showed a mint color next to a pink color, with streaks reminiscent of a My Little Pony figurine. Guess what color you get when you mix pink and green? That's right, kids, a gross dishwater brown. I'm sorry to anyone who tries this candy-colored creation without knowing basic color theory because after the first shampoo you're going to have a bad time.
I will say that I think this product could be neat in a few scenarios. If you like to dye your own extensions, or you continually change the color of a streak and don't need to buy oodles of full-size dye containers, or you're a parent with kids that are always dip-dying their bleached ends, then it might make sense. And the resulting product does smell good. I also like the included container that lets you store leftover dye. If you're specifically seeking washed-out, pastel tones, I still think you should just … get some hair dye and dilute it with conditioner.
ScreenshotZuvi app via Louryn StrampeIn the end, based on my assessment, the product fails to do its job. And even if this improves—even if eventually, you can get a black pigment to help darken the shades, or Zuvi moves from using primary colors to using cyan, magenta, and yellow, or the company starts making the process of bleaching your hair at home easier, or the use of generative AI stops and Zuvi starts actually standing behind its own results … at the end of the day, you're still left with a proprietary machine that uses proprietary cartridges, all of which will become paperweights if the company folds.
I've combed through every single result I can find of other reviews on the Internet. I'm not a licensed cosmetologist, but I have been coloring my own hair for around 20 years, and I have yet to see a result that's more impressive than one the user could have achieved for less money from their local beauty supply. Semipermanent fashion dyes are available in hundreds and hundreds of shades, all of which can be mixed together. It may take some trial and error to dial in your perfect pink or blue or red, but it can be done without a machine. Your local beauty supply store likely has an associate who's been dyeing their own hair for decades and would be happy to point you in the right direction. And respectfully, if you can't figure out color theory or add conditioner little by little to dilute your own dye, perhaps you should go to a professional and save yourself the trouble of doing it incorrectly. The Zuvi ColorBox adds more guesswork instead of taking it away.
While I do like the initial low price, color corrections from a professional are very expensive, and the refill cartridges from Zuvi (around $22 each) could easily cost the same amount as the supplies would for dyeing your hair with products from the local beauty supply, especially if your hair is long, thick, and/or curly. And I like the idea of reducing leftover dye waste, but again, you don't need to buy a gadget for that.
$179 $149 at Zuvi
