Table Of Content

James Dyson ranks number five on the Sunday Times Rich List, with a net worth of 23 billion pounds.
Budget pick: InfinitiPro by Conair 1875-Watt Salon Performance AC Motor Styling Tool
It weighs just over a pound, has a cord measuring 5.5 feet, and comes with a concentrator and a diffuser. But the mediocre specs, along with the gimmicky red lights that flash while you’re blow-drying, kept this dryer from being a pick, even though it was a particularly inexpensive model at the time of our tests. The RevAir is unlike any other hair-drying, heat-styling tool we’ve tested. For people with Type 3 or 4 curl patterns especially, this vacuum-like device is gentle on fragile strands and can cut down total drying time significantly. One tester, who usually requires two back-to-back appointments with a professional stylist at Drybar, now achieves similar drying and smoothing results with the RevAir in as little as 20 minutes.
Expand beauty menu
For the initial iteration of this guide, we timed the models drying a swatch of hair from a wig wetted with 5 grams of water, with the dryers on their highest setting. We took basic stats on our dryers, using a weather meter to test the speed and heat and a postage scale to weigh them. Often our own readings disagreed with the manufacturer-stated specs.
Dyson Supersonic Hair Dryer
Although the 1,875-watt Revlon Compact Styler is a wallet saver at around $10, the savings do not make up for the dryer’s added heft, its lack of attachments, and its reduced wind speeds compared with those of our picks. Compared with the Rusk W8less, the Amika Accomplice Compact Dryer (currently unavailable) is heavier, limited to a lower max temperature (215 °F), and double the price. However, its 9.5-foot cord ties with that of the GHD Helios for the second-longest cord among the dryers we’ve tried. You get a styling concentrator, a flyaway attachment, and a wide-toothed comb, plus a “gentle” air attachment and a diffuser.

The Supersonic hasn’t been toyed with for more than seven years until now, and Dyson’s engineers have been working toward making the new hair dryer easier to use. Of the Dyson Supersonic lookalikes, the Karrong F350 seemed the most promising to us, but it ended up being half as fast, with no way to control speed separately from temperature—the hotter it got, the faster it got. The motor sits in the handle of the dryer rather than in the head. The handle is straight and a tad thicker than that of the Rusk W8less, too. Dyson says the motor placement makes the weight of the dryer more balanced, since it’s not top-heavy.
Upgrade pick: RevAir
It weighs less than a pound, it has an 8-foot cord (one of the longest we found), it’s notably comfortable to hold, and overall it has the best combination of features we deem important. The W8less comes with a concentrator, which is helpful for straightening hair, but it does not come with a diffuser. The Hot Tools Professional Black Gold Turbo Ionic Salon Dryer (DC Motor) is extremely light at only 14 ounces. But it also has the most buttons and slides and switches of any hair dryer we’ve ever tested, including a cool-shot button, a power-boost slide, an ion select wheel, and switches for speed and temp—whew! The gorgeous GHD Helios 1875W Advanced Professional Hair Dryer is heavier and slower than our pick, the Rusk W8less—and three times the price.
If you have curly hair and prefer using a diffuser to dry it, you have to buy one separately (though it’s best to buy a hair dryer that comes with one). The hair dryer comes with five attachments that contain heat shield technology, where the surfaces of the attachments stay cool throughout use. Other features include three airflow levels and four heat modes, including a constant cold mode. Despite the Supersonic’s flaws, compared with other dryers we’ve tested, this one truly feels like a luxury to use every day. One tester found that the heavier cord tired out her arms when she was drying the top of her head, though resting the power bar (which most dryers do not have) on the counter helped. The sound the Supersonic emits is a high-pitched whine, with none of the low rattle that other dryers put out.
Dyson Airwrap Cyber Monday 2023: Save $120 - Good Housekeeping
Dyson Airwrap Cyber Monday 2023: Save $120.
Posted: Mon, 27 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

What your hair looks like comes down to technique, products, and, in large part, its natural characteristics. The Remington Damage Protection Hair Dryer D3190 comes with a diffuser and a concentrator, but it’s bulkier and heavier than other models we tested. The Conair InfinitiPro SmoothWrap Hair Dryer is slower and has a shorter cord than all of our picks. However, it is lightweight (a pound), and it reaches temperatures above 245 °F. Shannon Palus reviewed hair dryers for Wirecutter from 2015 to 2017.
The RevAir has an exceptionally large footprint compared with most dryers. The entire corded machine weighs about 8 pounds and is the size of a toaster. The hose-attached handheld wand alone weighs more than our heavier dryer picks (around 2 pounds), but we found that this is not terribly problematic because very little motion is required to use it. It’s no more effective than our other picks, but if you want the most pleasant hair-drying experience possible, the Dyson Supersonic Hair Dryer provides that. This dryer has an unusual design that makes it extraordinarily nice to use. Speed and heat are the only features that matter for drying your hair efficiently, and with a 55 mph airflow that exceeds 245 °F, the Rusk W8less Professional 2000 Watt Dryer is one of the fastest and hottest dryers we tested.
It also comes with five magnetic attachments, including a diffuser, all of which are exceptionally easy to add or remove mid-blowout. If you don’t care about weight, consider the InfinitiPro by Conair 1875-Watt Salon Performance AC Motor Styling Tool. Commonly found in drugstores, this dryer produces airflow that’s faster (65 mph) than that of our top pick and almost as hot (205 °F). At 1.3 pounds, however, it may feel heavy after you spend a couple of minutes holding it above your head.
That blowing air was around 200 °F (more if we held the dryer in place for a few moments). Although some dryers achieved faster wind speeds than others, interestingly that didn’t end up translating to notably or consistently faster dry times once we used them on our hair. At an impressive 11 feet long, the currently unavailable CHI Touch 2 Dryer’s cord is the longest of any dryer we’ve tested, but this dryer is more expensive and much slower than the Rusk W8less. It also has a mere one year of warranty coverage, and its nonintuitive touchscreen felt gimmicky. The Bio Ionic 10X Ultralight Speed Dryer is a tad lighter (0.92 pounds) than our top pick and has a slightly longer cord. However, the dryer doesn’t have separate wind-speed and temperature-control settings (if you want hot air, it must also be fast).