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After testing both for a few months, we think the $300 Shark FlexStyle kit is a better overall value when compared with the $600 Dyson Airwrap setup. Blow Dryer Professional
Most hair dryers are effective at blowing hot air toward your head—sometimes quite fast—in order to speed along your hairstyling. It’s the small differences between models that can make a big difference overall, particularly with daily use.
After putting in over 20 hours of research and spending over 70 hours testing 42 hair dryers, we’ve found that some are far more pleasant to hold and use than others. Because it provides an excellent experience for the price, we think the Rusk W8less Professional 2000 Watt Dryer is the best choice.
A quality hair dryer blows hot air at high speed. Features like “ionic” drying and “tourmaline” technology don’t impact styling results.
We looked only at dryers with multiple heat settings. We also preferred a cool-shot option.
A too-short cord renders even the most effective hair dryer useless in certain situations.
Lighter-weight dryers (around a pound) are easier and more enjoyable to use for long periods of time.
This dryer is lightweight and equipped with a long cord. Among the models we tested, it tied for blowing the hottest and fastest air.
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 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.
Although this dryer is just as fast as pricier models, it’s the heaviest of our traditional hair dryer picks, and its attachments can be hard to remove.
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. The 6-foot cord, though shorter than those on our other picks, is longer than those on most other inexpensive hair dryers. The buttons are easy to use, but the cool-shot button is a little small and harder to hold down than the cool-shot button on our top pick. The InfinitiPro comes with both a diffuser and a concentrator.
It’s expensive, but the unique design makes it extraordinarily nice to use: There’s no vibration whatsoever, and the simple-to-switch magnetic attachments make styling easier.
Add offer of two complimentary attachments to-cart
If you’re willing to splurge on a dryer, you might consider the Dyson Supersonic. It has consistently been our favorite to use since we first tested it in 2016. With airflow at 88 mph and a temperature surpassing 245 °F (the hottest temperature our weather meter could measure), the Supersonic doesn’t dry hair any faster than our pick, but it is more pleasant to use in almost every way due to its unique design. The motor sits in the handle, making the nozzle shorter and easier to maneuver. The handle doesn’t vibrate at all, which wasn’t true of other “luxury” models we tested. It has a long, 9-foot cord, and it’s less grating noise-wise than other dryers. It also comes with five magnetic attachments, including a diffuser, all of which are exceptionally easy to add or remove mid-blowout.
It’s spendy, it’s bulky, and it works—quickly and gently. For hair that’s fragile or difficult to blow-dry with a conventional hair dryer, the RevAir is worth considering.
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. 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.
This dryer is lightweight and equipped with a long cord. Among the models we tested, it tied for blowing the hottest and fastest air.
Although this dryer is just as fast as pricier models, it’s the heaviest of our traditional hair dryer picks, and its attachments can be hard to remove.
It’s expensive, but the unique design makes it extraordinarily nice to use: There’s no vibration whatsoever, and the simple-to-switch magnetic attachments make styling easier.
Add offer of two complimentary attachments to-cart
It’s spendy, it’s bulky, and it works—quickly and gently. For hair that’s fragile or difficult to blow-dry with a conventional hair dryer, the RevAir is worth considering.
Nancy Redd is Wirecutter’s senior staff writer covering health and personal care. She’s reviewed hair dryers professionally for over three years but has relied on them for hair care for over three decades. After testing it she did, indeed, keep a beloved RevAir in the trunk of her car.
Shannon Palus reviewed hair dryers for Wirecutter from 2015 to 2017.
For this guide we interviewed dermatologists, hairstylists, a cosmetic chemist, and an electrical engineer.
If you can’t or don’t want to leave the house with wet hair, you need a hair dryer.
You also likely need one if you plan on using other hot tools on your hair: Make sure you’re really getting your hair dry if you’re going to take a flat iron to it (smushing hair between two hot pieces of metal is really bad for it if it’s still wet, according to our dermatologist sources).
Despite what magazine lists and advertisements would have you believe, most hair dryers are one-size-fits-all. No dryer will make your hair exceptionally more voluminous and glossy than another. What your hair looks like comes down to technique, products, and, in large part, its natural characteristics.
The packaging for hair dryers is adorned with a ton of buzzwords and specs. Most of these “features” are useless at best and pseudoscience at worst.
For all the words and phrases associated with hair dryers—“tourmaline,” “ionic,” “ceramic,” “conditioning nano beads”—hairstylist Allen Ruiz told us he looks for two qualities in the appliance: “hot and fast.” (And that said, in our testing, differences in heat and speed from dryer to dryer often failed to noticeably affect the dry time.)
The hotness and fastness of a hair dryer are connected to the wattage, but they’re not perfectly correlated: A very high-wattage dryer can produce more heat than a lower-wattage one, but that doesn’t mean it will.
Beyond heat and speed, we considered the following features:
Objective features aside, the main thing that separated the dryers we loved from those we didn’t was a bit harder to quantify: how they felt in our hands. In addition to weight, that overall feel depends on the following factors:
We took basic stats on our dryers, using a weather meter to test the speed and heat and a postage scale to weigh them. We also measured the cord lengths. Often our own readings disagreed with the manufacturer-stated specs.
We found that on the top setting, most dryers blew air at about 40 mph as measured a couple of inches away from the nozzle. 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.
All of the dryers took more or less the same amount of time to dry hair.
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.
Two things became clear after our first round of swatch time tests: First, all of the dryers took more or less the same amount of time to dry hair. Little things, such as how close we held the dryer or how the hair moved around, were what really made the hair dry faster or slower. Second, we found that many of the dryers had designs that made them annoying to use.
With a few dryers eliminated, we put our favorites through some more time tests with the hair swatch and then brought them home for a couple of weeks and used them in our daily routines, timing how long they took to dry hair and feeling for any general differences in the quality of the resulting blowout. We found basically none.
This dryer is lightweight and equipped with a long cord. Among the models we tested, it tied for blowing the hottest and fastest air.
The Rusk W8less Professional 2000 Watt Dryer offers all the features you need in a hair dryer while costing a fraction of the price of a luxury model. The W8less is one of the lightest, fastest, and hottest dryers we’ve tried (1 pound, 55 mph, and over 245 °F, respectively). Those are the only features that matter for drying your hair efficiently.
The buttons are all nicely placed. They’re easy to push but hard to press accidentally. And the cord is long enough (8 feet) to reach distant outlets. Unlike on other dryers, the cool-shot button is wide, so holding it down for several seconds isn’t uncomfortable.
The housing is also nice. It’s glossy white, and the logo is understated. The handle is slightly curved, with a notch at the top. The sound of the air is smooth. The dryer comes with a concentrator, too.
It’s capable of making your hair look just as nice as any other dryer. The Rusk W8less takes about the same amount of time to blow-dry hair as dryers that cost hundreds of dollars.
It comes with a two-year warranty.
The Rusk W8less doesn’t come with a diffuser. 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).
Although this dryer is just as fast as pricier models, it’s the heaviest of our traditional hair dryer picks, and its attachments can be hard to remove.
In our tests, the airflow from the InfinitiPro by Conair 1875-Watt Salon Performance AC Motor Styling Tool was faster than that of our top pick at 65 mph, but at 205 °F it was not as hot as the Rusk W8less (which reached over 245 °F). This Conair hair dryer is considerably less expensive, too.
The main reason it’s not our top pick is its weight. At 1.3 pounds, it’s noticeably heavier to hold than the W8less, especially after several minutes of drying.
Its cord is 6 feet long. That’s two feet shorter than our top pick’s, but longer than the cords on other models you can find at a drugstore.
The InfinitiPro typically comes with a concentrator and a diffuser. (Some colors, such as black, come with only the concentrator). Although these pieces snap onto the nozzle, they look as if they might screw on, which can be confusing at first.
Conair covers the InfinitiPro with an impressive four-year warranty (PDF). This dryer is usually available in six color options.
It’s expensive, but the unique design makes it extraordinarily nice to use: There’s no vibration whatsoever, and the simple-to-switch magnetic attachments make styling easier.
Add offer of two complimentary attachments to-cart
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. It doesn’t vibrate whatsoever (all other dryers vibrate just a little, and the effect isn’t especially noticeable until you hold one that doesn’t), and its simple-to-switch magnetic attachments make styling with a diffuser or concentrator easier. It has a 9-foot cord.
The Supersonic offers the fastest wind speed of all the dryers we’ve tested. We measured it at 88 mph at a distance of 2 inches. The Supersonic ties our top pick for the hottest air at over 245 °F, the highest temperature our weather meter could measure. Although other reviewers (video) have found that the Dyson can sometimes dry hair a tad faster than the competition, after we put in a week of careful timed testing on our own hair, we found that this wasn’t consistently true: Drying hair with the Supersonic sometimes took a bit longer than with our top pick.
Five attachments are included with the Supersonic. You get a styling concentrator, a flyaway attachment, and a wide-toothed comb, plus a “gentle” air attachment and a diffuser. Dyson attachments connect to the nozzle magnetically. They don’t get burning hot, as they’re made of two layers of plastic with a gap of air between them, so you can rotate or remove them mid-session, unlike on other dryers, where you must handle attachments carefully or angle the dryer awkwardly to switch them.
As of 2023, a styling brush attachment is not available for the Dyson dryer; people who regularly use one to straighten their hair might be more inclined to purchase the less expensive Shark HyperAir, which we found is as hot and fast as the Supersonic (but it’s heavier and has a shorter cord).
Although the Dyson dryer’s feel and attachments are improvements over those of our other picks, we also found features we didn’t like and a few that we were neutral on.
The buttons can be hard to reach. We found the position of the speed and heat buttons on the back of the dryer’s head less than ideal, and the cool-shot button is in an awkward spot at the very top of the handle. If you don’t change speeds and temperature a lot, though, the button locations might be a bonus, as they are hard to hit accidentally. Meanwhile, the cord has a small power bar near the plug, which itself is bulky.
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. The difference isn’t huge, but over weeks of using the Supersonic, we found ourselves appreciating the configuration. If you have trouble holding a typical dryer overhead, the weight distribution of this one might make gripping easier, a reader told us.
The motor sucks air through a fine mesh from the bottom of the handle rather than through a grill at the back of the dryer, and the company claims it’s difficult for long hair to get stuck in the filter as a result. (Much of Dyson’s $71 million research and design tab for the dryer went into the motor, which is a smaller version of the motor found in Dyson’s handheld vacuum cleaners.)
At 1 pound, the Supersonic is the same weight as our top pick. 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. Whether this sound is more pleasant, as the company claims, is a matter of personal opinion, though. As with any dryer, the sound of whooshing air is physically impossible to eliminate.
Despite the Supersonic’s flaws, compared with other dryers we’ve tested, this one truly feels like a luxury to use every day.
The Supersonic has a two-year warranty and comes in five color combinations. Dyson in 2023 introduced a pared-down package, the Supersonic Origin, which includes only the dryer and a concentrator attachment.
It’s spendy, it’s bulky, and it works—quickly and gently. For hair that’s fragile or difficult to blow-dry with a conventional hair dryer, the RevAir is worth considering.
If you have hair that is damage-prone or very curly, or if it takes forever to blow-dry, the benefits of the RevAir might be worth its expense. This unconventional hair-drying vacuum relies on “reverse air” suction to simultaneously dry, stretch, straighten, and smooth hair. It is expensive, bulky, and loud, but it’s also extremely effective, providing a particularly gentle, expedient way to dry your hair. (For additional details, read our full RevAir review.)
It excels at gently drying and smoothing curly hair. RevAir’s recent redesign trimmed down the device’s footprint and weight significantly without diminishing its capacity, but it’s still a different animal from the other, more conventional hair dryers we recommend, so comparing specs such as wind speed doesn’t make sense. But anecdotally, we found that this unique appliance consistently dried and straightened our tester’s curly hair much faster than any traditional dryer, with minimal tangling and hair shedding. Other reviewers’ reactions to the RevAir vary by hair type: For those with finer, less curly hair, it tends to be an appealing novelty (video) not necessarily worth shelling out for, while those with Type 3 or 4 curl patterns tend to find it revolutionary and worth the splurge (video).
It’s heavy, but you don’t have to hold it high like a conventional dryer. It has a 5.5-foot hose that attaches to a 9-inch heat-producing wand. At 2 pounds, the wand alone is heavier than any of our dryer picks. Rather than raising the dryer to your hair, however, you insert sections of your hair into the wand; the device then quickly and gently sucks the damp hair dry. It offers seven suction power levels and three heat settings (high, low, or the no-heat cool shot).
It takes up a lot of space. The RevAir is huge. Unlike our other picks, it doesn’t easily fit in bathroom cabinets or on a countertop: Altogether it weighs eight pounds and is the size of a large toaster (plus the unwieldy hose).
The RevAir comes with a one-year warranty, half the coverage period of the Rusk W8less and the Dyson Supersonic.
The Dyson Airwrap ($600) and the Shark FlexStyle ($300) are multipurpose styling tools that can blow-dry, straighten (with a brush attachment), and curl (with curling attachments) hair. The best tool for you depends on which attachments you’ll use most and whether you need or want it to also replace a traditional hair dryer. Overall, we think the FlexStyle is a better value.
Comparing within product lines, while Dyson’s dryer-attachment-equipped Airwrap is not as powerful as the Dyson Supersonic (it is meant to get hair only semidry before you use the other attachments), the Shark FlexStyle is as fast at drying hair as the company’s Hyperair. The Airwrap is not a standard hair dryer, so we didn’t compare it against our picks for this guide. The FlexStyle, however, is. We found it performed well when compared with our traditional hair dryer picks.
The FlexStyle comes with a diffuser and a concentrator; the Airwrap isn’t compatible with either. The main advantage of the Airwrap over the FlexStyle is that you can create bidirectional curls using the same curling attachment—a switch at the top changes the direction of airflow so you can style toward or away from the face. With the FlexStyle, if you want to create curls in two directions, you need to switch from a left-handed curling attachment to a right-handed one, or vice versa, mid-styling.
Hair dryer brushes like the Revlon One-Step Volumizer Plus 2.0 (and its still-available predecessor) circulate heated air from within, through holes between the bristles. They are designed to replace the pairing of a traditional hair dryer with a separate brush. Most hair dryer brushes are cylindrical in shape and have 360 degrees of bristles, as round styling brushes do. However, some people find paddle-style hair dryer brushes gentler and better for detangling than cylindrical models, since this brush style may reduce snagging. Because the bristles and airflow are restricted to one side of a paddle-style hair dryer brush, you have more control over the amount of heat you apply to your hair. This control comes at a cost, though: Paddle-style hair dryer brushes are notorious for being unable to reach hair roots, and it often takes longer to dry a full head of hair with one than it does with either a round hair dryer brush or a traditional hair dryer. However, paddle-style hair dryer brushes do a decent job of drying and straightening hair, especially when you’re preparing hair for a second round of styling (with a curling iron, a straightening comb, or braids).
We tried four paddle-style hair dryer brushes, finding the best overall to be the Conair InfinitiPro Hot Air Paddle Brush. Although we recommend the vacuum-style RevAir dryer for people with more fragile strands, for around a tenth of the price the Conair is a decent and similarly gentle option for hair drying and straightening. Despite having the lowest wattage of any of the paddle hair dryer brushes we considered (600 watts), it dried hair sections almost as quickly as the brush we tried with the highest wattage: the Instagram darling EZ Dryer Ion (1,200 watts). This result may be due to two factors unique to the Conair brush, namely its slimmer oval shape (most paddle brushes are wide and rectangular) and combination of different bristle materials and lengths, all of which make it much easier to dry hair closer to the scalp. Like all of the paddle-style hair dryer brushes we tested, the Conair has three heat settings (high, low, and cool). At less than 11 ounces, it ties with the EZ Dryer Ion for the lightest of the paddle-style models we tested. The Conair has a 5-foot cord and comes with a two-year warranty.
The EZ Dryer Ion is the most effective and efficient paddle-style hair dryer brush we tested. But because it’s missing markings for the air-temperature settings, it’s impossible to determine at a glance which setting the brush is on. More importantly, it lacks an ALCI (appliance leakage current interrupter) safety plug, so if it shorts or is immersed in water, the device won’t automatically turn off and therefore could cause an electrical shock. It’s covered by an ultrashort (14-day) warranty, too.
We also tried the Hot Tools One-Step Detachable Straight Dry Paddle Dryer and the Revlon One-Step Hair Dryer and Styler, both of which were clunkier, heavier, and slower to dry hair than the Conair. Their designs also made it difficult for us to directly reach hair roots compared with the other paddle-style hair dryer brushes we tested.
If you can’t find the Rusk W8less in stock: The BaBylissPro Porcelain Ceramic Carrera2 Dryer is a great substitute. Regularly $95 (though often on sale), it’s not much more expensive than the W8less, but at a pound and a half, it ties with the Conair Pro Yellow Bird Hair Dryer for the heaviest dryer we’ve tested. With speeds reaching 60 mph, it’s almost as fast as the W8less (65 mph), and like the W8less it can reach temperatures over 245 °F (the hottest our weather meter could measure). It also has an extra-long cord measuring 9 feet 10 inches—nearly 2 feet longer than the W8less’s cord. Like the W8less, the Carrera2 comes with only a concentrator (not a diffuser) and has two speeds, three temperatures, and a cool shot.
If the Conair InfinitiPro 1875-Watt Styling Tool is unavailable: The Revlon Turbo-Speed Hair Dryer is an inexpensive, extremely lightweight, serviceable hair dryer. Costing $25 (often on sale for $15 or so) and weighing under a pound, it’s one of the least expensive yet one of the lightest dryers we’ve ever tested. It’s also one of the slowest of the dryers we like (41 mph), and it has the shortest usable cord (5 feet 6 inches). However, the Turbo-Speed is one of the hottest dryers we’ve tested, reaching over 245 °F in just a few seconds, blowing the InfinitiPro’s 205 °F out of the water. It has only two speeds (in contrast to the InfinitiPro’s three). Whereas the InfinitiPro comes with both a diffuser and a concentrator, the Turbo-Speed has only a diffuser. This inexpensive Revlon model is polarizing—people either love it or hate it—and a few damning owner reviews claim that it melts, burns hair, and poses a fire hazard.
If you want to splurge (but not too much): The Shark HyperAir is a great middle ground between the Rusk W8less (our top pick) and the Dyson Supersonic (an upgrade pick). It’s heavier and has a shorter cord than the Dyson (1.2 pounds and 96 usable inches, respectively, versus the Dyson’s 1 pound and 105 inches), but our testers found that it’s just as fast and hot for around half the price or less, depending on the accessories package. Plus, versions of it come with a concentrator, a diffuser, and an extremely effective styling brush that reviewers rate highly. Like the Dyson Supersonic, the Shark HyperAir—which is usually $150 to $250 less than the Dyson, depending upon the attachments package and sale—is warrantied for two years.
If you have Type 3 or 4 (curly and coily) hair and don’t want to shell out for the RevAir: The Pattern Blow Dryer is popular for its aesthetic beauty as well as for its unique attachments. It is more expensive and has a shorter cord (7 feet) than our top pick; it’s also a lot slower and doesn’t get as hot. But it’s slightly lighter (1.4 pounds) than the Conair Pro Yellow Bird Hair Dryer, which is the only other dryer under $200 we like that comes with a straightening pick (Pattern calls it the wide-tooth comb attachment). The Pattern dryer also comes with a diffuser, a concentrator, and a novel brush attachment that has quickly become a cult favorite among frequent users because of its unique detangling bristles. It has three speeds (plus a cool shot) and two temperatures.
If you want an all-in-one hair drying and styling tool: Consider the Shark FlexStyle, which we think is a better overall value when compared with its closest competitor, the Dyson Airwrap.
Shark has released another hair dryer called the SpeedStyle, as well as a new hair tool, the SmoothStyle (which resembles the Revlon One-Step). We’ll test both and update this guide with our findings.
We’ll also test Bellissima Italia’s Diffon Supreme, a unique dryer the company says is specifically designed for curly hair.
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.
In our testing, the BaBylissPro Nano Titanium Dryer produced a whining sound that was worse than any noise from competitors.
At 1 pound, the BaBylissPro Rapido Dryer is an ultra-lightweight dryer, and it comes with a 9-foot cord, but it’s slower and more than double the price of the Rusk W8less. (We’d go with the company’s Carrera2 over this one if we had to choose between the two.)
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).
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.
We previously recommended the Conair 1875-Watt Tourmaline Ceramic Styling System as a budget option. However, the short, 5-foot cord has been enough of a pain for us to use in the setups we’ve tested that we suggest going with our current budget pick, the InfinitiPro by Conair 1875-Watt Salon Performance AC Motor Styling Tool (which has a longer cord), if you need a very inexpensive dryer. If weight is your primary concern, though, the 1875-Watt Tourmaline Ceramic Styling System is still worth considering: At 0.91 pounds, this model is lighter than our budget pick.
The Conair 1875-Watt 3-in-1 Ionic Styler has a long row of grills (and a brush attachment) instead of a circular nozzle. It gives you no way to attach a diffuser, which means you’re stuck with a single-purpose dryer.
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.
The retro-looking Conair Pro Yellow Bird Hair Dryer is one of the hottest dryers we’ve tested (reaching over 245 °F). But at a pound and a half, it also ties for the heaviest dryer we’ve looked at. Its buttons are strangely placed and unlabeled, and it doesn’t have a cool shot. It used to be our favorite dryer that came with a straightening pick, but we now prefer the Pattern Blow Dryer.
The DevaDryer by DevaCurl is slower and heavier than our picks. However, after a few wash-and-go tests, our curly-haired testers found that they liked using the included DevaFuser attachment, a unique hand-shaped diffuser that helps dry curls and waves without losing definition. You can buy a universal-fit version of the DevaFuser for any attachment-compatible hair dryer.
At 1.3 pounds, the Drybar Buttercup Blow Dryer is heavier than our picks. The air speed is also slower, at just over 30 mph measured at a distance of 2 inches.
Elchim offers an impressive warranty and repair program that covers all its hair dryers. At 1.2 pounds, however, the Elchim Classic 2001 is heavier than our picks, and we found the handle to be thick and awkward to hold.
The gorgeous GHD Helios 1875W Advanced Professional Hair Dryer is heavier and slower than our pick, the Rusk W8less—and three times the price. However, at over 9.5 feet, its cord ties with that of the Amika Accomplice for the second-longest cord of any hair dryer we’ve tested, and this dryer is especially beautiful.
At 0.6 pounds, the Gold ’N Hot Ultra-Lightweight Dryer with Tourmaline is the lightest dryer we’ve tested. However, the measured air speed was only 45 mph, and we found the handle thick and awkward to hold.
There are things about the Harry Josh Pro Tools Pro Dryer 2000 that are genuinely nice. It has a short nozzle, which would make it slightly easier to fit in a suitcase for travel, though our top pick and runner-up aren’t so much bigger that either one would be an issue in your average weekend bag. The matte-finish seafoam green color is pretty. In our tests, the cool-shot button was easy to push, and all the buttons were placed nicely on the back of the dryer—no poking, no accidental pushing. Undeserved hype (and proximity to celebrity hair aside), this dryer has only one major design drawback: At 1.21 pounds, the Harry Josh dryer was on the heavier side of the models we tested. Like our top pick, this model is warrantied for two years.
The lightweight and long-corded Hot Tools Professional Black Gold Turbo Ionic Salon Dryer is a little heavier than and not as fast as the Rusk W8less, and it’s typically more expensive, too. On top of that, owner reviews allege poor longevity. (This dryer is covered by a whopping seven-year warranty, though.)
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! It’s also one of the slower dryers we’ve tested.
The Hot Tools Pro Artist White Gold Digital Salon Dryer, the Panasonic Nanoe EH-NA65, and the Panasonic Nanoe EH-NA67 were all slower, heavier, and more expensive than the Rusk W8less.
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. Also, there was no warranty information to be found.
Customer reviews of the 1,900-watt Parlux 3200 Hair Dryer were pretty good at the time of our research, and the compact design of this model is nice. But the buttons are positioned on the side, and they made the dryer hard for us to hold without getting poked in the hand.
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.
We found that the handle on the Remington T-Studio Pearl Ceramic Professional AC Hair Dryer AC2015 vibrated unpleasantly when we put it on its highest speed setting.
The Revlon 1875-Watt Infrared Hair Dryer produced a wind speed of 45 mph (measured directly in front of the nozzle), slower than the speed we got from our picks. 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.
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.
The Rusk Pro Speed Titanium Hair Dryer, which the company suggested as a replacement for the discontinued CTC Lite model we previously recommended, is nearly double the price of the Rusk W8less and has the same cord length, heat settings and speeds, and two-year warranty. It does, however, always come with a diffuser (the W8less does not).
The wind emitted by the lightweight Trezoro 9300, an Amazon best seller, is very fast and hot (especially for the dryer’s price). However, at the time of testing, customer service was only reachable via a Hotmail address (and since then, quite a few reviews have lamented their customer service experience). We think the less expensive InfinitiPro by Conair is a better value overall.
This article was edited by Tracy Vence and Kalee Thompson.
Perry Romanowski, cosmetic chemist, email interview, October 22, 2015
Jim Shapiro, engineer, email interview, September 1, 2015
Melissa Piliang, MD, dermatologist at the Cleveland Clinic, phone interview, September 29, 2015
Rebecca Kazin, MD, assistant professor, Johns Hopkins Department of Dermatology, phone interview, October 2, 2015
Allen Ruiz, global artistic director of hair styling, Aveda, email interview, October 8, 2015
Nancy Redd is a senior staff writer at Wirecutter covering everything from Santa hats to bath bombs. She is also a GLAAD Award–nominated on-air host and a New York Times best-selling author. Her latest picture book, The Real Santa, follows a determined little Black boy's journey to discover what the jolly icon truly looks like.
Shannon Palus is a former Wirecutter senior staff writer. She tested countless health and wellness products from 2016 to 2018.
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Hair Dryer Blow Wirecutter is the product recommendation service from The New York Times. Our journalists combine independent research with (occasionally) over-the-top testing so you can make quick and confident buying decisions. Whether it’s finding great products or discovering helpful advice, we’ll help you get it right (the first time).