Table Of Content
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 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.
RevAir
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.
Upgrade pick: RevAir
Unlike on other dryers, the cool-shot button is wide, so holding it down for several seconds isn’t uncomfortable. All of the dryers took more or less the same amount of time to dry hair. We took basic stats on our dryers, using a weather meter to test the speed and heat and a postage scale to weigh them.
Fast and light
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). 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.
Our pick: Rusk W8less Professional 2000 Watt Dryer
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. 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.
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. 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.
Best for thick, dense, or curly/coily/kinky hair
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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.
How we picked and tested
You’ll find the medium heat is more suitable for more precise hair drying, when you aren’t moving the nozzle around so much. 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). 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. 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.
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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 cool shot button sits separately on the inside of the handle and is very large. It’s also a little on the stiff side too, meaning holding it down for more than a short period is a bit of a pain. GHD might be better known for its hair straighteners, but it actually covers all aspects of hair styling, with the GHD Air its entry-level at-home hairdryer. The Supersonic has a two-year warranty and comes in five color combinations.
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. Among the models we tested, it tied for blowing the hottest and fastest air. You get a styling concentrator, a flyaway attachment, and a wide-toothed comb, plus a “gentle” air attachment and a diffuser.
However, the measured air speed was only 45 mph, and we found the handle thick and awkward to hold. 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). 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.
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 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 0.6 pounds, the Gold ’N Hot Ultra-Lightweight Dryer with Tourmaline is the lightest dryer we’ve tested.
