Most hair dryers are effective at blowing hot air toward your head. Sometimes quite fast—in order to speed along your hair styling from showering to whatever’s next.
It’s the small differences between models that can make a big difference overall. Particularly in daily use. After putting in 72 hours of research and spending nearly 40 hours testing 19 dryers. We found that some dryers are far more pleasant to hold and use than others.
Because it provides an excellent experience for the price, we think the Rusk W8less is the best choice for most people.
What makes a great hair dryer?
- Adjustable heat and speed settings, including a cool shot button which can help to close the hair’s cuticle and lock in the style, preventing frizz once you’re finished drying.
- Attachments really make a difference on varying textures since they affect the airflow of a hair dryer.
✔️ Diffusers are great for people with curly hair because they circulate air to the ends of hair while diffusing the airstream from the hair dryer to prevent frizz, which can help to define curls and even add volume.
✔️ Concentrators narrow the hair dryer’s airflow to blow air directly on the hair for smooth, sleek styles.
They come in different sizes for varying purposes: Broad, extended concentrator nozzles are meant for larger surfaces and are “useful for thick and long hair as they help it dry faster,”
Short, narrow concentrator nozzles provide curly and frizzy hair the opportunity for a sleek blowout, since their powerful flows are great for eliminating frizz.
Whether you’re going for everyday at-home use:
- The best travel hair dryer,
- An easy-to-use hair dryer brush, or
- Pro-level blow-outs every few days.
You won’t be disappointed with our top picks. Here are the best hair dryers you can buy:
1. Rusk W8less
Get it on Amazon
Heat and speed are the only features that matter for drying your hair efficiently, and with a 50 mph, 150 °F airflow, the Rusk W8less is one of the hottest and fastest dryers we tested.
It weighs less than a pound, it has an 8-foot cord (among the longest we found), it’s notably comfortable to hold, and overall it has the best combination of features we deemed important—that’s the case by far, even when you compare it with dryers that cost hundreds of dollars.
The Rusk W8less comes with a concentrator, which is helpful for straightening hair.
It does not come with a diffuser, however; if you use one for curly hair, consider our runner-up, which is nearly identical to our pick but includes a diffuser and usually costs more.
2. Nano Titanium Hair Dryer
- Concentrator included
- 3 heat settings; 2 speeds
- Easy to use and hold
Get it on Amazon
3. Infiniti Pro by Conair 1875-Watt Salon Performance AC Motor Styling Tool
If you don’t care about weight, consider the Infiniti Pro by Conair 1875-Watt Salon Performance AC Motor Styling Tool.
Commonly found in drugstores, this dryer produces airflow that’s nearly as fast (45 mph) and hot (130 °F) as that of our top pick.
At 1.2 pounds, however, it feels heavy after a couple of minutes of 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 on our top pick. The Infiniti Pro comes with both a diffuser and a concentrator.
Get it on Amazon
4. Professional Ionic Blow Dryer
Why We Like It
- 2 concentrators included
- 3 heat settings; 2 speeds
- Salon quality
NB:
- Diffuser sold separately
Get it on Amazon
BEST TRAVEL HAIR DRYER
Why we like it:
- Concentrator included
- 2 heat settings; 2 speeds
- Dual voltage and compact
Get it on Amazon
BEST HAIR DRYER BRUSH
6. One-Step Hair Dryer & Volumizer
BEST VALUE HAIR DRYER
7. D3190 Damage Protection Hair Dryer
BEST HAIR DRYER FOR DAMAGED HAIR
BEST HAIR DRYER FOR FRIZZY HAIR
9. Professional Turbo Ionic DC Blue Hair Dryer
BEST LIGHTWEIGHT HAIR DRYER
10. Ionic-Gold Fusion Pro Hair Dryer
How we picked The Best Hair Dryers for Quick, Easy Blowouts at Home and Away
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.
There are no clinical studies examining whether one type of hair dryer is better for your hair than another—at least, none that we, nor the dermatologists we interviewed, could find.
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 that it will. Most hair dryers (including our picks) are about 1,875 watts anyway.
And according to engineer Jim Shapiro, “Essentially all of the energy used by each dryer will be converted into heat, so don’t expect or look for much difference among the dryers here.”
For all the buzzwords and superlatives you can find on the side of hair dryer boxes, the key specs don’t vary much from model to model.
Beyond heat and speed, we considered:
Heat settings:
Multiple settings are a must-have. They mean you don’t have to keep blasting your hair on high—and incurring more damage—once it’s mostly dry.
And once your hair is totally dry, hitting the cool-shot button, according to many stylist opinions we read, will help seal your hair cuticle, keeping your hair feeling smoother. (Even if you don’t personally notice a difference, the cool air also feels nice when your head is hot.)
Cord length:
An often-overlooked but important feature is a cord that reaches from the outlet you want to plug your dryer into to the spot where you want to stand to dry your hair. Many bathrooms have an outlet near enough to the mirror that a short cord won’t matter.
But if your mirror is more than three steps from an outlet, there’s no way around choosing a dryer with a longer cord; it’s unsafe to add an extension cord to a device that draws as large a wattage as a hair dryer.
Avoid the problem by going with a longer cord in the first place. How long depends on your outlet situation, but in our testing, a minimum of 6 feet was most comfortable.
Weight:
The lighter the dryer, the easier it will be to hold for a longer period of time. In our testing, we found that a weight difference as small as two-tenths of a pound made a big difference in terms of how a dryer felt overhead.
Attachments:
The best dryers are compatible with diffusers and concentrators, and preferably come with them. A diffuser is an attachment that helps dry curly, wavy, or textured hair gently so it maintains its natural shape.
If you have straight hair or are trying to straighten your hair with a dryer, you won’t need a diffuser, though a concentrator attachment can help. See the How to dry your hair section for more info on how a diffuser can help minimize damage to your hair.
Removable filter:
A hair dryer with a filter you can easily pop off the back is much easier to clean. Without a removable filter, cleaning is kind of a pain because you have to take the hair dryer apart (video).
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:
- Button placement: Buttons that are placed either entirely on the front of the dryer or entirely on the back so they don’t poke your hand and are hard to hit accidentally make the experience of using a dryer nicer.
- Handle shape: The wider and straighter the handle, the harder it is to grip, typically.
- Sound: A dryer’s sound shouldn’t be annoying; most dryers operate at the same decibel level (59 to 90), but some dryers can make whinier noises than others.
- Vibration: Dryers that don’t rattle and vibrate much have a more pleasant feel.