Overview
Best for the at-home blowout
Revlon One-Step Hair Dryer and Volumizer
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Best for frequent hair styling
Dyson Airwrap Complete
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Best Dyson Airwrap dupe
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Best straightener
GHD Platinum+
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Best curling wand
T3 Whirl Trio
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Table of Contents
"Hair," as a Fleabag-era Phoebe Waller-Bridge once put it, "is everything."
Yes, we're using this quote four years too late, but its relevance — its practical application — remains too potent for us to ignore. A day where you hair falls a little flat or your part is just off enough can be, in a word, devastating.
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CES 2023: L’Oréal is helping those with limited mobility apply lipstickOf course, you are more than your hair, but it is nice to feel like you have some control over how to make your locks look good, especially when your standard wash and dry routine decides not to yield presentable results. The key to consistency is having a styling routine you can rely on.
Obvious as that may sound, for some people, hair styling is more than using shampoos, conditioners, mousses, and creams. For the most control over your results, finding the right hair styling tools can be the difference between loving and hating doing your hair every day
Looking for a hair styling tool is a lot like going to a hair salon. We get that simile is maybe a bit too similar, but stick with us.
Say you have long, pin-straight hair. If you go to the salon with a reference photo of a person who has a textured bob with bangs, and you tell your stylist you want that cut and the only styling you're willing to do is air drying, one of two things is going to happen. One, your stylist will say "No problem!" and you will end up with a haircut you're unhappy with. Two, your hair stylist will tell you to get real. And in that latter scenario lies perhaps the most valuable and widely applicable hair guidance out there.
When you're looking for hair tools, you have to consider your natural texture, how far that is from the look you'd like to achieve, and how much time, effort, and money you're willing to put into your hair routine. If at the end of the day, you appreciate the ease of air drying your hair and only want curls every now and then, you probably won't get your money's worth by dropping $600 on the Dyson Airwrap. You'll save money going for a curling iron, and occasional styling won't make that much of a difference in your hair's health.
If you do find yourself wanting to achieve a different texture than your own most days, hot tools can really help lock in a look for as long as possible. And though your $30 hair straightener from middle school may do the job, there are reasons worth investing more, whether that be saving some time or your hair's health.
Is heat styling every day bad for your hair?
Simply put, no matter your hair type, the more often you use heat to style your hair, the more prone you are to damage like breakage and dryness. The case is the same whether you're using standard hot tools or fancy Coanda air technology. Thankfully, this is not an all-or-nothing situation, and there are steps you can take to protect your hair from heated hair tools.
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The Dyson Airwrap's secret sauce is jet engine techThe first thing everyone should do before any styling sesh is to apply a heat protectant. It doesn't matter if it's from a drugstore bottle or if it's a high-end serum — you need to apply some form of protectant beforehand. Otherwise, you're basically asking for fast-tracked heat damage, which in the grand scheme of things, will likely mean you spend more money getting your hair cut frequently or you spend more time (and use more heat) to style hair that looks dry and dull already, continuing a very vicious cycle.
With all that said, some tools are better for regular heat styling than others. The Dyson Airwrap uses hot air, rather than hot metal plates, to style hair, and maxes out at 302 degrees. And even for people with textured or thick hair, it can provide lasting styles. The benefits of the lower temperatures don't just apply to air stylers either. Having a tool that maxes out at a lower heat may seem counterintuitive for long-lasting styles, but using lower heat and having to redo some sections is actually better for your hair than ta full-on 400-degree blast.
When to invest in hair styling tech
We won't sugarcoat it — most of the hair tools on this list aren't the cheapest. However, it's because they weren't designed to simply give you perfectly straightened or effortlessly curled hair. Honestly, a lot of hair tools can do that.
Spending more, however, often means making an investment in your health's hair, by exposing it more evenly to lower heats while producing the best possible version of the style with minimal effort. Plus, these hair styling tools are built to last, so you won't be making an investment more than once.
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Best Dyson Airwrap Dupes Best Dyson Supersonic Dupes Best Hair Straighteners All Best Products
Best for the at-home blowout
Read our full review of the Revlon One-Step Hair Dryer and Volumizer.
Hot air brushes are a category of hair tool that dares to ask: What if the best way to achieve sleek, volumized locks isn't by wrangling a hair dryer in one hand and a round brush in the other?
These tools have revolutionized the art of the at-home blowout, and the Revlon One-Step Hair Dryer and Volumizer (hereafter referred to as the One-Step) has led the charge. Why? It's affordable, it's simple to learn, and the results are impressive. When I tested the One-Step, I expected that I'd get results that left me pleased for a hair tool priced at only $60. Instead, for the first time in my life, I effortlessly achieved a blown-out look at home, complete with sleek, shiny strands, volume, and nicely flipped ends.
Impressed as I was, this isn't a perfect tool. It does bring more heat directly in contact with hair than the standard round brush and blow dryer combo likely would. If you're not careful with heat protectant and staying on the lowest possible heat setting, you could easily damage your hair with frequent use. But for a hair tool that's often on sale for $35 or less, these are drawbacks worth living with.
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Best for frequent hair styling
Read our full review of the Dyson Airwrap Complete.
If there is a single It Girl of the hair tool world, it's the Dyson Airwrap. And it's because she does a lot, and does it all well.
The Airwrap is a tool that uses hot air to style and set your hair. However, the air maxes out at 302 degrees, so you won't get the same damage as you would from using a straightener or curling iron on the daily. It also comes with six attachment heads, including two curling barrels, two smoothing brushes, a round brush, and an all-over dryer attachment. Pretty much any style you might want is achievable with a single base, and there's no need to pull out a hair dryer.
The Airwrap Complete is the second iteration of the original tool from 2018, bringing with it some nice improvements: you can add a single wand attachment to switch the direction of the curls, and there's a longer wand available for people with longer hair. The pre-styling dryer of the first gen has also been swapped with a smoothing dryer that delivers an overall blow dry and targeted gusts of air to tame flyaways.
Great as it is, this isn't an everyday essential. It's very much a luxury priced as such at $600 (and for what it's worth, the curling wands didn't cut down on styling time that much). If, however, you style your hair most days and are looking for a more hair-healthy option that feels nice to use, the Airwrap is likely the investment for you — that is, if you can get your hands on it.
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Best Dyson Airwrap dupe
Many have claimed to be a Dyson Airwrap dupe, but the Shark FlexStyle may be the first to truly make good on that promise.
The key to its success lies in the Coanda air technology, which distinguishes the FlexStyle from other hot air brushes that have claimed Dyson dupe status in the past. The result is a product that is pretty much indistinguishable from the Airwrap, in both design and performance. Yes, it even has the curling wands that grab your hair and wrap it for you (though they're more similar to the older Airwrap than the direction-changing ones on the newer version). The best part is that the FlexStyle is less than half the cost of the Dyson.
Shark didn't stop at offering an exact replica of the Airwrap at a cheaper price point. For a bit more cash, you can purchase a set with accessories for wavy and curly hair or a customizable one with whichever accessories you want — including a diffuser attachment (which Dyson has never offered). You can also use the FlexStyle without any attachments to give a nice overall dry to hair — in my own experience, this has made it a great hair dryer for travel.
Using the wand sans attachment is made especially simple thanks to the twisting mechanism on the wand base, which makes it just as usable at 90 degrees as it is at a full 180.
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Best straightener
Heat styling and hair damage may go hand-in-hand, but that doesn't mean you have to leave everything up to your heat protectant and a blind leap of faith — even when it comes to straightening your hair between two hot plates.
Flat irons may seem like the natural poster child for heat damage, but the GHD Platinum+ uses sensors to monitor your hair's heat up to 250 times per second to maintain a consistent 365-degree styling temperature. GHD deems this the optimal temperature for providing enough heat to create and lock in a style, but not so much that it'll completely fry your hair. (A professional stylist has reassured us that multiple passes at a lower heat are much better for hair health than a single pass at a high temp). For the textured and thick-haired among us reading this with skepticism, we get it — but we saw plenty of reviews from those with curly and wavy-haired singing this iron's praise.
Since this flat iron operates at one temperature only, it's super simple to use, with one power button to turn it off and on. The rounded edges and exterior also assist in creating both curls and waves.
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Best curling wand
What's better than a curling wand that works really well? A curling wand with three barrels that works really well.
T3 is by no means new to the scene, and the Whirl Trio has been around for a while. It's not the cheapest option — and that's factoring in that you'll get a one-inch barrel, a one-and-a-quarter to three-quarter-inch tapered barrel, and a one and half-inch barrel. But there's a reason (or two) T3's hot tools often top the best-selling lists on sites like Sephora and why we've deemed this curling wand one of our favorites before. (It's also been the Allure Best of Beauty pick in its category in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2019.)
The ceramic barrels provide even heat distribution and shine, which is why the material is often regarded as the healthiest for hair. In addition to the five heat settings, the Whirl Trio also uses Digital T3 SinglePass Technology which helps get smooth, shiny curls in one try.
For those who prefer using a clamp, the T3 Whirl Trio also comes in a curling iron version, the Twirl Trio.
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Best hair dryer
When it comes to blow dryers, efficiency is the name of the game. Fancy features and pretty design don't mean a lot when you have sopping wet hair and 20 minutes to get out the door.
That's where the Bio Ionic 10X Ultralight Speed Dryer can save you. Though it's pricey, it's also plenty powerful, offering one of the fastest drys on the market. Many reviewers noted how 30-minute dry times turned into 15-minute dry times. Plus, its sleek design clocks this dryer in at under one pound, so your hair styling session doesn't have to double as an arm workout.
Included in the box is a styling concentrator, so you can get the most frizz-free blow dry possible. On the actual dryer, the power and temperature switches are one and the same, so it's a little less customizable than we'd prefer. Still, ultra-fast dry times are hard to beat. If you're still iffy about the investment, this dryer's 10-year warranty might reassure you that you're buying a tool that's built to last.
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Topics Beauty
How we tested
The products with linked reviews have been tested by Mashable staffers over a period of weeks. The Shark FlexStyle has also been tested and a full review is forthcoming.
For products without Mashable reviews, we've read hundreds of customer reviews from multiple websites, considered features offered versus price points, and stayed up to date with the latest hair tech releases to ensure we're providing you with the best possible offerings.
Bethany Allard is a Los Angeles-based shopping reporter at Mashable covering beauty tech, dating, sex and relationships, and headphones. That basically means she puts her hair through a lot, scrolls through a lot of dating apps, and rotates through a lot of different headphones. In addition to testing out and rounding up the best products, she also covers deals for Mashable, paying an especially obsessive amount of attention to Apple deals and prices. That knowledge comes in handy when she's covering shopping holidays like Prime Day and Black Friday, which she's now done for three years at Mashable.
She graduated from New York University with a B.A. in Journalism and English Literature. You can follow her on X @betallard and reach her by email at [emailprotected].In her free time, you'll find her playing her Switch, hanging with her cat Mila, or cooking something new in her kitchen.
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