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Before we get down to the business of reviewing this (spoiler) wonder of a hair dryer, it should be established that I have very thick, frizz-prone hair. As a teen I identified deeply with J.K. Rowling's characterization of Hermione Granger's hair as "bushy," and as an adult I try to combat it, but if I'm being honest that description still tracks. Its texture inexplicably changed a lot throughout my twenties, evolving from curly to wavy to frizzy (whenever humidity levels creep above 40 percent) and back to wavy (only in winter). What's remained constant is that my haircut appointments consistently end late, and every new hairstylist, without fail, remarks, "Wow. You've got a ton of hair."
It should also be established that, in terms of hairstyling skill level, I'm a solid medium. I'm neither a styling pro nor a hair idiot, and my typical routine consists of washing my hair every other morning, adding some heavy styling cream, and blow-drying it with a diffuser. My goal is always to achieve curl definition while not encouraging frizz, but outcomes vary wildly. If I didn't work at Glamour, I'd probably be using a $30 blow-dryer from Amazon, but my professional circumstances have afforded me several very nice (averaging in the $250 range) hair dryers over the years. Each of them has been fine, but none has fully blown me away: Blowouts take much longer than I can abide and are destroyed by even moderate humidity (so I basically never attempt them), and as already established, my diffuser skills are highly average. Most days after blow-drying, my very thick hair manages to look stringy and bushy at once, with a substantial layer of frizz garnishing the whole situation.
So when Dyson came out with the original Supersonic two years ago, I was intrigued but had just acquired a new $250 hair dryer and assumed there wouldn't be much difference. Big mistake. Huge. Everyone I've talked to who's tried it keeps raving about how nothing compares. So when I heard that Dyson won a Glamour Beauty Award for the readers' choice category by a landslide, I needed it.
The unboxing revealed a concentrator attachment, a smoothing nozzle, and what I could tell just by looking at it would become either the best or the worst diffuser I’d ever used. At first glance it looked like a run-of-the-mill diffuser, but upon closer inspection I noticed its interior was fitted with a metal mesh that the air would be forced through, creating two layers of diffusion. In action, this meant that rather than hair being blown around—which flattens curls and adds frizz—the Supersonic diffuser dries hair faster while still keeping curls defined. On my first time, I got a frizz-free blow-dry in five minutes. FIVE MINUTES. With my old $300 hair dryer, five minutes gets me half-damp/half-crunchy hair with a huge halo of dry frizz.
The Supersonic did such a fantastic job with the diffuser that I had to give the smoothing attachments a try. Blowing my hair out is something I seldom attempt because it’s always been a lengthy, multistep, minimally rewarding process. First, I’d spend a good 20-plus minutes blow-drying my hair in sections with a round brush, eventually ending up with extremely tired arms and a very poufy, albeit straight, head of hair. Then it would be on to the flatiron, which took another 10 to 15 minutes, depending on how ambitiously anti-puff I was feeling. The Supersonic blew that out of the water. What would normally take me at least 35 minutes with a very expensive hair dryer and flatiron literally took the Supersonic 12 minutes. I achieved a sleek, shiny blowout in a third of the time it would otherwise have taken—and not only was I having to hold a heavy tool above my head for less time, the Supersonic actually isn’t all that heavy.
Having used hair dryers in the $30, $150, $200, and $300 ranges for years, I can confidently speak to the differences between them, and in my experience, after you get over $100, that difference is negligible. The Dyson Supersonic’s price tag is high—there’s no getting around that. However, if you have thick, curly hair and are willing to invest upwards of $200 on a hair dryer, take my word for it: either save your money and buy that $35 one off Amazon, or save a little longer and get the Supersonic. Anything else I've tried at a high price point truly hasn't been worth it.
