31 Best Hair Dryers of 2022: Tested & Reviewed

Table Of Content

• Costco In-Warehouse Hot Buys Sale: APRIL 2024
• Best $50 or Less: Conair Infiniti Pro 3Q
• Best Lightweight Hair Dryer
• Best for a Time Crunch: Gama Italy IQ Perfetto Professional Hair Dryer
• Best for Bangs: GHD Air Professional Performance Hairdryer
• Budget pick: InfinitiPro by Conair 1875-Watt Salon Performance AC Motor Styling Tool

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. 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.

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Costco In-Warehouse Hot Buys Sale: APRIL 2024

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. 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. But with so many brands on the market and seemingly endless factors to consider, from your hair type and concerns to each blow dryer's technology and your desired features, it can be tricky to know where to start.

Best $50 or Less: Conair Infiniti Pro 3Q

All products featured on Glamour are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Good Housekeeping participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites. Photos may not be a perfect representation of the product, especially the color and shading. I spotted this item at the Covington, Washington Costco but it may not be available or may not be on sale at all Costco locations.

Best Lightweight Hair Dryer

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.

In GH Beauty Lab testing, Cricket’s hair dryer model emitted high heat and had powerful airflow to quickly dry even dense or coarse hair. 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.

Hair Styling Hair Dryer Specs

In the Beauty Lab's most recent hair dryer test, experts evaluated the tools in the Lab and at home for ease of use, performance, drying time and whether they cause hair damage, among other factors. Over 2,000 data points were then tallied to identify the best hair dryers on the market for every hair type, from curly to fine, frizzy, thick and more. 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!

Best for Bangs: GHD Air Professional Performance Hairdryer

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. 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 winner of the GH Beauty Lab's travel hair dryer test, Drybar’s top-of-the-line dual voltage model delivers fast-drying power in a portable package. It scored perfectly in Lab evaluations for having easy-to-use controls, dried hair samples fast and had strong airflow. 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 3 heat and 2 speed settings combined with a lock-in cool shot button to create customized settings for any hair type and texture. With a lightweight body and ergonomic handle, styling is comfortable and effortless.

Budget pick: InfinitiPro by Conair 1875-Watt Salon Performance AC Motor Styling Tool

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). 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). 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.

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. Look for safety verification emblems such as those from ETL (Electrical Testing Laboratories), UL (Underwriters' Laboratories) or TUV or SUD (both part of the Technical Inspection Association) on the hair dryer's packaging.

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. If you want to mimic a salon-like blowout at home, it helps to know what type of hair dryer professional hairstylists use and what they look for when shopping for one. The Good Housekeeping Institute Beauty Lab has been testing hair tools, including hair dryers — plus hair dryer brushes and travel hair dryers — for over a decade. In the GH Beauty Lab's most recent test, scientists evaluated 41 hair dryers over eight weeks (for a total of 320 hands-on testing hours), recording 2,244 data points to determine the winning models.

However, its 9.5-foot cord ties with that of the GHD Helios for the second-longest cord among the dryers we’ve tried. You get a styling concentrator, a flyaway attachment, and a wide-toothed comb, plus a “gentle” air attachment and 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). 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.

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. Despite the Supersonic’s flaws, compared with other dryers we’ve tested, this one truly feels like a luxury to use every day. Shannon Palus reviewed hair dryers for Wirecutter from 2015 to 2017.

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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 Remington Damage Protection Hair Dryer D3190 comes with a diffuser and a concentrator, but it’s bulkier and heavier than other models we tested. 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. 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. All of the dryers took more or less the same amount of time to dry hair.

I had no idea there were so many brands out there, but this one seems to get rave reviews about drying your hair very quickly. Here are a few more specifications on this T3 hair dryer from Costco……. "Ionization technology has visible benefits," Wizemann explains. Power-packed yet gentler than other models, Bio Ionic’s hairdryer was mild on both hair and scalp in GH Beauty Lab testing, key for damaged or fragile fine hair. It had the lowest air temperature at the highest of three settings, yet still dried hair samples quickly.