The Best Hair Dryers of 2021

Like the Bio Ionic, the Devacurl dryer is the heaviest at 1.2 pounds (tying with the Harry Josh), but easy to hold, and produces a low humming noise that is loud but not unpleasant. As you may be able to tell by now, those physical features are all highly important to me when it comes to choosing the best hair dryer, so it’s no surprise that the Devacurl ranked second place when all of my testing results were scored. The placement of the controls (on the inside of the barrel where my thumb instinctively lands) and the order that the switches are labeled in (ascending from coolest to hottest or lowest to highest) makes this dryer especially appealing to me. In terms of intuitiveness, it even beats out the Bio Ionic, which has the controls on the opposite side of the barrel—not prime real estate, in my opinion.

In terms of power, this one is among the top half of the dryers in our ping pong test, with Kristin Ess and Harry Josh. It dried my hair quickly and left it feeling soft to the touch. Its Achilles heel that bumped it to our second spot: it reached 107.9°F (the hottest), which can be drying on the hair and feel too hot to the touch. However, you may find the lower heat setting fine if the highest one is too hot.

The most appealing thing about the Amika dryer is its long, narrow barrel, which gave me more control than any other dryer I tested. I could get really close to my roots without having my hair blown around everywhere and, ultimately, tangled. My hair dried as straight and smooth as it did with the Bio Ionic, too.

We deducted points because of the control settings. This dryer has two heat settings (cool and hot) and two power settings (low and high), each controlled by two respective buttons, rather than the toggle switches used by most dryers. If the dryer is blowing cool hair, you click the “hot/cool” button to change to hot; the same idea goes for the power settings. Unfortunately, you can’t see what setting they’re on, as you can with the usual switches. Yes, you’ll notice by how hot the air is or how forceful the air is blowing out, but I found it odd that the controls weren’t labeled to reflect this

At 106.6°F, this dryer reached among the hottest temperatures we measured, and I wished that there was a medium heat setting, as can be found on the similarly ultra-hot Devacurl.

Am I being too picky? Maybe. But the Amika also was not a top performer in our lab tests, either. It was in the bottom half of contenders when we tested its strength in the ping-pong ball test.

This dryer sits at a mid-level price, making it rather appealing upon first glance. It’s designed well, with a narrow head and nozzle that’s easy to control and makes for a comfortable hold—it weighs 0.9 pounds, a titch more than some others, but we didn’t find it too tiring to use.

Unfortunately, while this dryer works, it also gets very hot. It was the hottest dryer Jess Teich tested and she worried it would damage her hair. “With three heat settings and two speeds, this dryer blasted my hair straight. However, the resulting style looked roughened and a bit fried, not sleek and smooth like the more expensive dryers achieved.” During heat testing, this dryer clocked in at 104.4°F, which isn’t the highest (Devacurl topped the charts at 107.9°F, though Teich didn’t test this one), but not as mild as the Bio Ionic (our lowest recorded “high” temperature, at 96.3°F) or the Revlon (96.4°F).

In the previous round of testing, the Harry Josh was crowned the best hair dryer, as it scored well and was very loved by our previous tester. Several people at Reviewed even bought the dryer after testing and still love it. However, my experience was a poor one, which makes sense, as we realized our test model showed signs of deterioration during our new round of testing.

For background: I tested the Harry Josh dryer that we’d kept in storage at our office for at least two years since our last test. When that unit underperformed, I tested the same model that one of our editors has owned for a year. When I found the performance of the second Harry Josh anecdotally better, we tested that unit in our labs and found it performed just as the original tester dryer had. The thing is, I tested four new models, including our new overall pick from Bio Ionic, that weren’t on the market at the time of the last test. And while I found the (second) Harry Josh I tested to be just fine, other brands simply performed better.

At 1.2 pounds, the Harry Josh is tied with two other models for the heaviest dryer we tested. This is surprising, considering it has the most compact design—it’s small enough to act as a travel-sized dryer. That small size can take a little bit of getting used to as the weight is distributed differently, but it’s comfortable to hold.

One upside to this dryer is its 9.7-foot cord, which is great if your outlet isn’t right next to your mirror. It comes with two concentrator nozzles and has a “negative ion” setting switch that claims smoother styling. Without a nozzle accessory, I struggled to control the dryer’s airflow, which caused my hair to poof up more than any other blow dryer. The nozzle attachment corrects this problem, but that accessory gets burning-hot to the touch, so there’s no taking it off mid-drying session without waiting for it to cool. Another big deterrent for me was the high pitch squeal of this dryer—after I finished, my ears were ringing for about the same amount of time it took to dry my hair—20 minutes.

No hair dryer list would be complete without mention of the cult-favorite Dyson. What's so innovative about it? It's much-smaller motor lives inside the handle instead of the head, with the intention of creating a lighter-weight and balanced dryer. At a middle-of-the-road weight of 0.9 pounds, its design does make it feel a little lighter than the competition. The trade-off, though, is a thick, non-contoured handle that looks sleek but feels bulky to hold.

This dryer has been billed as "silent," which is simply untrue. It sounds somewhat quieter than other hair dryers, but not by a remarkable margin—and our lab sound tests confirmed this, with its 79.5-dbA volume landing in the middle of the dryers we tested. It has a bit of a high-pitched whine to it, much like Dyson's vacuums.

Something unique is that the buttons are on the head of the dryer, which keeps you from accidentally switching modes while you’re drying, which can happen with on-the-handle controls. It has a cool mode to “set your blowout” that locks into place, so you don’t have to keep squeezing the button down.

It comes with three magnetic styling attachments (two smoothing nozzles and a diffuser). However, the cord is ridiculously bulky, like an extension cable, with a half-pound adapter that makes the dryer heavy and difficult to store. The fact this dryer also comes with a non-slip mat speaks to its price: You don't notice or care how often your dryer crashes to the ground until you’ve invested this much money on it.

At the end of the day, this Dyson is, without a doubt, a great hair dryer, but we don’t see the value in its category-topping high price—particularly as we found comparable and better results in less-expensive dryers.

If you’re a fan of Drybar, the chain of salons known exclusively for blowouts, you’re probably curious about this tool.

This dryer’s claim to fame is that it’s ultralight to keep stylists from becoming body-builders, but we found it heavier than expected—at 1.1 pounds, it’s actually only 0.1 pounds less than our heaviest dryers. The Buttercup has three speed settings and two heat settings on the front of the handle and comes with two smoothing nozzles.

Even on high, the airspeed didn’t feel strong to Teich’s but it dried her long hair a bit faster than the ultra-powerful Dyson, just without the ultra shiny, soft feel. It didn’t perform badly, but the Buttercup wasn’t a standout.

A newcomer to the test, I wanted this dryer—branded by the celebrity stylist who coifs Lauren Conrad and Lucy Hale—to be a stunner, as it’s easily accessible at Target and comes in sleek white-and-gold packaging. Unfortunately, the box it comes in is about the best thing it has going for it. The Kristin Ess dryer fell flat in the lab testing and in my own experience with it. Most notably, the dryer sounded loud, despite being about the same volume as the rest, because of its higher-pitched tone and that made the whole experience offputting.

In terms of power, this dryer performed well in our ping-pong test, tying with the Harry Josh and Devacurl, and right behind the Bio Ionic (the top performer in our test). Similar to the Buttercup, this dryer didn’t stand out for its performance while I was using it, and the one thing that did, the pitchy sound, was negative.

The brand Conair is synonymous with hair dryers, This is a classic at a reasonable price, but upgraded enough to appeal to a shopper searching for a dryer with a little more power.

However, this Conair is emblematic of the difference between a high-end dryer and a budget one. It was noticeably heavier, seemed louder, and had a weaker air stream than the competition. Its concentrator nozzle is too wide to effectively concentrate the air, with side vents that muss up already-styled hair.

This Conair offers three heat settings and two speeds, but none of them were powerful enough to tame Teich’s hair and the result was a frizzy style. Finally, Teich had to switch hands while drying because her arm was fatigued, which has to do more with the balance of its design than its 1.1-pound weight.

The T3 dryer’s unique acute angle design helps distribute its 1.1 pound weight. It feels light and ergonomic to use, although you might smack yourself in the head a couple times while you get used to its shape. It comes with a concentrated nozzle and was the only dryer to come with a round brush, which seems like a great add-on, but the quality doesn’t stack up to one you may purchase separately.

After nearly 30 minutes of styling, Teich said the dryer still couldn’t tame her waves and the drier caused the whole room to heat up quite a bit in the process of trying.

The T3 dryer’s price rings in at the top end of the category, but the resulting style was comparable to the cheaper dryers in the bunch, the two inexpensive Conairs.

This blow dryer is as barebones as it gets, which is reflected in its low price point (at the time of publication, it was the cheapest on this list). There are only two settings, high and low, but no cool shot and no adjustable temperatures. On high, the dryer produces very hot air—over 100º in our testing—but the air power isn’t strong enough to get through thick hair—it left Teich’s scalp hot and damp from sweat, which led to greasy-looking roots.

This Conair is by far the lightest dryer we tested at 0.5 pounds. But as easy it is to wield this dryer, the end of the nozzle is wide and, as it doesn’t come with an air concentrator nozzle (or any other attachments), you will get quite hot during your blowout as hot, unregulated air blows all around you. Teich’s resulting hairstyle was a bit fried and a lot frizzier. Only reach for this in a pinch.