The Best Hair Dryers of 2025

Panasonic created its Nanoe Hair Dryer with an attachment that oscillates to give your arms some relief. While testing this dryer, Jessica evaluated this feature in addition to its regular drying abilities.

The oscillating attachment presented some challenges. First, it took her several attempts to figure out how to activate the attachment, despite reading the instructions (it turned out I was over-complicating it). Then, the attachment caused her hair to tangle while in motion, though you may not notice this as much if you have silkier hair unlike Jessica's textured hair that binds together easily.

It took her a total of 15 minutes to dry her hair on the low setting—high felt too hot, and heat and airflow can’t be controlled independently here. She chose not to style her hair with this dryer, as she wanted to test its claim of cutting down on drying time using the oscillating nozzle, but she noted that her hair looked "crazy" after the 15 minutes and would require a pass through with a straightener if she wanted to wear it down.

Still, she would expect that result with any of these dryers if she didn’t specifically pull her hair taut and try to straighten it, so she doesn’t fault the dryer. However, it didn’t really help to cut her drying time down.

Aside from the snags, she liked this dryer fine. It didn’t wow her, but she appreciated the innovative idea that indeed kept her arm from feeling as tired throughout the drying process. All of the controls are also very intuitive, albeit less customizable, with a single switch that toggles among off, low, and high.

The Shark Hyperair looks like a dupe for the double-the-price Dyson Supersonic. It forgoes a long barrel and instead opts for a short, wide one that, like the Dyson, acts as the control center with three buttons for air and three for heat. Both sets of buttons even light up white and red, respectively, like the Dyson.

This landed higher than the Dyson on our list because it felt more comfortable to hold, thanks to its better weight distribution, but she has similar criticisms for both tools. The medium heat and air settings dried her hair in 20 minutes, with the finished ‘do looking semi-straight but poofy. But the higher airflow, even on medium heat, was intense and whipped her hair around at times.

Would Jessica use this again? Sure. But she could get her hair to look sleeker with other, more affordable options on this list.

The Harry Josh comes with two concentrator nozzles and has a "negative ion" setting switch that claims smoother styling. Without a nozzle accessory, Jessica struggled to control the dryer’s airflow, which caused her 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 her was the high-pitched squeal of this dryer—after she finished, her ears were ringing for 20 minutes, which coincidentally was about the same amount of time it took to dry her hair.

No hair dryer list would be complete without the super-pricey Dyson Supersonic Hair Dryer. Its diminutive but powerful motor lives inside the Supersonic's handle instead of the head, differentiating it from the other models we've tested.

The design lends itself to being more balanced and, in theory, more ergonomically pleasant to use. However, placing the motor inside of the handle means an ultra-light barrel that leads to an awkward weight imbalance, most noticeable when Jessica was maneuvering it around her head to dry her roots before moving onto styling.

She liked that the Supersonic's control buttons are located on the head of the dryer as opposed to in its handle, and that they light up to show which of the three heat or air settings she's using. Their placement keeps them from accidentally engaging while the hair dryer is in use—an issue that some hair dryers suffer from.

Its "cool mode" button locks into place so that you don’t have to keep squeezing it to keep it on—a nice touch if you like to use the function to "set" your hair after styling with hot air. The Supersonic comes with two smoothing nozzles and a diffuser, all of which attach to the hair dryer magnetically in a snap.

She saw poofy but fully dry results after 30 minutes of using the Dyson and a round brush—a little longer than some. While the Supersonic works well enough, there are far less expensive hair dryers that you can invest in that will yield similar, if not better, results.

Unlike many of the other hair dryers on this list, the Shark SpeedStyle has six attachments. But the brand says you can build your own SpeedStyle by choosing two attachments to accompany your dryer. As far as customization goes, that's not the only option. Shark also has bundles designed for each hair type. Even though Sara had all six attachments for testing, she took a particular liking to two: the RapidGloss Finisher and the QuickSmooth Brush styler. The RapidGlosser Finisher left a noticeable sheen on Sara's strands and gave a pin-straight finish, but she can't confirm if the tool significantly reduced the frizz in her hair.

On the other hand, when it came to the QuickSmooth Brush styler, it was no walk in the park upon first use. After three attempts with the QuickSmooth Brush, she mastered the art of creating a voluminous blowout that accentuated all her layers.

This dryer also stood out because its on and off switch is located on the outside of the handle. It felt different to turn it on and off from the outside, but it wasn't a major nuisance. While it did an excellent job at drying and giving a bouncy blowout, other hair dryers towards the top of this list ring in at a fraction of the price of the SpeedStyle and provide similar, voluminous results.

This low-priced Conair embodies the differences between a high-end dryer and a budget one. It was noticeably heavier, seemed louder, and had a weaker air stream than its competition.

Like most of the blow dryers, it has two speed and three heat settings, but the low speed setting isn’t powerful enough while the high one feels uncontrollable, which led to Jessica's hair getting tossed around and looking poofy instead of smooth and straightened. Sure, it’ll dry your hair at a fraction of the price of others, but so will our Best Value pick, which works way better.

I wanted this beautiful dryer to be a star performer like the celebrity hair stylist who branded it, as it’s easily accessible at Target and comes in sleek white-and-gold packaging. Unfortunately, looks are about the best thing it has going for it.

The Kristin Ess dryer fell flat in the lab testing and in Jessica's own experience with it. Most notably, the dryer sounded loud, despite measuring at about the same volume as the rest, because of its higher-pitched tone, and that made the whole experience off-putting. It performed fine in terms of its power, but the thing that made it stand out from the pack was its pitchy tone—in a bad way.

The first thing that stood out about this blow dryer was its lightweight build—it’s a perfect travel hair dryer. It’s similar in size and shape to the Shark Hyperair, but feels even lighter and looks sleeker with its white and gold exterior. That positive aside, its airflow isn’t powerful enough to stack up with the others on this list.

It gently tossed Jessica's hair around even at the highest speed, and it took her about 28 minutes to get her hair to look semi-straight, but it was still damp in some spots and puffier than she’d prefer. She tried it on medium and high heat settings and found the former sufficed but the latter felt too hot. She’d use this again in a pinch, but its lightweight, attractive design is the most appealing thing about it.

The budget-minded Remington was another dryer that hurts the ears with its high-pitched hum—something you can look past if the performance was superior to others on this list. But it wasn’t: This dried the hair in about 25 minutes with the results straight but not sleek enough, even after switching both the heat and speed settings from medium to high.

Its humdrum performance was not for a lack of heat, either—a big difference could be felt between the heat settings, with the medium being about right and the hot one feeling too intense.

The primary positive to this dryer is that it was comfortable to wield. It didn’t feel too heavy and the weight was evenly distributed in the head and the handle. Aside from that one aspect, this dryer was only passable.

This dryer from Hot Tools isn’t bad—it’s just not great, either. It dried her hair in 25 minutes with semi-straight results. Like a few of the ones above it, you can use it in a pinch, but nothing about its performance, build, or buttons stood out from the pack.