Dyson has its fingers in several pies, from vacuum cleaners to hair care, all of which are pricey but deliver near-perfect results. The Dyson Supersonic might be the most expensive hair dryer on the market, for example, but having used that for several years we’d not want to use anything else – it’s worthy of its price tag.

Can the same be said for Dyson’s Airwrap hair styler? Yes, yes it most definitely can. Here’s why the Dyson Airwrap is the only hair styler you need in your life and, again, why the hard-to-stomach price tag is worth it in the long run.

Premium, superior design

• Multiple finishes
• Digital V9 Motor in the handle
• 6 attachments available

Taking on a similar design to the Dyson Supersonic, the Dyson Airwrap oozes that premium build quality we’ve come to expect from Dyson products. It’s bigger than other curling tongs, and heavier too, but the points it loses for size, it more than claws back in performance.

As with the Dyson Supersonic hairdryer, the Dyson digital V9 motor sits in the handle, dispersing the weight evenly to make the Airwrap easy to manage and hold.

At the very top of the Airwrap’s handle is a mechanism for attaching the various accessories, with a release button below it. The accessories are therefore not connected via magnet – as they are with the Supersonic – but easily attached by twisting into place with a reassuring ‘snap’ for a secure fit.

It depends on the Airwrap model as to which accessories are included, and this has changed since the Airwrap first launched too. Initially, the Dyson Airwrap Styler Complete offered nine attachments, while the Volume+Shape and Smooth+Control models had seven attachments each. The attachments were re-engineered in 2022 however, and although you can buy a couple separately, there are now two Airwrap models – Complete and Complete Long – both of which have six attachments in total.

Below the release button on the main handle, there’s an on/off button with a cold burst option that’s activated when pushed all the way up and held. You’ll also find a heat setting button to the right of the on/off switch and a speed button to the left.

Dyson Airwrap technology: How does it work?

• No extreme heat – nothing above 250-degrees
• Glass thermistor measures temp 40 times/second
• Wet to dry
• Coanda effect

Anyone familiar with curling tongs or straighteners will have likely burned themselves at some point. It doesn’t matter how careful you are, they are notorious for their ability to clip your finger or face leaving a red mark in their absence.

The Dyson Airwrap styler is different though. For starters, it doesn’t use extreme temperatures, so while the barrel is still warm after and during use, we were able to touch it during and after 30 minutes of styling without any problems at all.

Even on full power and full heat, the Airwrap is designed to stay below 250-degrees Celcius – because heat damage is claimed to occur to hair at this temperature and above. To ensure the temperature stays within that set limit, a glass thermistor measures the temperature 40 times a second, which is double the amount of the Supersonic.

The Airwrap is also a wet to dry styler, like the Dyson Airstrait, while most curling tongs require your hair to be bone dry if you don’t want to hear that dreaded frazzle as a ceramic tong finds a wet strand of hair. This might sound strange at first, but it’s one of the reasons we love the Airwrap so much – you don’t have to completely dry your hair to then curl it, thus saving time. The same applies for the Airstrait, though this styler is focused on straightening your hair rather than curling it.

Hydrogen bonds in hair break when your hair is wet. The idea behind Airwrap is to style your hair when the hydrogen bonds are broken, reforming them by using the cold shot above the on/off button on each styled section before you turn the styler off and release the section of hair.

The Airwrap also sets itself apart from other curling tongs thanks to the use of a technology called the Coanda effect. This is essentially the use of high speed jets of air that flow across a surface which sees your hair wrap itself around the Airwrap barrels (it’s like magic), meaning no moving parts like clips are necessary, nor high temperatures. It also smooths everything out, reducing frizz and you don’t get any dents in your hair from clips.

Fantastic performance

• Hair needs to be around 80 percent dry
• 30-40 minutes for styled long, thick hair
• Curls didn’t drop

Sounds pretty great right? No heat damage, no burns, requires wet hair and your hair wraps itself with minimal input from you. It’s basically the dream. We can honestly say the Dyson Airwrap is one of the best pieces of technology we have had the pleasure in testing.

However, the way it works takes a little time to get used to, and having the right dampness in your hair makes a big difference to the final result. But after a couple of trial runs, we achieved the exact finish we were after every single time.

We have very long, thick hair which is typically frizzy when allowed to dry naturally (we don’t allow this often, it’s a bad look on us). Prior to the Airwrap entering our lives, it would take an hour to style our hair from wet, whether curled or straight. Even a blow dry is an hour’s work for our hairdresser at the hair salon.

With the Dyson Airwrap, we can get out of the shower and have perfectly styled hair in 30 to 40 minutes. We also haven’t touched our GHD hair straighteners or curling tongs since we’ve had Airwrap in our lives, though we do occasionally use the Dyson Corrale hair straightener and we like the Flyaway attachment on the Supersonic for touch-ups too.

We have the Dyson Airwrap Styler Complete Long model, though we initially reviewed the standard Complete model that had both the 30mm Airwrap barrels and 40mm Airwrap barrels, both of which used the Coanda effect we mentioned previously. The Firm Smoothing Brush and Soft Smoothing Brush also both use the Coanda effect and, again, both are included with the original Complete model. If you have this model or you’re looking at the original model, you can buy the newer attachments separately. These include the Coanda smoothing dryer that dries, smooths and hides flyaway hairs in one attachment and the wide-tooth comb that is designed to shape and lengthen curly and coily hair as it dries. There are also the 20mm, 30mm and 40mm barrels that use the Coanda effect like the original barrels but you can twist the top so you only need one barrel for all your hair rather than having to switch attachments when you move to the other side. The other re-engineered attachments include the Soft smoothing brush and Firm smoothing brush, both of which use Enhanced Coanda airflow.

We found ourselves using the 40mm and 30mm barrel sizes regularly – and we love that we no longer have to switch each time we change sides. The Coanda smoothing dryer is also great, though it takes a bit of time to get used to. The Flyaway attachment for the Supersonic hair dryer is easier to use, but this attachment will deliver the same effect once you learn how to use it. We pre-dried our hair to about 80 per cent – still damp but not dripping – then we used the 40mm barrels for when we wanted softer curls and the 30mm barrels when we were after a tighter curl. We would often run through those tighter curls with our fingers for a more natural look though.

For our fringe, we used the Round Volumising Brush – which although doesn’t use the Coanda effect, it does allow you to create a blow-dried look. If we styled our hair with the Airwrap on a Saturday, for example, those fabulous curls would still be there on the Tuesday if we clipped it up at night. Sometimes they looked even better the day after, but more to the point, they didn’t drop at all.

We didn’t love the brushes as much as the barrels but that’s mainly because of how we like our hair styled. Ultimately you get both options in the original Airwrap styler box and the newer model so you can pick which suits you and your hair best.

Both the Dyson Airwrap styler Complete and Airwrap styler Complete Long models – which are the current models – have a Coanda smoothing dryer, Round Volumising Brush, Storage Case, and a lovely velvet carrying case.

Verdict

The Dyson Airwrap styler is an absolutely fantastic device. We recommended it all the time to friends and we have had countless compliments on not only the condition of our hair but how fabulous and bouncy we’ve managed to make it look – all in half the time it previously took us using other hair styling kits.

It takes a little bit of trial and error when using the Airwrap to get the right level of wetness in your hair, as well as working out exactly how much hair should be in each section and getting the technique right, but once you have mastered these things, you will never look back.

Yes, the £480/$600 asking price is an awful lot of money to pay for a hair styler, but in our experience the Dyson Airwrap is the only hair styler we ever want to use again. That makes it worth every single penny for the time it’s saved us alone!

This review was originally published in May 2021 and has been updated to reflect the changes in attachments offered.