Source Images: Courtesy of subjects Save Story Save this story Save Story Save this story Earlier this month, Dyson dropped one of its latest innovations: the Airsmooth Styling Dryer Brush , which is designed to transform wet hair into a bouncy, supermodel-worthy blowout with a flick of the wrist. Early reactions online were mixed. (After a demo dropped ahead of the device’s launch, showing it being used on tight curls , let’s just say the crowd went mild .) But also, why release a dedicated blow-dry brush when the Airwrap is already equipped with not one, but two attachment brush heads?
According to Kavya Nair, a Dyson designer based in Singapore, the brand sought to create a more travel-friendly, stand-alone solution for wet-to-dry styling. Going with a brush, specifically, made sense for several reasons, including the popularity of the category (she says blow-dry brushes have one of the largest user bases among all hot tools ); the Smoothing Brush and Round Brush being among the most popular Airwrap attachments; and the simple fact that the brand didn’t offer a blow-dry brush yet.
Most interesting, perhaps, given the early feedback, Nair says Dyson also saw the Airsmooth as an opportunity to show up for folks who have historically felt underserved by the company’s offerings—the textured hair community. “I think one of the key things that we wanted to solve, or attempt to solve,” she explains, “is the fact that our products essentially weren't giving the performance that a lot of 3T [curly-haired] and 4T [coily-haired] users” desired. And despite that bumpy pre-launch, reception among those with tighter curl patterns has shifted significantly, including some emphatic endorsements .
So what gives? Is the Airsmooth really a one-stop shop for every hair type—one worth purchasing even if you’ve got a perfectly fine Airwrap at home? We at Allure dove deep into this product experience to find out what it’s actually supposed to do and put it to the test on different hair types. Read on for our honest thoughts.
I once heard someone say of high school proms, “If you’ve been to one, you’ve been to them all,” and that’s how I would generally describe blow-dryer brushes . That was my initial reaction to the Airsmooth too. It’s lightweight and easy to hold, but the only obvious difference between it and competitors is the teardrop-shaped brush head. Or so I thought. As I used it, another key difference quickly became apparent: the bristles. Slim and hyper-flexible, they lack the ball-tipped ends found on most brushes and combs.
Says Nair, as the team began researching hot brushes already on the market, two user complaints consistently emerged, particularly among those with finer, thinner hair and coily hair types : breakage and discomfort. Digging deeper, they discovered that those ball-tipped bristles were a major culprit. The bristles tend to catch knots and tear them, as opposed to working through them.
Despite shared concerns, however, these hair types have some drastically different needs. “If you design something very high in tension that gives you a lot of control, the curly/coily community loves it. The minute you do that, though, users [with] finer hair —like Asian hair or European hair—are like, ‘It’s painful for me, I need this to be a bit more flexible,’” says Nair. “So a lot of work went into the development of the bristles and understanding how the product can be robust in terms of taking very high tension, but also being…