Better than the Airwrap and less expensive? Yes, please!
Lauren Finney Harden
It's a truth universally acknowledged that when you're a parent, some personal maintenance items get put on the back burner. For me, my hair has really taken a hit. It went from salon cut and color religiously every six to eight weeks with good blowouts to me doing a sniff test every morning, crossing my fingers I can get one more day out of my hair.
My daughter's hair, however, is always freshly detangled and pulled into a neat ponytail. And I'm fine with that taking hair priority in our house. While I'd like to get a keratin treatment and really pamper my long-suffering hair, I think that an in-between solution of a killer home hair dryer is going to be what's best for me at this stage of my life. Enter the Shark SpeedStyle Hair Dryer, my new obsession.
Here's my honest review of the Shark Dyson dupe.
The Shark SpeedStyle Hair Dryer is a lightweight, next-gen blow dryer that's a dupe for some of the popular and expensive Dyson styles. It's small and compact, weighing about a pound and a half, and it can get hair from wet to dry quickly with no heat damage, maxing out at 230°F (heat-damaging temps are closer to 300°F).
Use it on any hair type from fine to coarse, straight to wavy. It can be used for super quick stylish with a paddle brush or oval brush, or used with the included attachments for a customized, trendy finish.
Lauren Finney HardenIt comes with attachments, and the blow dryer intuitively knows which attachment is connected and adjusts itself to one of four heat and three airflow settings. There are two bundles on Amazon to choose from depending on your hair type. Both bundles include the RapidGloss Finisher, which zaps frizz and flyaways and gives hair a silky, straight finish, and the QuickSmooth Brush, which offers volume.
One bundle comes with a DefrizzFast Diffuser for bouncy, springy curls and the other with a Turbo Concentrator for smooth styling.
I have been looking for a new hair dryer but couldn't stomach the price of a Dyson when I don't dry my hair all that often as a mom who works from home. But when I do dry my hair, I want it to be good and fast. The Shark SpeedStyle was appealing to me because it seemed to offer all the same qualities as the Dyson Airwrap and Dyson Supersonic blow dryers—but at half the price.
I was particularly interested in the Rapid Gloss Finisher attachment as a way to tame my very wild postpartum front pieces.
Lauren Finney HardenI'm glad I did my research—the Shark SpeedStyle blow dryer is a tiny little miracle worker, saving me time, space and headache when drying my hair. I almost want to complain that it was too fast to dry my hair. It took nine minutes from the second I started on my sopping wet hair until my final pass with the Rapid Gloss Finisher.
Lauren Finney HardenThe Shark SpeedStyle is super lightweight, which took some getting used to. It was easy and intuitive to connect the attachments. I'm left-handed, so there was a little trial and error in figuring out how to hold the Rapid Gloss Finisher in particular. It's been easy enough to figure out the best way to use this hair tool to my advantage, though.
I love how easy and quick it is to go from frizzy to fully hair styled in a matter of minutes without any professional help. I always seal my work in with a tap of the cool shot button to close the hair's cuticle and preserve the look (really, it works).
My only wish was that it came with a bag or storage box so that I could keep all the pieces together. Curling attachments and curling barrel pieces are complicated to fit in vanity drawers without a proper case.
You can buy the Shark SpeedStyle blow dryer and its attachments on Amazon, where you have two bundles to choose from. One set comes with the RapidGloss Finisher, QuickSmooth Brush and Turbo Concentrator, and the other comes with the RapidGloss Finisher, QuickSmooth Brush and DefrizzFast Diffuser.
Whichever you choose, a salon-style blowout is just a few minutes away. Need a free Amazon Prime membership? Here is where you can grab one—then check out all this other free stuff from Amazon.
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Lauren is a writer, leader, content strategist and storyteller based in Atlanta, Georgia. Her work can also be found in publications such as Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest (U.S.) and Ocean Drive Magazine.