Dyson has unveiled a new version of its Airwrap multi-styler, which makes styling hair into soft waves and curls quicker and easier, as there’s no need to use different barrels for the left and right side of your hair.
The Airwrap uses warm air to create an aerodynamic phenomenon called the Coanda effect. This attracts hair towards the barrel and wraps it around to create curls; however, on the original model the air was only able to flow in one direction, which meant you needed two barrels – one for styling the hair on each side of your head.
Now Dyson has re-engineered the barrel that ships with the latest model so that the air can flow in opposite directions. Rather than needing to switch barrels halfway through styling, the tip of the curling attachment can simply be rotated to change the air flow direction.
It’s not only the curling heads that have been tweaked. The smoothing brush and volumizing brush heads have more air vents in them, which means the Coanda effect is stronger, providing more control over hair, while also speeding up styling.
There’s also a new-look drying attachment that apes the design found on the fly-away tool, which was released for the Dyson Supersonic hair dryer last year, and which aims to replicate the effect of a professional blow-dry, smoothing hair while drying it, and hiding the damaged strands on the inside of tresses to give a healthy, shiny appearance.
Even better, the re-designed Airwrap tools are compatible with the original Airwrap, so you don’t need to invest in a new styler to benefit from the new attachments.
The new Dyson Airwrap is priced at $599 / £479.99 / AU$899, which makes it slightly pricier than its predecessor, although it does come with the new re-engineered attachments. In the UK, it's available to pre-order from Dyson now and will ship at the end of March, although in the US and Australia it won’t be available until at least June. The set of attachments can also be purchased on their own for $199 / £149.99 /AU$249 making it possible to upgrade an existing Airwrap, too.
If you can’t wait a few more weeks to get your hands on the latest version of the hot air styler, then head over to our article where to buy a Dyson Airwrap to find out which retailers have stock of the original Dyson Airwrap.
Opinion: versatility is the key to the Airwrap’s popularity
In spite of the current Airwrap’s hefty price tag of $549.99 / £449.99 / AU$799.99, it’s proved to be extremely popular. According to Dyson, four Airwraps were sold every minute during 2021 and the Airwrap became hard to get hold of from November 2021, and is still in short supply now. So why is the Dyson Airwrap coveted by so many?
When the Airwrap launched in 2018, hot air brushes that dried and volumized tresses weren’t new. In fact, they were seen as somewhat old-fashioned, having been a staple in the late 19080s and early 1990s, as they offered a more-affordable alternative to salon-style dryers.
However, they were very much a one-trick pony, and unless you had hairdresser-level skills, creating soft waves with these brushes was extremely difficult, while creating tight curls was near impossible.
But the array of attachments that shipped with the Airwrap changed all that. Not only did the different-width barrels mean you could ditch your curling iron completely, they also meant it was possible to achieve both tight curls and soft waves with one styler. Even better, the Coander effect meant it was far easier to create these styles.
No longer did you need to worry about wrapping strands of hair around a hot metal barrel, and risking a multitude of burns to your fingertips, nor did you need to learn how to manipulate a pair of flat irons in several directions while gently sliding them through your locks to curl hair. Instead, the Airwrap pulled hair towards the styler and wrapped it for you, enabling you to create salon-worthy styles in minutes.
The Airwrap does all of this while ensuring that the hot air never exceeds 302F / 150C, which means your hair isn’t subject to the same level of heat damage that other styling tools, such as hair straighteners, which can reach temperatures of up to 446F / 230C, can inflict on tresses.
This writer has fine shoulder-length hair, and while I love the idea of styling my hair into soft waves and curls, the reality is that my tresses always end up as a straggly, kink-filled mess. I don’t have the patience to spend hours twirling small sections of hair around a curling iron; in fact, I’d all but given up, and resigned myself to a life with straight locks.
However, the Dyson Airwrap makes red-carpet-worthy hair feel more within my grasp. Given this, it’s not hard to see why the Airwrap has proved so successful, and while the new model is likely to prove equally popular.
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