Leave it to Dyson to reinvent the hairdryer and the result is the Dyson Supersonic. In typical Dyson fashion the end result is a minimalistic, gorgeous design with at a whopping €399/$400 price to match. Judging purely by it’s design, it’s clear their using a modified version of their cordless vacuum cleaner’s motor and their air multiplier tech in the tiny Supersonic. In fact, it looks like one of their fans squeezed into a small format.
According to James Dyson: “Hair dryers can be heavy, inefficient and make a racket. By looking at them further we realised that they can also cause extreme heat damage to hair. I challenged Dyson engineers to really understand the science of hair and develop our version of a hair dryer, which we think solves these problems”
For starters the Supesonic has a built-in thermistor that measures the temperature 20 times and adjusts the temperature accordingly. Regular hairdryers will simply push out hot air without any intelligent control over the actual heat. Despite having manual controls over the heat output, there’s no control over the actual output, which can lead to dry or damaged hair.
Air Multiplier technology which we’ve looked at in our Dyson fan review is also used here, creating a strong focused jet, something you wouldn’t expect from such a short barrel. Most professional hairdryers have a fairly long barrel to allow for a strong airflow, but in the process they end up being bulky and difficult to handle. By using the air multiplier tech, the Supersonic basically uses curved surfaces to create a low pressure areas to draw in more air, allowing even more air to pass through the unit than normally would have been possible with such a small motor and short barrel. This is also one reason why it should be much quieter than regular hairdryers. With the help of acoustic engineering they tweaked the unit to be even more silent.
On a daily basis I use a professional and fairly expensive hair dryer to dry my hair, so I’m curious as to how the Supersonic will compare. In the future we’ll be taking a closer look at the Supersonic and see how it compares.