Diffusers are a curly girl's best friend, as long as you know how to use them,” says Vaccaro. So, what’s the best way to use a diffuser? Take it blow by blow. We accidentally dropped it and the chic, mint green hue (one of our favorite elements) chipped a little.

Katy Olson is a beauty buff and professional journalist with naturally curly hair. For this article, she drew on research from the InStyle editors who tested each hair dryer. Options are seemingly endless on the attachment front, but your hair type will drive your decisions there too.With evenly-distributed and fast-acting ionic heat, sealed in by a cool-shot button, the device is designed to dry and straighten simultaneously. Emitting a low, high-tech hum versus the typical soundblast associated with most dryers, the Shark tool has three different air speeds, ranked low, medium, and high. Yet we found that “strong, stronger, and very strong” might be more apt descriptions — even on the lowest setting, the air is forceful and consistent. Compact yet effective, this blow dryer dried half of our fine hair in just a few minutes, without ever making us feel like we were frying our hair. Even at low speed, it felt pretty powerful, but not like our hair was burning. Our hair dried smoothly, with tons of volume, instead of flat against our head. As the cute green color chipped off when we dropped it, the hair dryer may not be as durable as some of the other options on this list.

The hair dryer doesn’t come with attachments for different hair textures, and it’s heavier than we’d like it to be. Hotjar sets this cookie to identify a new user’s first session. It stores a true/false value, indicating whether it was the first time Hotjar saw this user.The Halo uses infrared light to dry water on the hair’s surface, leading to less damage to the hair itself, and the only real downside in sight is perhaps an upside for those looking for a calmer way to dry: Its muted flow is not as powerful as other brands’. Just about on par with models that are double its price, the InfinitiPRO by Conair DigitalAire Dryer gets the frizz out, taming tortured hair smooth with ease. In fact, it blew out our fine, wavy hair within 30 minutes, commanding an airflow so strong that it sent the curtains swaying in our room. (That force is likely due to the fast-moving digital motor, which revs at 90,000 times per minute!). The high level of heat is also conducive to wrangling frizz. Our experience varied depending on the type of hair. While our wavy hair did receive the results we set out to achieve (a straight blowout without the need for a follow-up tool), our coily hair still needed a second tool to straighten the ends. The wide-tooth comb wasn't particularly useful for drying our kinky hair, not completely drying it and leaving the ends puffy.

The pro-grade dryer comes with an ionizer switch at the top that lets you customize your blowout to your needs. All you have to do is simply press 'volume' or 'smoothing' and let the ionic blow dryer do its thing. I personally went for the smoothing option as my wavy hair was looking particularly unruly on the testing day. I'm happy to report that the smoothing option does exactly what it says it will — I was left with a sleek blowout, even on a humid summer day in New York City. With over five years’ experience in beauty and health journalism, Florence has written for ELLE, Women’s Fitness, Sister Magazine, National Geographic Traveller and many more, with a strong sustainability angle thread through much of her work. With a super chic vortex design that helps to control airflow and a matte caramel colorway, the Pattern’s good looks are only the beginning of its story as a curl-enhancing hot tool. Designed with "curlies, coilies and tight textures" in mind, the Pattern Blow Dryer absolutely delivers.

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When it comes to hair dryer wattages, the old axiom “Go big or go home” doesn’t apply universally. Instead, go big only if your hair type warrants the wattage. This cookie, set by YouTube, registers a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. Despite our positive experience, we wish there were more bells and whistles. Overall, we love the results it delivers, but would love it even more if it came with more attachments. Quiet and controlled, the airflow and temperature were reflective of the dryer’s professional standing, and our hair and scalp didn't feel scorched, or even slightly overheated, at any point during the trial. At the hands of the luxe, lightweight and effective tool, the resulting blowout of our hair felt like a professional one. The Hyper Air comes with two attachments, the IQ 2-in-1 Concentrator and the IQ Styling Brush. The concentrator includes a dial to toggle between wide and narrow airflow, and users can rotate the attachment itself to ensure that the airflow is always in line with a brush while blowing out hair. A diffuser is also available, although it's sold separately, which was disappointing.

The accompanying attachments make it one of the best blow dryers for curly hair for creating different looks. A diffuser will create a head of natural, bouncy curls. Want a straight look instead? Use the higher heat and speed settings along with a brush, held taut. A true investment piece, the Dyson SuperSonic Hair Dryer arrived at our doorstep loaded with five different attachments and a high-powered, three-heat setting panel. We were thoroughly impressed by the blowout produced by the INFINITIPRO SmoothWrap Hair Dryer, transforming our fine, wavy hair into a dreamy blowout in a matter of just 18 minutes flat. Even better, it wasn’t heavy or bulky, and didn’t aggravate our editor’s carpal tunnel. The high speed with low heat dried our hair fast — in four and a half minutes to be exact, without any attachments. After drying, we used the concentrator, which smoothed out our hair nicely and reduced the look of frizz. Despite loving the blow dryer's sturdy, compact body and easy-to-use attachments, we were less impressed with the cool setting — it more so felt like we were out on a windy day. Ionic: These dryers use negatively charged ions to break down positively charged water molecules in hair to cut down on drying time and minimize frizz.It didn’t take much effort to get the hair dryer up and running — it’s designed in the traditional way in terms of the shape, button placement, and cord length. We used the highest airflow setting to get the power we needed to zhuzh our fine hair, but kept the heat setting between two and three (although we did try out the hottest setting and it was, indeed, quite hot). Within 10 minutes — even on a low heat setting — our hair was totally dry, smooth, and fluffy in the best way possible.