We Tested the Dyson Airstrait, and It Created More Problems Than It Fixed
I once considered paying half a month’s rent for a gym membership just so I could have regular access to the Wirecutter-beloved Dyson hair dryer.
That’s the gravitational pull of the brand, and it mostly lives up to the hype. The Supersonic hair dryer is an upgrade pick in our guide to the best hair dryers, and the Airwrap has a deeply dedicated following.
The Airstrait flat iron, though?
Let’s just say that in our testing, its story was less fairy tale, more Shakespearean tragedy — all of the anticipation of a great romance, followed by the absolute letdown of its fatal flaw.
On paper, the Airstrait sounds like it’s setting the stage for the future of all flat irons. It dries and straightens at the same time, with no hot plates, just hot air. For someone like me, who once lost chunks of hair to stress and clings to the promise of less damage, this sounds like salvation. But in reality that salvation was heavy, awkward, and came with five mysterious buttons.
We put the Airstrait to the test in our guide to the best hair straighteners. One tester — a dyed-in-the-wool Dyson evangelist — could barely figure out how to turn it on, let alone use it. We all wanted to love it. The brand is aspirational. The design is gorgeous. And saying you own a Dyson holds its own social cachet. But the charm fades when using a hair tool feels like you’re wielding a toddler on a 10-foot leash, and there are lots of reasons why we couldn’t recommend the Airstrait as a pick.
At 2.2 pounds and $500, it’s twice the weight and more than 10 times the cost of the straightener we dubbed our favorite, the Remington Shine Therapy. Our testers also unanimously thought the Airstrait’s 9.6-foot cord made a styling session feel unnecessarily tedious. Without a swiveling cord base, the tool felt even more clunky and hard to maneuver.
Top pick
Testers with thick coils and thin waves were all left with sleek, straight hair after just a few passes of this beloved tool.
That cord wasn’t the only design flaw that we experienced on the Airstrait. The straightener has five buttons — to turn it on, control the temperature, toggle between airflow modes, cool the hair, and switch between wet and dry mode. But in our experience, the icons on each button were hard to decipher without watching a how-to video. A tiny digital screen displays animations that are objectively adorable and subjectively baffling. Our testers had to watch tutorials on YouTube and TikTok to learn what each button did and what the animations were trying to convey.
Compared with the Remington tool’s 1-inch plates, the Airstrait’s wide, 1.6-inch plates can’t easily reach roots or the nape of the neck, making it a hard pass for anyone with short hair, bangs, or face-framing layers. All of our testers said they couldn’t get it anywhere near their root. This was an especially big complaint for those who have type 3C and 4A curls and wanted to be able to style their baby hairs. , Michelle Hong, stylist and founder of NYC The Team salon, calls 1-inch plates the sweet spot. This tool’s plates are a full six-tenths past being sweet.
Worst of all, our tester with color-treated, type 4A curls reported lasting damage. She said no matter how many times she washed her hair, some patches stayed unnaturally straight and wouldn’t revert to their natural curl pattern. Those sections weren’t brittle or very dry, but they were permanently straight, so she ended up having to trim that hair off.
This is likely because the Airstrait (unlike traditional hair dryers) forces concentrated heat directly onto wet hair, which is when strands are most delicate. The tool tops out at 320 degrees Fahrenheit, which is around the temperature experts recommend you use your flat iron. But combining wet hair with high heat can be riskier than using a flat iron on fully dry hair.
I kept an open mind when consulting experts, thinking pros might see magic where we didn’t. Maybe the extra-long cord and dashboard display were better suited to salon use. But traveling stylist Lona Vigi nixed that theory immediately. It’s too heavy, too limited, and too expensive for a gadget that can only style hair one way.
Stylist Rogerio Cavalcante had even sharper words: “It’s like a two-in-one shampoo and conditioner. They try to do two jobs at once and end up doing neither well.” For curls and coils, he said, the Airstrait is an especially terrible idea. On fragile wet hair, the heat can unravel curl patterns and zap moisture, leaving hair more prone to long-lasting damage.
If you’re simply looking to cut down on drying time, our guide to the best hair dryers recommends the fast, lightweight Rusk W8less Professional 2000 Watt Dryer; it even comes with a concentrator add-on nozzle, which we found helps to straighten hair. Depending on your hair type and goals, simply go in with the Remington flat iron afterward. And if you really just want a Dyson product, we found the brand’s hair dryer to be fun and easy to use.
As a regular hot-tool user, I wanted the Airstrait to swoop into my bathroom and free my hair from the fear of New York’s humidity. Instead, it would be leaving me with frizzy bangs, a tangle of cord, potential damage, and the faint feeling that my hair had just been hustled.
This article was edited by Hannah Rimm and Maxine Builder.
