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Cheap Hair Dryers, Ionic Hair Dryers, Hair Blower Reviews

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Have you ever walked out of the salon with smooth and sleek hair feeling great, but when you try to recreate the look at home, it doesn't happen? A big reason is the hair dryer. Hair Dryers range in price from $20 for cheap hair dryers to $300 for high end blowers.

The difference in price often reflects whether it's meant to be used in salons by professionals or at home by consumers. Professional hair dryers are designed to dry hair faster, do less damage to the hair, and be light in weight because professionals need to hold them all day. In addition, according to HDryers.com, professional hair dryers last through 200-300 hours of use, whereas retail hair dryers give out sooner. Recently, consumers have begun demanding professional-quality hair dryers and manufacturers have obliged, leading to an abundance of high-end, pricey professional hair dryers for retail consumption. And yet, frugal shoppers can find a number of decent cheap hair dryers with some of the same professional hair-dryer qualities for less than $40.

The hard part is weeding through a hair dryer market that's flooded with different budget brands, models, and makes, all claiming to produce the best "professional" results. While many do not, there are some cheap hair dryers in the Cheapism niche that come close to producing the claimed "professional" outcome. Note, however, that few experts weigh in on hair dryers, probably because they use the professional-grade models, so most of the reviews we found come from consumers themselves.

Hair Dryers Heating Element.

Hair dryers first heat and then produce a forceful burst of hot air onto the designated strands of hair. How Stuff Works explains that the heating element is called a nichrome wire, which is also used to heat other household products like toasters. With high-end hair dryers and an increasing number of cheap hair dryers, this heating element is coated with ceramic. The ceramic coating allows the heat to be dispersed more evenly to avoid overheating random parts of the hair. The Babyliss Pro Professional Ceramic Xtreme 2000 (starting at $35, Amazon) and Andis 1875 Ionic Ceramic Folding Dryer (starting at $20, Amazon) are two models that use ceramic technology to heat evenly.

Hair Dryers Drying Technology.

Some of the newest hair dryers incorporate something called "ionic technology," which claims to use negative charges to dry hair. The idea here (based on no proven facts) is that this technology beats out the traditional method of pulling air from the room and directing it onto your locks as hot air. According to experts at Misikko, the reasoning behind this theory is that positively charged air drawn from the room forces open the hair shaft during the drying process, which leaves you with frizzy, dull, and static-charged hair. If an ionic negative charge is used instead, it is thought to leave the hair shaft closed, letting the hair absorb the moisture so you wind up with smooth, sleek, and nearly static-free hair.

Tourmaline is a technology that allegedly produces even more negative ions in the air, and incorporates fragments from the tourmaline gemstone into the actual hair dryer. While ionic and tourmaline technologies have not been scientifically proven to be more effective in hair dryers, user comments we found during our research suggest that consumers cannot get enough of these new technologies.

There are many cheap hair dryers on the market featuring ionic and tourmaline technologies, or a combination of the two, with ceramic. The Revlon RV544 Tourmaline Ionic Hair Dryer (starting at $26, Amazon) offers both ionic and tourmaline properties, as the name suggests, while the Revlon RV 484 Ion 1875 Watt Hair Dryer (starting at $20, Amazon) claims ionic properties. The Conair 213x Infiniti Tourmaline Ceramic Ionic Styler (starting at $32, Amazon) goes to the extreme and uses all three sought-out properties; the Hot Tools Anti-Static Ionic Travel Hair Dryer (starting at $23, Amazon) only uses ionic technology, which you can opt to turn off.

Hair Dryers Power.

Watts are the driving force of the drying properties mentioned above and correspond to the amount of time it will take to dry your hair. The most popular wattage in cheap hair dryers is 1875 watts, with the Andis 1875 Ionic Ceramic Folding Dryer, Revlon RV544 Tourmaline Ionic, and Revlon RV 484 Ion 1875 Watt all boasting 1875 watts of power. Professional hair dryers can reach up to 2000 watts, which means faster drying (and quicker customer turnover for the salon). One cheap hair dryer that can satisfy your need for speed is the Babyliss Professional Ceramic Xtreme 2000.

Hair Dryers Heat/Speed Settings.

Professional hair stylists like to have options when styling hair, which means a lot of heat and speed settings. This range is starting to show up on discount hair dryers, too. You can now buy a cheap hair dryer with two or more speed and heat settings, along with a cool shot setting, which is a blast of cool air that helps to set the finished style. According to experts at Misikko, cooler heat works best if your hair is damp, while high heat is ideal for very wet hair.

Among cheap hair dryers, the Andis 1875 Ionic Ceramic Folding Dryer and Babyliss Pro Professional Ceramic Xtreme 2000 both have three heat and speed settings. The Revlon RV 484 Ion 1875 Watt has three heat and two speed settings, while the Revlon RV544 Tourmaline Ionic has two heat and speed settings. There's no proven ideal for the number of heat and speed settings, and our research indicates that users seem just as happy with two settings as three as long as hair dries quickly and looks silky at the end. The cool shot option is becoming the norm for both high-end and cheap hair dryers, and all the budget hair dryers on our list feature this function.

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Conair 213x Infiniti Professional Styler
Hot Tools Anti-Static Ionic Travel Hair Dryer 1039
Revlon RV 484
Andis 1875 Ionic Ceramic
Babyliss Professional Ceramix Xtreme
Revlon RV544 Tourmaline Ionic

 

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