Can this £330 eco hairdryer put Dyson in the shade?
DOn’T say I’m obsessed with my Dyson Supersonic hair dryer, but please be aware that the day will come when someone will have to prise it from my cold, dead hands.
(Please let it be after I’ve completed a bouncy blowdry rather than before. It’s important to always look presentable.)
Hair dryers were not traditionally the sexiest nor most luxurious of beauty gadgets, but that changed when Dyson’s Supersonic launched in 2016, with its promise of a super speedy and sleek finish, coupled with a surprisingly chic design.
It costs £330, which is outrageously expensive, but once you get sucked in (well, blown out) it’s difficult to go back to a bog-standard blower from Boots.
But now, Dyson has got competition in the form of Zuvi Halo, the opening salvo from a Chinese tech start-up which launches in the UK this week (zuvi.uk). Its USP is that it dries using light to evaporate the water, rather than traditional heat coils. ‘It combines light, mostly infrared light, and warm air to remove water from the surface of your hair while leaving the inside hydrated and healthy,’ says Jon Diele, Zuvi’s managing director for U.S. and Europe. ‘Just like with your skin, hydration is key to hair health.’
This apparently means ‘shinier, stronger hair that retains colour for longer’.
Zuvi’s LightCare technology mimics, they say, the sun drying wet hair on a warm day. The light (with harmful UV rays filtered out) is accompanied by a gentle stream of air, which acts like a summer breeze. It is all very lovely. But the price is less lovely — £329, so it’s clear whose market share Zuvi’s gunning for.
As for the design, let’s be polite and call it an homage to the Dyson. It’s all clean lines and minimal stylings, with its cylindrical barrel and faux leather handle (oil-resistant, apparently), plus a magnetically attached nozzle and diffuser.
The Zuvi’s eco-credentials are impressive. The light technology means it uses 2.5 times less power than a traditional hair dryer (690 watts vs 1,700 watts). I work out that using the Zuvi for ten minutes therefore costs me 4.7p on my current tariff, compared with 11.6p for a traditional, 1,700-watt dryer.
Over the course of a year, drying for ten minutes daily with a Zuvi would cost around £17.15, whereas a normal dryer would rack up a £42.30 bill. Every little helps at the moment, no?
I give it a whirl on my very fine, mid-length, blonde hair. It’s freshly washed and I’ve used my usual shampoo and conditioner, plus my normal styling products: a few squirts of volumising spray at the roots and a smidge of oil on the ends.
The dryer is pleasant to use — it’s quiet and light and the modes (care, fast, soft, style, cool) are easy to navigate. The cord, however, is shorter than the Dyson’s (177cm vs 264cm), which is irritating. But you don’t end up with a room full of wasted hot air.
ZUVI’S dryer will come into its own in the summer months — or if you have thicker, longer hair than mine; the kind that takes a decent wodge of time to dry. I’m done in a speedy five minutes, the same as when using the Dyson.
I try the Zuvi on my 13-year-old daughter’s long, hard-to-tame curls. It takes ten minutes, again, the same as with the Dyson.
I’m currently eight weeks into my cut, so my hair is in need of some attention. The ends have reached a point of frizziness that even my trusty Moroccanoil can’t sort. But the Zuvi worked wonders — to the extent that I can put off a trim for few weeks. There wasn’t a split end in sight, my hair was so soft and it was shinier than I’ve ever seen it.
This is no mean feat on bleached blonde hair, which is notoriously gleam-resistant. I imagine if Claudia Winkleman used a Zuvi, she could to use her hair as a make-up mirror.
However, this exquisite finish came at the expense of volume and movement. The Zuvi just doesn’t have the air power to give my roots the oomph they need and the finished look was too flat for my taste.
My daughter, on the other hand, is on a mission to make her hair straighter and less pouffy, so she was delighted with the smooth finish.
My husband had a go on the Zuvi, too. He has a short cut with the same hair type as our daughter and was won over. He hates how hot and bothered standard hair dryers make him.
I speak to celebrity hair stylist Richard Ward, who is responsible for the Duchess of Cambridge’s crowning glory.
He confirms that my hair will indeed be limp if I dry it without blowing hot air into the roots. That said, using light rather than hot air is likely to be ‘a bit gentler on the hair cuticles — and the flatter they lie, the shinier your hair will look’.
He says: ‘The Zuvi is about reducing carbon footprint. But ultimately I think women just want to get the best results from their hairdryer.’ And, he says, it’s not what you’ve got, it’s what you do with it.
‘A good blow dry is about using a real bristle brush and getting the right tension with that brush as you pull it straight.’
I will remain a Dyson devotee — I’m going to choose its superior volume over Zuvi’s mega-shine, but it was a close call. However, if you’ve got longer, thicker or curlier hair than mine, the Zuvi is worth considering.
And if you’re pondering the impact of your everyday behaviour on the environment and your energy bills — and who isn’t right now? — the Zuvi looks like a smart choice.