
And though ceramic material does heat evenly, we couldn’t feel a difference in the heat coming from the dryers we tested with ceramic coils versus those made with other materials. Any heating element in a dryer gets the heat to your head via the blowing air. (Many space heaters also employ ceramic elements.) But the engineers we spoke to were skeptical that this component makes much of a difference in drying hair: Radiant heat isn’t really helpful “unless you expect to direct the heat far from the dryer,” said Shapiro, such as if you were trying to use a dryer to heat a room for some reason. Ceramic material does heat up faster and radiate heat more evenly than iron or nickel. All hair dryers work by heating up an element, such as a metal coil, and then blowing air over it, carrying the heat to your head. They provide “a more even heat” than other materials, according to Melissa Piliang. In our testing, a weight difference as small as two-tenths of a pound made a big difference in how a dryer felt overhead.Īs for other features, the dermatologists we interviewed recommended ceramic-coated coils. Weight: The lighter the dryer, the easier it is to hold for a longer period of time.How long depends on your outlet situation, but in our testing a minimum of 6 feet was most comfortable. Avoid the problem by going with a longer cord in the first place. But if your mirror is more than three steps from an outlet, there’s no way around choosing a dryer with a longer cord it’s unsafe to add an extension cord to a device that draws as large a wattage as a hair dryer.

Many bathrooms have an outlet near enough to the mirror that a short cord doesn’t matter.

Heat settings: Multiple settings are a must-have.
